Lisa Marie Presley, 54, is seen at the Golden Globes on Wednesday night. She was rushed to a hospital on Thursday morning after paramedics responded to her home saying she was in “complete cardiac arrest.”
Lisa Marie Presley died Thursday at the age of 54 after a long life in the shadow of drug and alcohol abuse.
She abused drugs from the ages of 13 to 17 until her mother checked her into a Scientology rehab center.
Her son Benjamin died by suicide in July 2020 at the age of only 22 after a long battle with addiction. Her two-year marriage to Michael Jackson fell apart amid his substance abuse, and she herself became addicted to opioids in 2008 when she received a last-minute prescription while recovering from the birth of her twin daughters, Vivienne and Finley.
By 2013, she was a heavy cocaine abuser and entered rehab at least five times.
She was thought to have been sober for the last few years, but after the death of their son, her ex-husband Michael Lockwood said he feared she might relapse.
The daughter of Elvis and Priscilla Presley was just nine years old when her father died at age 42 of a heart attack likely caused by his addiction to prescription barbiturates.
The only daughter of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, she was quickly thrust into the spotlight as a child and had more than her fair share of tragedy
Lisa Marie said she had to go to rehab “several times” and admitted to spending between three and five wards at a Mexican treatment facility
The little girl found his body face down on the carpet while his friend Ginger Alden tried to revive him and recalled crying as she said “My dad is dead”.
His body was not removed from the property for three days after his death in August 1977, which Lisa Marie previously said appeared “not real” to her and was “oddly reassuring.”
As a teenager, she rebelled against drugs between the ages of 13 and 17, but her mother put her in The Castle, a Scientology center in Hollywood, to get her off drugs.
“I did everything except shrooms and heroin or crack,” she said.
“Cocaine, tranquilizers, marijuana and alcohol all at the same time… I don’t know how I survived it.
“One day I woke up with some people on the floor. I drove to the Church of Scientology myself and said, “Someone… help me right now.”
It worked for a time, and Presley said she had been drug free since she was 17.
At the age of 27, she married Michael Jackson – her second marriage after a six-year relationship with actor Danny Keough, father of Benjamin and his sister Riley, who is now 33.
At the time of their marriage in 1994, he had been an opioid addict for over a decade after suffering an accident on the set of a Pepsi commercial in 1984 that left him with severe burns.
Lisa Marie and her second husband Michael Jackson are seen in Paris in 1994
Lisa Marie had a shotgun wedding to the King of Pop, Michael Jackson, (left) just 20 days after finalizing her divorce from Danny Keough. She then married Hollywood actor Nicholas Cage (right) in a marriage that lasted just 107 days – Cage filed for divorce
The last time Jackson and Lisa Marie spoke was in 2005, just before he was taken to court for yet another molestation
He entered rehab in 1993 and said, “I became more and more dependent on the painkillers to get me through the days of my tour.”
He canceled the latter part of his 1993 “Dangerous” world tour and announced that he would seek treatment.
Presley said she hoped their marriage would quell his addiction.
“I fell into this whole, ‘You poor, sweet, misunderstood man, I’m going to save you,'” she said in 2003.
‘I fell in love with him.’
But eventually she gave him an ultimatum — and he chose drugs.
“He had to make a decision. Was it the drugs and the vampires or me?’ she told Oprah Winfrey in 2003.
“And he pushed me away.”
Their divorce was finalized in 1996.
Her third marriage to Nicholas Cage lasted just three months – Cage had also battled drug use throughout his 20s and famously revealed he had taken magic mushrooms with his cat.
In 2006, she married musician Michael Lockwood, and the birth of their twin daughters began her own descent into drug addiction.
She struggled to keep her addiction private, but details of her struggle with sobriety surfaced as she filed paperwork for a divorce from her fourth husband — musician Michael Lockwood
Lisa Marie tried to keep most of her fights private, but after marrying musician Michael Lockwood and having twins Finley and Vivian together, the couple went through a bitter divorce. The family is seen in 2010: from left – Riley Keough, Michael Lockwood, Benjamin Keough and Lisa Marie Presley
She revealed the extent of her own addiction for the first time in the foreword to a 2015 book by Harry Nelson, The United States of Opioids: A Prescription for Liberating a Nation in Pain.
“You may be reading this and wondering how, after losing people close to me, I also fell victim to opioids,” she wrote.
She explained: “I recovered after that [2008] My daughters Vivienne and Finley were born when a doctor prescribed opioids for pain.
“It only took a short-term hospital prescription of opioids for me to feel the need to continue taking them.”
Presley, Elvis and Priscilla’s only daughter, added: “I have never spoken openly in public about my own addiction to opioids and painkillers.
“I wasn’t sure I was ready to talk about such a personal topic.”
Ahead of the Golden Globes, Lisa Marie celebrated her late father’s 88th birthday with fans outside of Graceland – Austin Butler also attended the event
Lisa Marie Presley was hospitalized less than two hours after celebrating her father at the Golden Globes with Austin Butler bringing him back to life on the big screen
She said in the 2015 book she trod a “difficult road” with her recovery.
“It’s time we said goodbye to the shame of addiction.
“Across America and around the world, people are dying in incredible numbers from opioid and other drug overdoses.
“Many more people are suffering in silence, dependent on opioids and other substances.
“I am writing this in the hope that I can do a small part in raising awareness of this terrible crisis.”
Presley mentioned her children – the twins with Lockwood, and Riley and Benjamin Keough.
“As I write this, I think of my four children who gave me a goal to heal,” she wrote, and it made her think of “the countless parents who have lost children to opioids and other drugs.”
She concluded by saying that she is “grateful to be alive today” and especially grateful to have “four beautiful children who have given me purpose that has carried me through dark times.”
The extent of her problem was revealed during her 2016 divorce from Lockwood, after a decade of marriage.
In a 2017 statement obtained by Radar Online, she admitted to abusing cocaine, opioids, painkillers and alcohol.
“In the last three years … I’ve had to go to rehab several times,” she said, later putting the exact number at between three and five wards at a Mexican treatment facility.
“I was a mess. I couldn’t stop.”
The 54-year-old suffered cardiac arrest at her home in Calabasas on Thursday morning and was revived by paramedics
Presley said her addiction peaked when her marriage ended in 2016.
“During the last year of our marriage, I abused cocaine terribly,” she said, according to court records.
When asked if her drug use was heavy, she said, “It was bad, yes.”
She added, “I’ve only been mixing the pills and alcohol for the past two years.”
Presley and Lockwood’s divorce battle continues, and Lockwood is now looking for money to pay his legal fees.
He said in court he was concerned Benjamin’s suicide could cause a relapse.
Lockwood requested custody of the children.
“Lisa Marie Presley’s son shot himself in her home (although she wasn’t there at the time).
“With all due sympathy and respect, this creates a new and unaddressed dual concern: the safety of children and the increased likelihood of LMP relapsing into drug and alcohol addiction,” the documents read.
She was hospitalized with cardiac arrest on Thursday – after celebrating Austin Butler’s success in Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis biopic with her mother at the Golden Globes the night before.
Priscilla Presley, 77, said she’s getting the “best care.”
In a statement to People, she said: “My beloved daughter Lisa Marie has been taken to the hospital. Now she gets the best care.
“Please keep her and our family in your prayers. We feel the prayers from around the world and ask for privacy at this time.’