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By Thomas Westerholm
Life & Trends Reporter
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David Bowie's daughter Lexi said she missed her father's death and was subjected to an abusive wilderness behavioral camp in her teenage years in a video posted to Instagram on Thursday.
Alexandria "Lexi" Zahra Jones shared her story on the social-media platform in which she explained how being sent to wilderness camp shaped her life.
'I was escaping'
The 25-year-old British-American artist and singer-songwriter grew up with famous parents—the musician Bowie and Somali-American supermodel Iman.
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In the video, which drew more than 213,000 views, Jones explained that she was loved and cared for as a child.
However, she said she didn't want fame or attention and the spotlight that came from her parents caused her mental health to collapse from a young age.
According to Jones, teachers and her parents started to notice something was wrong around the age of 10. She began to feel depressed, she started struggling in school and by 12, she was self-harming and had developed bulimia.
Having successful parents made everything more difficult and she was 14 when Bowie was diagnosed with cancer, at which point she started using drugs and alcohol.
"For me, it wasn't about fun," she admitted.
"I wasn't experimenting. I was escaping."
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'I felt like cattle'
Jones said her problems built to her first form of treatment, which was wilderness therapy. She was apparently taken away from her family on a weekday morning—wrenched away forcibly by two large men and tied up with a rope as her parents watched.
"I felt like cattle," she said.
"I felt stripped of any right to stay in my own life."
Jones said she was forced into a black SUV and the men drove her far from home into, "the middle of nowhere."
She was searched and given a backpack full of supplies.
"It felt like boot camp's weird cousin and it was disguised as something therapeutic," she said.
Jones was at the camp for three months, where they learned survival skills and cooked meals over fires they created. Everything was monitored, including their bathroom usage.
"There was a lot of therapy," she said, adding, "Some of it was helpful. Some of it felt like being cracked open and left exposed."
Jones described the experience as "dehumanizing," even though she feels lucky she wasn't physically abused, which has allegedly been the experience for some kids.
'Except for me'
After wilderness camp, Jones said she was sent to another camp in Utah, where she had to start over. She kissed another girl at that camp, which was against the rules, and she was punished.
Still, Jones said that she met one of her best friends and had a great teacher in Utah, which helped, and she continued with her therapy.
Then, a few months into the program, her father died from cancer at the age of 69 in January 2016.
"I saw the post, the one that said something like, 'David Bowie passed away, surrounded by his whole family'," she said.
"It made me physically ill, because yeah, the whole family was there.
"Except for me."
'Define healing for myself'
Jones said dealing with her grief became a part of her treatment, complete with milestones from the camp.
Eventually, she was sent home with rules to follow, but absent the structures of the camps, she apparently, "slipped back into old patterns."
However, Jones explained that she wasn't trying to give a rundown of every place she had been.
"The point is that this happened to me and to a lot of other kids that deserve better," she said.
She felt she was, "forced to look inward before I even had a chance to look outward.
"Maybe it wasn't gentle, but it's a part of who I am now," she said.
Jones shared that she still feels guilty sometimes for "wanting freedom."
However, "I also feel proud of how far I've come," she said.
"Not because I was fixed. Because I finally get to define healing for myself."
Newsweek has reached out to Jones for comment via her website.
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