Alexandria “Lexi” Jones, the daughter of the late music icon David Bowie, has shared deeply personal claims about her childhood, alleging she was forcibly sent to a treatment center during one of the most fragile periods of her life.
In a video posted to her Instagram, the 25-year-old explained growing up with famous parents and that the struggles she says were largely hidden from public view.
Lexi, who is also the daughter of model Iman, said she felt conflicted about her upbringing.
Although she admitted to being grateful for the opportunities afforded by her family’s status, she admitted that she often wondered if people were attracted to her for who she was or who her parents were.
As a teenager, these doubts intensified and developed into serious mental health problems.
Throughout the video, Lexi talked about being sent to “treatment” at age 14, later explaining that she suffered from depression, eating disorders and drug addiction.
She said her situation worsened after her father was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2014, a moment she described as her breaking point.
While others around her experimented socially, Lexi said her substance use was about escapism rather than pleasure.
“For me, it wasn’t about fun,” she said.
“I wasn’t experimenting, I was escaping. I was escaping my complicated mind, my complicated family, my complicated school. When the party was over for everyone, I kept going. And I drank and got high alone.”
Lexi claimed she was taken from the family home against her will shortly after Bowie’s diagnosis.
She remembers her father reading her a letter beforehand and clearly remembers the last line: “I’m sorry, we have to do this.” »
She described two men arriving at the house one weekday morning and giving her what she considered an ultimatum.
“They told me I could do it the easy way or the hard way,” she said. “I chose the hard way.”
She alleged she clung to a table leg, screaming, as she was dragged into a black SUV and left without being told where she was going.
According to Lexi, she was first taken to a wilderness therapy program, where she spent 91 days living outside in winter conditions.
She said she slept under tarpaulins, was taught survival skills and was strip searched upon arrival before being given basic equipment and a heavy backpack.
“We started fires by removing birch bark and striking flint and steel,” she remembers. “I was a city girl. I didn’t even know this kind of program existed.”
After three months, Lexi said she was transferred to a residential treatment center in Utah, where she stayed for more than a year. It was there that she learned of the death of her father in January 2016.
She shared that she had spoken to him two days earlier, on his birthday.
“I had the luxury of speaking to him two days before, on his birthday,” she said. “I told him I loved him and he said so, and we both knew it.”
She also spoke about the pain of seeing public statements that Bowie died surrounded by his entire family. The wording, she said, made her physically ill.
“Yeah, the whole family was there. Except me,” Lexi said.
Bowie, who also had a son, Duncan Zowie Jones, with ex-wife Angie Bowie, died on January 10, 2016 from liver cancer.
