David Bowie’s Daughter Lexi Says She Was Forcibly Sent to Treatment as Teen During Dad’s Cancer Battle
Alexandria “Lexi” Jones, the 25-year-old daughter of late music icon David Bowie and supermodel Iman, is speaking candidly about a painful chapter from her teenage years. In a recent Instagram video, Lexi shared that she was forced into treatment as a young teen while struggling with mental health issues and substance abuse.
Reflecting on her upbringing, Lexi acknowledged the privilege of having two globally recognized parents. At the same time, she admitted that growing up in the spotlight came with emotional complications. She often questioned whether people genuinely cared about her or were simply drawn to her last name.
In the video, Lexi revealed that at 14, she was battling depression, an eating disorder, and substance abuse. She said she was removed from her family home shortly after Bowie was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2014, describing it as one of the most fragile periods of her life. According to Lexi, the diagnosis pushed her to a “breaking point.”
While others around her were experimenting with drugs and alcohol socially, Lexi explained that her experience was different. “For me, it wasn’t about fun,” Lexi said in her video. “I wasn’t experimenting, I was escaping. Escaping from my complicated mind, my complicated family, my complicated school. When the party ended for everyone else, I kept going. And I drank and got high alone.”
She recalled her father reading a letter to her before she was taken away, saying the final line has stayed with her: “I’m sorry we have to do this.” Lexi described two men arriving at her home on a weekday morning. “They told me I could do this the easy way or the hard way,” she said. “I chose the hard way.”
She remembered clinging to a table leg and screaming as she was pulled into a black SUV, not knowing where she was being taken. “I felt stripped of any right to stay in my own life,” said Lexi. “By the time the door shut, my parents were already gone.”
She alleged she spent 91 days in a wilderness therapy program, living outdoors through winter conditions. “We made fires by stripping birch bark and striking flint and steel,” she said. “I was a city girl. I didn’t even know this kind of program existed.”
Afterward, she was transferred to a residential treatment center in Utah for more than a year. It was there that she learned of her father’s death in January 2016. “I had the luxury of speaking to him two days before, on his birthday,” said Lexi. “I told him I loved him and he said it back, and we both knew.”
Seeing public statements that Bowie died surrounded by his whole family left her devastated. “Yeah, the whole family was there. Except for me,” said Lexi.
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