Alexandria “Lexi” Jones, daughter of late music icon David Bowie, has shared deeply personal allegations about her childhood, claiming 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 opened up about growing up with famous parents and the struggles she says were largely hidden from the public eye.
Lexi, who is also the daughter of supermodel Iman, said she felt conflicted about her upbringing.
While she acknowledged being grateful for the opportunities that came with her family’s status, she admitted that she often questioned whether people were attracted to her for who she was or who her parents were.
As a teenager, these doubts intensified into serious mental health challenges.
Throughout the video, Lexi talked about being sent to “treatment” at age 14, and later explained that she was dealing with depression, an eating disorder, and substance abuse.
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 drug use was about escape rather than enjoyment.
“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 ended for everyone else, I continued. And I drank and got high alone.”
Lexi claimed she was taken from her family home against her will shortly after Bowie’s diagnosis.
She recalled that her father had read her a letter beforehand and clearly remembers the last line: “I’m sorry we have to do this.”
She described two men who arrived at the house one weekday morning and gave her what she felt was an ultimatum.
“They told me I could do it the easy way or the hard way,” she said. “I chose the hard way.”
She claimed she was screaming and clinging to a table leg as she was pulled into a black SUV and driven away 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 outdoors through winter conditions.
She said she slept under tarps, learned survival skills and was searched on arrival before being given basic equipment and a heavy backpack.
“We made fire by removing birch bark and striking flint and steel,” she recalled. “I was a city girl. I didn’t even know these kinds of programs existed.”
After three months, Lexi said she was transferred to a treatment center in Utah, where she stayed for more than a year. It was there that she learned of her father’s death in January 2016.
She said she had spoken to him just two days earlier, on his birthday.
“I had the luxury of talking to him two days before, on his birthday,” she said. “I told him I loved him and he said it back and we both knew it.”
She also spoke of the pain of seeing public statements saying that Bowie died surrounded by his entire family. The wording, she said, made her feel physically ill.
“Yeah, the whole family was there. Except me,” Lexi said.
Bowie, who also had a son, Duncan Zowie Jones, with his ex-wife Angie Bowie, died on 10 January 2016 of liver cancer.
