David Bowie's daughter, Alexandria "Lexi," has revealed that she was forced to attend a treatment center during her childhood. In a video shared on her Instagram, the 25-year-old spoke about growing up with two famous parents, expressing gratitude for the opportunities she was given but also admitting to feeling uncertain about people's true intentions towards her.
Throughout the video, Lexi mentioned going to "treatment" and later elaborated on struggling with depression, an eating disorder, and substance abuse at the age of 14. She claimed that she was forcibly removed from her family's house after her father was diagnosed with liver cancer - a time she described as one of the most fragile periods of her life.
Reps for both Iman and Bowie's estate did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Lexi said that when Bowie was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2014, she reached her "breaking point." She noticed that others around her started experimenting with drugs and alcohol, but her substance abuse stemmed from a different place. "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."
Lexi claimed that her father read a letter he had written to her before she was taken from the house and remembered the last line specifically - "I'm sorry we have to do this." She recalled two men entering the house to take her away 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 recalled grabbing onto a table leg, screaming as she was pulled into a black SUV and driven off without being told where she was going. "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."
Lexi alleged that she was then taken to a wilderness therapy program where she stayed for 91 days. She lived outside during the winter, slept under tarps, and learned survival skills. On arrival, Lexi said she was strip-searched and given fleece, snow pants, boots, and a huge backpack. "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."
After the three months were up, Lexi said she was transferred to a residential treatment center - a boarding school - in Utah, where she stayed for more than a year. She was there when she learned that her father had died. "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."
But when she saw the announcements of her father's death stating that he had died surrounded by his whole family, Lexi said that the wording made her feel physically sick. "Yeah, the whole family was there. Except for me," said Lexi.
