Less than a month after his tragic passing, we’re getting some clarity on the death of Melissa Etheridge’s son, Beckett Cypheridge.
In a heartbreaking new interview, the late 21-year-old’s ex girlfriend Hailey Lavelle opened up about the origin of the opioid addiction which eventually took his life.
Lavelle told DailyMail.com that Beckett’s drug use was actually a form of self medication due to a horrible snowboarding accident in 2016 that went untreated for years. She told the outlet:
“He passed out in the air and fell 40 feet, landing on his head. They showed me his helmet. It was split in half like a watermelon. He had a major concussion and he broke his ankle and his foot as well. I believe it resulted in a brain injury that was never treated. It’s the same that you see in football players. He took a hard hit to the head and nothing was fixed afterwards.”
At the time, Cypheridge was 17 years old and Lavelle 18; she described them as “children” unequipped to handle his injuries. Unfortunately, due to a “miscommunication” with Etheridge, who was on tour, the teen never pursued the care he so clearly needed. Lavelle recalled:
“I told him: ‘From what I knew you’re not supposed to go to bed after a concussion. So, let’s stay awake. Let’s call your mom get some insurance information so we can bring you to the doctor’… We didn’t understand that we could tell the doctors to charge us and once we get the insurance card, we’d make it work. We were both so young, we didn’t know anything. The communication with his family got less and less and we never did get insurance, so he never went to the doctor.”
Instead, Cypheridge attempted to continue snowboarding, which exacerbated his injuries. That was when he began to self medicate, first with “just weed, then he got cough syrup with codeine in it,” Lavelle revealed.
Unable to continue with the sport he loved, Cypheridge and Lavelle went to L.A. to stay with his mother. There, feeling “worthless,” the young man turned to opioids to manage the pain and his growing depression. His mother attempted to send him to work at a marijuana farm for more structure in his life, and when he continued to spiral sent him to the first of five rehab stays.
Cypheridge and Lavelle eventually broke up but remained friendly and in contact. She says he may have seen this coming, imploring her to tell the “true story of his life” in the event of his untimely death. She elaborated:
“He told me that multiple times. The story that’s out there is that he was a drug addict, a privileged boy living off his parents’ money in Denver. But the real story is that he got hurt and he didn’t get the proper help for it and that just led to a domino effect of horrible, horrible events.”
This story just keeps getting sadder. We continue to keep Beckett and his loved ones in our thoughts.
[Image via FayesVision/WENN]
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