Paris Jackson was eleven when her father died. She is 28 now, and in August 2026 she sat down with Jay Shetty on his podcast On Purpose and talked, at length and very plainly, about what the years since have actually been like.
The phrase she keeps returning to is “chronic loneliness.” And she traces it back to childhood, not adulthood.
Her description is the part people keep quoting, because anyone who has felt it recognizes it instantly. “I remember being surrounded by love and playing Hot Wheels with my brother, and then going into my room and being alone for a second and having that sinking, empty feeling.”
Paris Jackson Opens Up About the Darkest Chapter of Her Life On Jay Shetty’s Podcast
She is unsparing about her teenage years. Asked about that period, she said: “I’m a completely different person. I was crazy. I was actually crazy. I was going through a lot of teen angst. And I was also dealing with my depression and my anxiety without any help.”
She has spoken about what followed since — the substance use and the treatment centers — and her view on it now is the most useful thing in the whole conversation. No intervention could have made her stop before she was ready. She has said she is not trying to be a “spokesperson for sobriety.” But she has also said that hearing other people’s stories helped her, and she hopes hers might do the same for somebody.
Paris Jackson Talked About Her Suicide Attempt
She reached six years sober in January 2026, and she has been honest that it was not a straight line. In an Instagram post marking it, she wrote: “Getting sober ain’t always the indication that life is perfect. A few years in it all got very very hard. For what felt like an eternity. And I didn’t have the same survival skills I was used to having to cope. I had to learn to live life on life’s terms.”
All of it went into her second album, Happiest Day of My Life, released on 21 August 2026 and co-produced with Linda Perry of 4 Non Blondes.
She is a woman who lost her father in front of the entire world at eleven, and has spent seventeen years being told how to grieve him. Now she is telling it herself.