Lisa Marie Presley was trying to lose weight for the Elvis awards season and was even taking opioids in the weeks before her death, family sources have claimed.
The star underwent plastic surgery two months before the Golden Globes and lost up to 50 pounds as part of a strict regimen, insiders told TMZ.
At the awards show just days before her sudden death from cardiac arrest at her California, home, the 54-year-old was seen slurring her words and appeared unsteady on her feet on the red carpet.
In the clip, she turned to her friend Jerry Schilling, 80, and said “I’m gonna grab your arm” as she was asked questions ahead of the event by Extra host Billy Bush.
She appeared to talk slowly and slurred her words while talking about the film’s star Austin Butler and the storms and flooding in Southern California.
Lisa Marie had previously struggled with an addiction to opioids after she was given a short-term prescription during her recovery from the birth of her twin daughters, Harper Vivienne and Finley in 2008.
By 2013, she was heavily abusing cocaine and checked into rehab at least five times.
Opioid overdoses are known to trigger cardiac arrest, and after a lengthy period of being clean following an addiction, the body’s tolerance to the drugs will be far lower.
It is not clear what weight loss drugs Lisa Marie was on, but Wegovy, the newest weight loss medication on the scene, has proved highly popular since it was approved by the FDA.
Semaglutide, the active drug in Wegovy, can cause a host of side effects including heart problems.
In clinical trials, users dropped 15 per cent of their body weight over 68 weeks, but the drug also increases heart rate and impact how electrical impulses travel through heart muscle.
This means existing heart issues such as heart disease or an irregular heartbeat could be exacerbated by Wegovy.
Dr Shauna Levy, an assistant professor of bariatric surgery at Tulane University in New Orleans, who sits on the American Board of Obesity Medicine, did not rule out that Lisa Marie was taking Wegovy, but told DailyMail.com that even if she was, it was unlikely to be a contributing factor to her death.
In terms of Wegovy affecting heart rate, she said: ‘It’s only a one to two beat increase, so that really should not have a big impact on cardiac outcomes.’
Because Wegovy was only recently approved by the FDA as a weight-loss drug, there is still a lot doctors do not know about how it may interact with other drugs, including opioids.
Dr Levy said there is no interaction that doctors know of between opioids and Wegovy, meaning that as long as someone is following a doctor’s advice and taking the correct amounts of each, there should be no issues caused by taking the medications together.
Lisa Marie’s cause of death is still yet to be determined, with the autopsy delayed while toxicology tests are carried out to see if there was an accidental or intentional overdose.
She was believed to have been sober in recent years, but following her son’s death her ex-husband Michael Lockwood said he feared she could relapse.
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