What to Know
David Bowie and Iman’s 25-year-old daughter, Alexandria, was in treatment at the time of her father’s death. In a detailed video shared to her Instagram page, Alexandria, who goes by Lexi, recalled being forced into treatment when she was 14 years old. A few years prior to that, she began struggling with her mental health. She felt depressed, she struggled in school, and she didn’t like the way she looked. At age 11, she turned to self-harm. At age 12, she began struggling with bulimia.
Over time, her mental health worsened and she also turned to drugs and alcohol. She described her dad’s cancer diagnosis as her “breaking point.”
She said having famous parents made her feel worse in a way.
Thinking back to her mental health challenges from her childhood, Lexi said, “I didn’t know why I felt the way I felt, I just knew I was miserable.” It didn’t exactly help to see her parents “thriving” when she felt like she was “failing at everything,” which made her “hate” herself.
“When my dad was diagnosed with cancer, I was at my breaking point,” Lexi said in the video. “I was barely 14. I could already see what the future would look like for my family and for all of us. I felt broken before it even happened, and I didn’t want to stick around and watch it fall apart. That’s when I turned to drugs and alcohol.”
Other kids around her were also experimenting with substances at the time, but it felt different for her. She explained, “It was my first year of high school and everyone around me was experimenting. But 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.”
Then, one day, she was forced into treatment.
At that point, she was acting out in “defiance,” she recalled. She said, “I was angry, I was scared, I was numb, but I felt free.” But her mental health and substance use continued to get worse, until one day, she was taken to a treatment facility.
“It didn’t happen in the middle of the night,” she recalled. “It was a weekday morning. I already had gotten ready for school. My mom called me out to the living room. My dad, my godmother, and my mom were all standing there. It felt like an intervention, and in some ways it was.”
David Bowie's daughter Lexi, 25, says she was 'forcibly removed' from family home and sent to 'abusive' teen treatment centre which resulted in her missing her father's final days ahead of his tragic death from cancer pic.twitter.com/Re2uTi9EHr
— G R I F T Y (@GriftReport) February 23, 2026
She said her dad wrote her a letter and read it to her. She couldn’t remember exactly what it said. “I do remember the last line, and it said, ‘I’m sorry we have to do this,'” Lexi said. “Then two men came through the door and they were both well over six feet tall. They told me I could do this the easy way or the hard way. I chose the hard way.”
She “resisted” being taken away, screaming and holding onto a table. Lexi remembers seeing her parents and godmother watching and crying before the men took her away.
She said she was taken to a wilderness therapy treatment program.
“It felt like boot camp’s weird cousin,” Lexi said in her video. She stayed there for three months, and called the experience “dehumanizing.” After that, she was transferred to a residential treatment center in Utah. This was where she was when her dad died. “All of this was happening while my dad was only getting more sick back at home….a few months into the program, my dad passed away,” she explained. “I was not there. I had the luxury of speaking to him two days before, on his birthday. I told him I loved him and he said it back, and we both knew.”
Still, she recalled feeling “physically ill” when she saw a post that read, “David Bowie passed away surrounded by his whole family.” She said, “Because yeah, the whole family was there. Except for me.”
Looking back on it now, Lexi said she’s “accepted it” and tries to not feel “guilty.” At the same time, she added, “But sometimes, I still have those moments where I wish things were different.”
