Lisa Marie Opens Up About Bitter Drug Addiction

Already part of her battle to divorce estranged husband Michael Lockwood, Lisa Marie Presley is coming forward about her fight against drug addiction – something that she knows all too well as her father fought it as well.

For the very first time, Presley opened up to address her addiction to opioids and painkillers that started shortly after the birth of her twin daughters, Harper and Finley.

A new book, The United States of Opioids: A Prescription for Liberating a Nation in Pain, by Harry Nelson holds a foreword penned by Lisa Marie in which she details her own personal battle against substance abuse – and bluntly states she’s “grateful to be alive.”

“You may read this and wonder how, after losing people close to me, I also fell prey to opioids,” she wrote. “I was recovering after the [2008] birth of my daughters, Vivienne and Finley, when a doctor prescribed me opioids for pain. It only took a short-term prescription of opioids in the hospital for me to feel the need to keep taking them.”

Throughout the foreword, she explains her path to recovery and her outlook now that she’s on the other side of things. For a long time, she had tried to keep everything very private – but then some documents from her pending divorce came out and revealed the truth of her struggle.

Lisa Marie called it “a difficult path to overcome this dependence, and to put my life back together. Even in recent years, I have seen too many people I loved struggle with addiction and die tragically from this epidemic. It is time for us to say goodbye to shame about addiction. We have to stop blaming and judging ourselves and the people around us… That starts with sharing our stories.”

She wasn’t sure she was ready to share such a personal topic with the public – but her overwhelming desire to help others in a similar situation really helped her choose to be open.

“Across America and the world, people are dying in mind-boggling numbers because of opioid and other drug overdoses,” she wrote. “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. I experienced firsthand how hard it is to cut through all of the bad information out there to get help. We all need to educate ourselves and the people around us on the dangers of opioids and other drugs, and understand what we can do to keep ourselves and the people we love safe… Acknowledging that we are all at risk is not a measure of weakness, but of honesty.”

Our prayers are with Lisa Marie as she works on recovering from this addiction.