*In February 2003, months before she soared to superstardom alongside her best friend Paris Hilton in the reality series “The Simple Life,” Nicole Richie was arrested for heroin possession after it was found in her Mercedes-Benz. The news was devastating for her parents, Lionel and Brenda Richie, and her Grammy winning father explained how he was able to use the drug-related deaths of three of his friends and two of Nicole’s friends to snap her out of complacency.
“I went to her and I said, ‘When I was growing up I lost three friends, they were the hippest friends I ever knew in life,” Lionel recalled in a prior interview with Piers Morgan. “I said, ‘It’s going to happen to your generation. I don’t want you to be in that list of three.’ Three months later her friend died of an overdose and I went back to her and very quietly, I said, ‘I am sorry to hear that, that’s one.’ And sure enough, one year later the second one died and I said, ‘That’s two’ and I got a phone call and she said, ‘Dad I need help, I don’t want to be the third one.’”
According to ILoveOldSchoolMusic.com, Lionel was about to start a massive tour when Nicole reached out to him for help.
“I said [to Nicole], ‘I am with you’ and I canceled [my] tour. I said, ‘Me and your mother [Brenda Richie]’ — who didn’t get along that well — ‘Me and your mother are checking into rehab with you,” Lionel said.
In a subsequent People Magazine interview, Nicole explained how she became hooked on drugs.
“I got so much so fast that nothing really excited me anymore,” she said. “I kind of took matters into my own hands and was creating drama in a very dangerous way. I think I was just bored, and I had seen everything – especially when you’re young, you just want more. At 18 I had just been doing a lot of cocaine. …[Now] I’m happy for the things I have accomplished. I’m happy I’m not in that state anymore.”
Lionel Richie told Piers Morgan that he always thought that a good father was being a provider, and that his performances and tours were providing support. But after experiencing Nicole’s drug dependence, he confessed “I think I wasn’t a good dad.”
But Nicole said of her dad in an interview: “I never blamed him. I think he blamed himself. It was very humble of my dad to come forward and say, ‘I made a mistake.’ I love him for that.”
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