Content warning: This article discusses topics of addiction, death and sexual abuse.
As bombshell after bombshell gets shared from Lisa Marie Presley’s posthumous memoir, New Idea hears the late star’s mother, Priscilla Presley is “devastated” at many of the secrets held within its pages.
In fact, one source claims the Presley family matriarch, 79, was not expecting Lisa Marie’s memoir, titled From Here to the Great Unknown, to touch on some of the subjects it did.
Although it’s thought the pair were in a good place at the time of Lisa Marie’s passing on January 12 last year age 54, that wasn’t always the case.
Elvis’ death left Lisa Marie ‘stuck’ with Priscilla
In her book, Lisa Marie writes that when her father, music legend Elvis Presley, died in 1977 she realised “life as she knew it was completely over”.
Lisa was nine at the time but vividly recalls thinking she was now “stuck with her” – meaning Priscilla. She further talks about preferring to “hit the streets” as a teenager than stay living with her mother.
Lisa Marie also claims that when she was 10, her mother’s then-boyfriend, actor Michael Edwards, molested her. Priscilla nor Edwards, 80, have not yet publicly commented on this allegation.
“God knows Priscilla and Lisa Marie had their ups and downs, so reliving some of this stuff is torturous for her,” says New Idea’s insider. “If she had her time again, she’d do a lot differently.”
Did Lisa Marie really freeze her late son Benjamin Keough?
Lisa Marie also revealed in her book, which was finished by her eldest daughter Riley Keough, that she kept her late son Benjamin Keough’s body in her house on dry ice after he died aged 27 in July 2020.
Overcome with grief, a heartbroken Lisa Marie explained Benjamin was held in a “separate casitas bedroom” on her Los Angeles property for two months, which had to always remain at roughly 12 degrees Celsius.
While it was partly done because burial plans were held up due to the 2020 pandemic, Riley writes it was “really important” for her mum to “have ample time to say goodbye” to Benjamin, like she had done with Elvis. Benjamin was eventually laid to rest at the family’s Memphis mansion Graceland.
Drinking away her grief
As Elvis and Priscilla’s only child, Lisa Marie was thrust into the public eye from birth. The Presleys’ tumultuous marriage ended when Lisa Marie was four, and she vividly recalls memories of Elvis being “a very exciting dad”.
In the book, Lisa Marie says her dad would often wake her up in the middle of the night to “get on the table and sing”. They’d also ride around their Memphis neighbourhood in a customised golf cart!
Lisa Marie also recalls a sense of unease when her father kissed her goodnight hours before he passed away. She never got over the trauma of Elvis’ death, writing: “There have been nights as an adult when I would just get drunk and listen to his music and sit there and cry. The grief still comes. It’s still just there.”
Her “80 pill a day” addiction
To try and deal with Elvis’ passing, Lisa Marie turned to drugs in her teen years. It’s a pattern that would repeat throughout her life.
“I did everything … cocaine, sedatives, pot and drinking – all at the same time,” Lisa Marie said. “I don’t know how I lived through it.”
Lisa Marie eventually got clean after entering a rehab program. But after welcoming her twin daughters Finley and Harper Lockwood in 2008, she became hooked on opioids. A doctor had prescribed them to her for pain. Soon, she was taking as many as 80 pills a day.
“It took more and more to get high, and I honestly don’t know when your body decides it can’t deal with it anymore. But it does decide that at some point,” Lisa Marie confessed.
A cocaine addiction followed, and Lisa Marie reportedly underwent five rehab stints. She also temporarily lost custody of the twins amid her divorce from their father, Michael Lockwood.
To wean her off the opioids, Lisa Marie was prescribed medication that Riley says “only served to make her even more high because whatever the normal dose was, she would somehow get five times that amount from the doctors”. She also went on mood stabilisers that Riley reveals dimmed “her light”.
Lisa Marie was eventually able to stay sober, although her autopsy revealed oxycodone in her system, which she was given after cosmetic surgery.
In an interview to promote the book, Daisy Jones & The Six star Riley said the passages about Lisa Marie’s “descent into addiction” were “incredibly difficult” to finish off. .
“[She] wanted to write a book in the hopes that someone could read her story and relate to her, to know that they’re not alone in the world,” Riley explained. “Her hope with this book was just human connection. So that’s mine.”
You can order From Here To The Great Unknown by Lisa Marie Presley and Riley Keough on Amazon and Big W.
You can order the audiobook version through Audible.
If you or someone you know is having a hard time, contact Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636 or chat to a counsellor online.