David Bowie’s daughter, Alexandria ‘Lexi’ Jones, has opened up on the devastating reason she wasn’t by her dad’s side when he died of cancer in 2016
07:34, 24 Feb 2026Updated 07:34, 24 Feb 2026
David Bowie’s daughter, Lexi(Image: Instagram)
David Bowie’s daughter has candidly opened up on missing her dad’s final days after being “forcibly removed” from the family home. Alexandria ‘Lexi’ Jones, 25, confessed she was forced to be away from the music icon as he died from cancer in 2016 aged 69.
Opening up on the harrowing details of being away from her family during the heartbreaking last moments, Lexi revealed her family decided she needed to be sent to a treatment facility to help her overcome her battle with depression and an eating disorder.
The singer’s daughter shared on Instagram how her dad’s liver cancer diagnosis in 2014 left her hitting ‘breaking point’. She explained how she turned to drink and drugs in a bid to cope.
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Lexi wasn’t with her dad when he died(Image: Instagram)
Describing her struggles aged just 14, she said she was greeted by two mean “well over six feet tall” who came to take her to the location. And she said her date penned an emotional letter to describe why the family felt this tough love was necessary.
“I’m sorry we have to do this,” the heartbreaking note read. And she admitted he told her that he was “sorry we have to do this”.
She looked back on her childhood as she revealed: “Adults would talk to me differently than they would talk to other kids. Some were not interested in me as a person at all, and only as a proximity to something else.”
And after labelling herself as being something that “existed as an idea”instead of a person, she went on: “Something hit me pretty young before I was around ten.
“I started seeing a therapist because my teachers noticed something was off, and so did my parents. That was around the time I had my first anxiety attack.
“I started to feel depressed. I was failing school. I had learning disabilities, that made everything feel harder, and I hated the way I looked. I developed bulimia when I was 12. I started self-harming when I was eleven.
David Bowie’s daughter has revealed the harrowing details of missing her dad’s final days(Image: Instagram)
“I felt stupid, incompetent, unworthy, useless, unloveable, and having successful parents only made it worse. It felt like I would never live up to them. I couldn’t understand how I came from people that were thriving in every single direction while I was failing at everything.”
She confessed that while everyone around her was “experimenting” with drink and drugs, for her it wasn’t fun. Instead, she said she saw it more as “escaping”.
“When the party ended for everybody else, I kept going, and I drank and got high alone. I became someone who lashed out. I was cruel to people who didn’t treat me the way I wanted to be treated. I was begging to be respected by becoming something people feared, or at least noticed.”
When she opened up on the moment her family made the call to put her into treatment, she said she “screamed” and held on to the table leg as she was dragged from her home.
In total, Lexi explained spending 91 days at a “wilderness therapy” programme. She described have no privacy and only showering once a week. She opened up on the harsh conditions she faced in the controversial programme.
She went on to explain how, following three months at the location, she was then sent to a residential treatment centre for a further 13 months. “I had to be watched while I slept. I had to count every time I used the bathroom,” she explained.
Sadly, it was at this location that Lexi discovered her dad had died. Speaking of the sadness, she said: “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. Then I saw the post, the one that said something like, David Bowie passed away, surrounded by his whole family. It made me physically ill because, yeah, the whole family was there. Except for me.”
Lexi says she has now accepted the situation, but still has moments where she had hoped it would be different. She added: “‘Processing his death became a whole new layer of the programme. They created a special phase for me called The Grief and Loss Phase. They structured my grief. They categorised it and assigned milestones and expectations.”
She returned home shortly before her 16th birthday, but had to go back to another programme after slipping back into her old patterns. Despite the hardship, she believes it has helped her become “emotionally intelligent, introspective, not afraid to reflect on some of the harder things”.
Lexi, whose half-brother is film director Duncan Jones, said she is sharing her story “to make this real so that it’s not just a memory I carry in private”.
She added: “The mental and emotional manipulation I experienced is something I will not forget. And I won’t pretend it didn’t happen because that is abuse too.”
because that is abuse too.”
If you’re worried about your health or the health of somebody else, you can contact SEED eating disorder support service on 01482 718130 or on their website, _here.
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