David Bowie‘s daughter, Alexandria (Lexi) Zahra Jones, recently spoke out about her childhood and teenage years.
She claims she was forced into a treatment center when she was a teen, leading to multiple treatment centers while her father was dying of cancer.
During the video, she stated, “Treatment made me realize how much I had to fast-forward my teenage years. I found myself longing to be a teenager even though I was one, just not in the conventional sense.”
Jones opened up about her experiences and how they have shaped her today.
Falling into Bad Habits
It all started before Lexi was 10 years old. She started seeing a therapist after her parents and teacher found something was “off” with her.
She noted, “That was around the first time I had my first anxiety attack.” A few years passed, and “things got heavier.”
Lexi became depressed, was struggling in school, dealing with a learning disability, and hated the way she looked. She eventually developed bulimia at 12 years old.
“I started self-harming when I was 11,” she shared. “I don’t know why I felt the way I felt. … felt stupid, incompetent, like unworthy, useless, unlovable. And having successful parents kind of only made it worse.”
As her mental health declined, she hit her “breaking point” when David Bowie, her father, was diagnosed with liver cancer in 2014. Jones experimented with drugs and alcohol. While others did it for fun, Lexi claims her substance abuse came from another place.
“For me, it wasn’t about fun. 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.”
Along with substance abuse, Lexi lashed out at those around her, trying to find respect through fear.
Wilderness Camp
Everything changed on a random weekday morning. Lexi’s mother called her into the living room after she had gotten ready for school. Her mom, dad, and godmother were all standing there. Bowie proceeded to read a letter to her, ending with, “I’m sorry that we have to do this.”
Two men came into the room and offered her “the easy way or the hard way.” Choosing hard, Lexi kicked and screamed as the two men “looped a rope” around her and dragged her out of the house and into a black SUV.
Her parents just watched. “They were crying, but they let it happen.”
She was taken to a wilderness center and promptly strip-searched and issued winter clothes and a large backpack. Jones was there 91 days, learning how to make fires, cook meals over fires, set up tarps, and sleep on a yoga mat in a sleeping bag.
She was only allowed to communicate with people outside the camp once a week through letters, but “only approved people were allowed to write to us or hear from us.”
While some of the therapy helped, Lexi added that “the whole experience felt dehumanizing, like the whole point was to take away every basic human comfort and need” to get back small privileges. S
he added that, “I didn’t choose to be there and if you don’t choose change, it’s hard to know what change even means.”
While she was fortunately never abused during her time at the camp, the “mental and emotional manipulation [she] experienced is something [she] will not forget.”
The Residential Treatment Center
After wilderness camp, Lexi was sent to a residential treatment center in Utah for over a year. Quickly, she had to adapt to a completely new system that felt “like starting over.”
While she did well there, a few times mistakes seeped in, like when she was 15 and kissed a girl. As punishment, Jones had to be watched all the time and couldn’t speak to anyone for several weeks. She admitted, “It felt like solitary confinement, and I felt like a prisoner.”
As the months went by, her dad’s condition worsened. “All of this was happening while my dad was only getting more sick back at home.” Then, Bowie died while Lexi was still in the program.
“I was not there,” she said. “…had the luxury of speaking with him two days before on his birthday. I told him I loved him, he said it back and we both knew.”
A social media post about his death commented that Bowie was surrounded by family, though Lexi was clearly missing, and it made her physically ill.
“I’ve accepted it. I’ve tried not to internalize it or feel guilty but sometimes I still have those moments where I wish things were to be different.”
Once home from the center, Lexi dipped into “sensory overload” and spiraled back into old patterns. This led to a stint in treatment centers, making her feel like “a problem being passed off.”
Lexi’s Final Thoughts
The point of Lexi’s post was to show what these places do to a person and the “parts of yourself you lose in the process of being fixed.”
“As much as I went through things that no kid should have to go through, I also became someone I’m proud of,” she added.
While she wishes the transformation were under different circumstances, “I can’t pretend it didn’t shape me into someone who sees people deeply, who feels things deeply, who creates from that place.”