Following the birth of her twins Harper and Finley Lockwood in 2008, Lisa Marie Presley was prescribed painkillers to aid in her postpartum recovery. In her posthumous memoir From Here to the Great Unknown, the late daughter of Elvis and Priscilla Presley details her experience developing an opioid addiction and the withdrawals that followed.
“For a couple of years it was recreational and then it wasn’t. It was an absolute matter of addiction, withdrawal in the big leagues,” reads an excerpt from the book, shared via People ahead of its Oct. 8 release. Presley first started opening up about her experience with addiction years before her death at 54 in January 2023 due to complications of a small bowel obstruction. In 2019, she penned the foreword for Harry Nelson’s book The United States of Opioids: A Prescription for Liberating a Nation in Pain.
“You may read this and wonder how, after losing people close to me, I also fell prey to opioids,” she wrote at the time. “I was recovering after the 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.”
She added: “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 … As I write this, I think of my four children, who gave me the purpose to heal.”
From Here to the Great Unknown was completed and co-authored by her daughter, Riley Keough. “I hope that in an extraordinary circumstance, people relate to a very human experience of love, heartbreak, loss, addiction and family,” Keough told People. The actress shared that the chapter about her mother’s addiction, in particular, was “incredibly difficult” to write. The content of that section also bled into the portions of the book that detail the death of Benjamin Keough, who also struggled with addiction and died by suicide in 2020.
“[My mom] 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,” Keough added. “Her hope with this book was just human connection. So that’s mine.”
