In her new posthumous memoir, From Here to the Great Unknown, Lisa Marie Presley shares the full scope of a devastating opioid addiction battle she fought after the birth of her twin daughters in 2008.

Presley says that her drug use was “recreational” in the beginning, according to a book excerpt published by People. The pain pills were prescribed to her to aid her recovery from her c-section birth. But soon, she became locked in the throes of addiction.

“It escalated to 80 pills a day,” Presley writes.

“It took more and more to get high, and I honestly don’t know when your body decides it can’t deal with it anymore,” she goes on to say. “But it does decide at some point.”

Presley’s daughter Riley Keough helped write the memoir, listening to audio recordings of her mother’s memories in order to complete the book after her death. She also adds some of her own perspective, saying that Presley’s addiction came as a surprise to the family. Even though she’d been through a bout with addictive drugs as a teen, she was clean and sober by the time Keough was born in 1989 and wouldn’t even take over-the-counter pain relief like Tylenol.

But Keough says that, after initially taking the opioids to relieve childbirth-related pain, Presley started taking them in order to go to sleep. She also says that Presley felt “shame” about becoming an addict as a mom to young children.

“It was an absolute matter of addiction, withdrawal in the big leagues,” Presley adds of her experience. “I just wanted to check out. It was too painful to be sober.”

Getting clean from opioids was a rocky road, too. She checked herself in to a court-ordered stay in rehab after being hospitalized for her addiction, but Keough writes that at this time, “I didn’t feel she was ready to be sober.” It was also at this point that Presley decided to undergo bariatric surgery.

Keough adds that, while she managed to stop taking opioids after her rehab stay, she was still imbibing “the post-rehab cocktail” after she came home. It’s unclear exactly what substances were included there, but Presley did finally get completely sober after a seizure sent her back to the hospital.

Presley’s bariatric surgery was ultimately a contributing factor to her death in early 2023.

Read More: Lisa Marie Presley’s Cause of Death Revealed

• Lisa Marie Presley died on Jan. 12, 2023, at the age of 54.
• Her primary cause of death was listed as a “sequelae of small bowel obstruction, and other “significant conditions” were listed as contributing factors, including residual complications from her surgery.
• A toxicology report ruled out foul play, death by suicide or overdose.
• Therapeutic levels of Oxycodone — an opioid proscribed for pain management — were found in her system, as well as a second opioid, Buprenorphine, which treats pain and opioid use disorder.

Elsewhere in From Here to the Great Unknown, Keough acknowledges the impact that grief had on her mom’s final years. Presley’s son Benjamin died by suicide in 2020.

“My mom physically died from the aftereffects of her surgery, but we all knew she died of a broken heart,” Keough writes.

In the book, Keough also says that Presley kept Benjamin’s body in a 55-degree room in her California home for two months after his death, as she decided whether to bury him at Graceland or in Hawaii.

Ultimately, Benjamin was laid to rest in Graceland, alongside Presley’s father Elvis Presley.