Layne and Demri went to rehab together at least once, checking into the Exodus Recovery Center in Los Angeles—possibly the same clinic Kurt Cobain went AWOL from shortly before his death. Layne called Kathleen Austin one night, telling her, “I don’t know what to do. They give us so many drugs here. Demri’s higher in here than she’s ever been outside of here. Her blood pressure is so low, she can’t stand up without passing out.” From what Austin recalls, “He was really worried and this particular place, the way I understood it, is you go in there and they feed you a bunch of drugs, the ones you’ve taken and ones you haven’t, and then they detox you off of them.”
Although outside pressure may have influenced her, Demri instigated the breakup, according to what she told Randy Biro. “She stopped seeing him. She tried to get away from him, because she felt like she was going to ruin his life. He was in love with her.” He added, “Everybody that knew Layne was constantly blaming her for shit. Constantly. And people were trying to keep them apart all the time. So I was under the impression that she tried to get away from him to give him a chance to live life.”
The problem with this one-sided view is that it doesn’t take into account Layne’s history of drug use before he started using heroin, before Alice in Chains was even formed, before he and Demri met. Moreover, it completely absolves Layne of any personal responsibility for his problems.
“Heroin,” is Kathleen Austin’s response when asked why the engagement was called off. “You can’t do a relationship and drugs, too. Nobody can.”
She also clarified Layne’s “rock-and-roll” explanation: “As the band got famous and girls are sending Layne underwear in the mail and things like that, that really bothered her.” She said, “Layne and Demri, regardless of when they broke up—those are just words. They never stopped loving each other. They loved each other dearly.”
Demri was described by several sources as being very proud of her ability to get her drugs on her own, despite the fact that Layne was more than willing to provide for her. “At that point, Layne had, I’m guessing, a million or so dollars, if not more. Or at least he was worth quite a bit. And he would give her anything she wanted. He would give her everything he had to stop her from doing what she was doing. And she just [said], ‘No,’” Biro explained.
Perhaps because they had broken up, or possibly because Layne was touring and hadn’t given her money or drugs while he was away, or even because she didn’t want his help, Demri ultimately did whatever she had to to sustain her addiction.
Though Layne disliked interventions, he was involved in an intervention for Demri. Layne was in Europe when he got a phone call from Kathleen Austin informing him of the plan, possibly in 1993. He flew back to Seattle from Germany and was picked up at the airport by Austin and Demri. The plan was to go to Austin’s home north of Seattle, where the intervention would take place the following morning.
They stopped at a bar after leaving the airport. After Demri finished her drink, Austin said her drink tasted funny and asked Demri to taste it. Demri finished Austin’s drink as well. “The plan was to get her drunk, shut her up, and we’ll go from here. So that’s what happened, and we go up to my place, and we get up in the morning,” Austin said. The next morning, several of Demri’s friends and relatives had gathered in the living room downstairs, including her maternal grandparents, her brothers, and Layne. At some point that morning, Austin told Demri to lie down in her room, where she had disconnected the phone to avoid waking Demri up or tipping her off. When Demri came out to the living room, she knew exactly what was going on.
“You’re not fucking intervening on me, and I’m not going to fucking rehab,” she said, and went back upstairs. Ultimately, they talked her into coming back out to hear what everyone had to say. According to Austin, the most profound comment came from her son, Devin, who said, “You’re my sister and I love you and I don’t want you to die.”
Austin made plans to check her into one of three possible clinics, to give Demri some choice in the process. She chose a clinic in Port Angeles, a city in Clallam County on the shores of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Known as the Lodge, it supposedly specialized in treating heroin addiction, Austin said. Demri was going through mood swings during the entire drive.
“She would say things like, ‘I’m fucking leaving as soon as I get there.’ ‘As soon as I get there, I’m going in the front door and out the back door.’ And I would respond with, ‘Well, Dem, you’re going to do what you’re going to do. My job is to get you there,’” Austin said. “I’d wink at Layne. Then she would say, ‘Well, I hope the food is good.’”
They checked her in, and Austin and Layne drove back to Seattle. They joked that Demri would somehow get back to Seattle before them. Austin dropped Layne off at his home at around midnight; then she got home about an hour later and went to bed.
One aspect of Demri’s personality, according to Austin, was her inability to handle guilt. In Austin’s words, “If she offended you, and you didn’t have a cell phone or anything, she would start calling your house, waiting for you to get home to apologize.” Because of her mood on the way to rehab, she felt guilty about it after checking in. Once admitted, she was supposed to be prohibited from receiving phone calls or any type of communication from the outside for a week.
The staff agreed to make an exception and allowed her to call Austin and Layne. “Her thing was ‘I’ve got to apologize to my mom and Layne. I’ve got to tell them I’m sorry. I’ve got to tell them that I love them. I’ll stay. I’ll stay and be a good person, if you just let me say I’m sorry.’”
She didn’t get through to either of them. Austin’s bedroom phone was still disconnected from the intervention, and Layne was probably exhausted from his return trip from Germany. Demri checked herself out after a few hours. According to Austin, Demri went to rehab two more times, staying the longest at the Sundown M Ranch, which she left a few days before graduation. “She actually got kicked out of there for talking to people,” Austin said. “She did well there.” This was the only treatment Austin paid for herself. She said she would not be surprised if the others were paid for either by Layne, his management, or his record label.
Demri’s health began taking a turn for the worse around Thanksgiving of 1993. She told her mother she had been having fevers in excess of a hundred degrees. Austin told Demri the next time it happened, she should go to the hospital. The first of many hospitalizations happened shortly after. “She came in to the hospital for the first time at the end of November of ’93. She was in until January of ’94. She got out [and] was back in in March of ’94 and at that time put on life support,” Austin recalled. “When she would be in, she would come in to the emergency room. They would admit her up into a medicine floor; then she’d go from the medicine floor to the [Intensive Care Unit] and life support, and then she wouldn’t die. So she’d go back to the medicine floor—she’d be on IV and antibiotics for a month. This went on and on and on. She had her lungs operated on twice. She had her heart operated on twice. She suffered miserably.”
While in the ICU, Austin said Demri was conscious but intubated—she had a tube inserted down her throat to help her breathe, which she despised. She would tell her mother, “I hate being fucking intubated. I can’t talk, and these people come and they ask me these fucking questions, and I can’t fucking talk, and I feel like a fucking fish in a fucking fishbowl.” She communicated by writing on a small blackboard with a piece of chalk.
Demri visited Bad Animals Studio a few times during the Alice in Chains sessions, Sam Hofstedt recalled. “She did not look good. She was like so, so, so skinny. And I think at one point during the record, she was actually in the hospital, and she survived, but at one point they said all her organs pretty much shut down for a little while. She was knocking at death’s door.”