Riley Keough

He had my dad's sort of mind in that way, just really intellectual kind of brain. And he was really special. And we were really close. He felt to me like he was my twin or something. We felt very connected spiritually. And there was nobody in the world who... would have been like, oh, Ben, he's kind of a bad guy. Like he was just like everybody had a good experience with him.

And one of the most important things that I like to say with regards to suicide is not somebody that you would ever imagine in terms of stigma would take their life or would die by suicide. Even for me, which was probably the hardest thing, experience was the shock of it, you know?

So her addiction was actually before my brother died. Okay.

Yeah. So her addiction was when my sisters were younger. And she went to rehab. Her addiction got like very out of control.

So she was 40 prior to this. She drank alcohol. She probably would get too drunk sometimes, but she would have never considered herself an addict. And I don't think anyone around would have been like, oh, she's got a drinking problem. It was just like the environment was very party. And I don't think she would have

ever said I need to stop drinking or anything but she certainly drank she barely took medication wouldn't really take Advil Tylenol try to be very healthy but what she did always say which is interesting in hindsight is she would always say like oh if I was ever to try heroin or if I was to do drugs like they would kill me because I'm like all or nothing type of a person

And she made these comments and probably because there was a part of her that was considering her fate and her dad's fate and wondering about, you know, I don't think she had like the language for it, but I think she was probably had something in her that felt right.

connected to his him and his addiction and so she had my sisters and she was 40 years old and she had a c-section and they gave her opiates and she took the opiates for pain and then when they were about two she came to me and I had no idea and said you know I've been taking painkillers And I think I need to go to rehab. And I was like, what? Like I had no idea.

And she said, you know, it was to sleep. Like I couldn't sleep. Like after the babies were born, I tried to take Benadryl and that wasn't working. And then I would take the opiates. And so I was just taking them at night. And that was, I think that was like a year where she would just take it at night to get sleep. And she was very open. And I think probably only told me once she

like realized it herself. Like, I don't think she would have hid it from us because she was always telling us everything. So she said, you know, I'm taking these pills and I need to go to rehab. And I found a place in Mexico and they do like a holistic thing. And I just need to get off them. Like my body's addicted, but that's it. And I was like, okay, that makes sense.

I'd had experience with my dad and opiates. And so, yeah, she goes to this place and And then halfway through the treatment, she's like, you know, I got to get back because the kids are starting school. And I think this was actually a really bad time to come here. And I'm like, wait, what? Like, you're here. What are you talking about?

Like, you're not just going to leave because they're starting school. Like, you knew they were starting school. And I think that overall, it's more of a priority that you finish your treatment. And she was like, it's fine. It's really important. They need like stability and they need to get back in school. And we got in a big, it was a big fight actually.

And so she left and then she went home and I went, oh, she doesn't want to stop taking them. And that's when progressively things got much worse. And she decided she was going to move to Nashville and that she was going to find time to go back to the rehab. you know, she was taking more and more pills. She ended up getting up to 80, 80 pills a day. And then she went back to the rehab.

She went home. She had like a week. And then I called her and I could just tell it was just felt like this thing that was started to spiral. And I was like, have you taken anything? And she was like, no. And then she like went to a dentist office or something and had like a dental work done and then needed to take some She's like, I have to take I have to take painkillers. And I know that trick.

I was like, OK, I see what's happening here. And then it just spiraled. It was like the opiates were, you know, so high up the amount. And then she like. Went out one night in Nashville and somebody gave her cocaine. And then it became cocaine, opiates, alcohol, and got so bad to the point where she ended up in heart failure in Cedars-Sinai in LA. So she basically was just going crazy.

And me and my brother got her to, which is in the book, like get on a bus to come to LA because she wouldn't fly because she couldn't do cocaine on the airplane. So we, my brother took her on a bus and brought her to Cedars. And then she was in the ICU for about a week. And then the amazing thing is, and it was a slow sort of like, you know, because she ended up in Cedars and,

She was so honest that she told the people working there, you know, I have a drug problem. And she's not realizing that they would call a social worker. And she was kind of saying, I need to get help. But I, you know, but she just told them and they took my sisters away from her. And they were like three then? How old were they? Gosh. Gosh. It would have been five or six, maybe five or six.

So actually, the courts just gave them to my grandma. Yeah. And then once she completed rehab and she had to send her urine tests and then whatever, the social workers basically said, well, you need a court-appointed monitor with you if you're going to have the kids back in the house. So I was the court-appointed monitor. Oh, Riley. And so I kind of had to live with them. until she finished.

It was like a year or something, year or two that she had to have that. And that was hard. That was really hard because she also didn't want to be sober, like still, but she did, you know, for her kids and she didn't relapse at all. She never relapsed. And this was like 2017, I think. And there were other issues like

When she would go to the doctors who were giving her the post-rehab drugs, she would convince them to give her like way too many. But other than that, she never took narcotics again until, which is actually interesting. So when my brother died, my first thought was like, she's going to relapse. She's going to obviously, like how could she not? And like OD or something.