However, her early years were anything but stable. After her parents’ divorce, disturbing allegations surfaced that her father had given her LSD as a toddler, while threats of abduction added to the chaos.
”I was given drugs at an early age .. my father gave me LSD at the age of four [but] I don’t remember anything about it,” she once said.
According to the star herself, she recalled that her sessions with mental health professionals started extremely early, saying, “I began seeing psychiatrists at like, [age] three. Observational therapy. TM for tots. You name it, I’ve been there.”
When she was nine, a psychologist observed that she showed signs of autism, including tactile defensiveness.
”When I talk about being introverted, I was diagnosed autistic. At an early age, I would not speak,” she said in 1995.
As a young girl, she was constantly on the move — shuttled between Oregon and New Zealand. In a burst of back-to-the-land idealism, her mom had made a sudden move to New Zealand in 1973 to star a sheep farm, separating her daughter from her stepfather, Frank, in Oregon.
Our star despised life in New Zealand and was eventually expelled from her school for misbehavior. She was then sent back to Oregon, but things didn’t improve — she was ultimately placed in a juvenile correctional facility at just 14, reportedly following a shoplifting incident.
But it was there that music found her. Records by Patti Smith, the Runaways, and the Pretenders sparked a passion that would eventually fuel a revolutionary career.
Working as a topless dancer
Throughout late 1979, she was placed in foster care on and off, until she gained legal emancipation in 1980, after which she remained firmly estranged from her mother.
