NEW YORK — Lisa Marie Presley is “grateful to be alive today.”
The daughter of Elvis Presley has written a foreword for the new book “The United States of Opioids: A Prescription for Liberating a Nation in Pain” by Harry Nelson.
In it she talks about her own struggle with addiction.
Presley wrote that in August she was on “Today” to promote the album “Where No One Stands Alone,” a compilation of gospel songs by her late father, when show co-host Jenna Bush Hager asked her a direct question about addiction.
Presley wrote that she said, “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, was well-known to have struggled with substance abuse.
His daughter 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.”
The-CNN-Wire
