Lisa Marie Presley, the only daughter of the late Elvis Presley and Priscilla Presley, died Thursday, just hours after being hospitalized following an apparent cardiac arrest.
Lisa Marie Presley spoke openly about her struggles with addiction on the Today Show, in 2019. She had written the foreword for the book “The United States of Opioids: A Prescription for Liberating a Nation in Pain” by Harry Nelson:”
She spoke to a lot of people throughout the world with this forward:
“I’m not perfect. My father wasn’t perfect, no one’s perfect. It’s what you do with it after you learn and then you try to help others with it.”
Elvis Presley, who died in 1977, also struggled with substance abuse.
Lisa Marie wrote that she wanted to go public in an attempt to help others.
“I had never openly spoken in public about my own addiction to opioids and painkillers,” she wrote. “I wasn’t sure that I was ready to share on such a personal topic.”
Presley said she became addicted when she was given a short-term prescription during her recovery from the birth of her twin daughters, Vivienne and Finley, in 2008. She’s faced a “difficult path” with her recovery but said, “It is time for us to say goodbye to shame about addiction.”
“Across America and the world, people are dying in mind-boggling numbers because of opioid and other drug overdoses,” Presley wrote in the book. “Many more people are suffering silently, addicted to opioids and other substances. I am writing this in the hope that I can play a small part in focusing attention on this terrible crisis.”
From the death of her father Elvis, when she was just 9 years old, to the joy of raising her children, to losing one of her children (Benjamin Keough in 2020), she was a beautiful woman who shared, and struggled with, a lot in her short life.
Enjoy these photos from her life, and smile as you live yours!
-Carla Rea
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