How Lisa Marie Presley’s cardiac arrest is latest battle in her rollercoaster life

Lisa Marie Presley was rushed to the hospital less than 2 hours after celebrating her father at the Golden Globes with Austin Butler, who brought him back to life for the big screen.

The 54-year-old woman went into cardiac arrest at her Calabasas home Thursday morning and was revived by paramedics.

As the only child of Elvis and Priscilla Presley, she quickly rose to the spotlight as a child and has had her fair share of tragedies.

From the death of her father to marrying the troubled Michael Jackson and losing her son to suicide in 2020, the mother of four has also had her ups and downs with drug addiction.

While writing the foreword to Harry Nelson’s book, Opioid America: A Prescription to Liberate a Suffering Nation, he first spoke about his addiction to painkillers and opioids.

Presley said in the book, written in 2019, that she was “grateful to be alive today” before explaining that she began taking opioids after the birth of twins Vivienne and Finley in 2008.

She said: ‘You may read this and wonder how, after losing people close to me, I also fell prey to opioids.

“It only took a short-term prescription of opioids in the hospital for me to feel the need to continue taking them.”

Addiction has been a part of the star’s life since she was a child, with her father and ex-husband, Michael Jackson, both dying due to complications from drug use.

Lisa was only nine years old when she saw her father’s dead body lying face down on the carpet, and she remembered crying while saying ‘my dad is dead’.

His body was not removed from the property after his death in August 1977, which Lisa previously said made it “not feel real to her”, adding that it was “strangely comforting”.

She has struggled to keep her addiction private, but details of her sobriety battle emerged when she filed for divorce from her fourth husband, musician Michael Lockwood.

Lisa married Danny Keough in 1988 and stayed with him for six years, with the couple sharing daughter Riley and son Benjamin, before marrying Jackson in 1994 and divorcing him just two years later.

She then enjoyed a whirlwind marriage of just 107 days to Nicolas Cage from 2002 to 2004 before marrying Lockwood for ten years from 2006 to 2016, giving birth to twins Finley and Harper.

The bomb admitted that her problems with sobriety began in 2003, after years of witnessing the struggle of those around her.

As a teenager, her problems began with drug abuse before she was committed to The Castle, a Scientology facility in Hollywood, to get her off drugs.

She admits to seeing her father take ‘a handful of pills’ and recalls his ‘erratic behaviour’ towards the end of his life.

His foreword continued: ‘It is a difficult path to overcome this dependency and put my life back together.

“Even in the past few years, I have seen far too many people I loved battle addiction and die tragically from this epidemic.

‘It’s time we said goodbye to addiction shame. We have to stop blaming and judging ourselves and the people around us. That starts with sharing our stories.’

With four failed marriages under her belt, Lisa’s troubles began after she found her father dead after a heart attack in the bathroom, with his then-girlfriend yelling into the phone.

Lisa was married to Danny Keogh for six years, from October 1988 to May 1994, when she filed for divorce in the Dominican Republic.

Just 20 days after it was completed, Lisa shocked the world by marrying the King of Pop Michael Jackson in a forced wedding.

The couple became fast friends after first meeting in 1975 at a concert in Las Vegas, but their fledgling relationship didn’t expand until they dined with a mutual friend in Los Angeles.

Their marriage only lasted two years, however, and was quickly overwhelmed by problems, including Jackson being accused of child molestation.

She claims she was ‘sucked in’ believing Jackson was a ‘misunderstood person’, and their wedding came a year after Jordan Chandler filed a lawsuit against the signer alleging sexual abuse.

Lisa told Rolling Stone in 2003 that she became obsessed with trying to “save” the star and thought they could “save the world” together.

Reflecting on the effect the marriage has had on his life and reputation, he said: “All I got was a storm.” And I came out of it.

She said she was aware of his drug addiction in 1995, just a year after they were married, after he collapsed onstage while rehearsing for an HBO concert special.

Lisa gave the superstar an ultimatum: choose drugs or her, and he chose drugs over his then-wife.

The star said she would regularly see her second husband return from his dermatologist’s office “completely out of it.”

She insists their marriage was real and not a publicity stunt, often saying she tried to fix Jackson what she couldn’t with Elvis.

Even after their split, the pair remained close friends, and she flew “all over the world” to be with him after their split.

The last time they spoke was in 2005, just before he went to trial on another sexual assault charge.

She said that the last time they spoke in 2005, he asked her if she still loved him, but they stopped talking after she said he was “indifferent.”

Lisa explained that she was very emotional when she found out that he had died in 2009, saying that “it was the strangest day of my life.”