Alice in Chains: The Untold Story

Although the relationship between Demri and the other band members was good in the beginning—according to her mother, Jerry once gave Demri a couple of parakeets for her birthday—there is evidence that some people within the Alice in Chains camp blamed Demri at least to some extent for Layne’s drug problems. On the other hand, people close to Demri blamed Layne for her drug problems. At one point, Randy Biro got a phone call from Mary Kohl asking him to go with her and Kevan Wilkins to a Seattle hotel where Layne and Demri were living. They told Biro they needed help bringing Layne to the airport and moving his luggage. Unbeknownst to Biro until they got there, Kohl and Wilkins were staging an intervention and were sending Layne to Hazelden.

“I wasn’t very pleased about that,” Biro said. “[Layne] looked at me, and I was looking at him, and he goes, ‘What the fuck are you staring at, asshole?’ And it was really uncomfortable, because I had no idea. I wasn’t part of that.” No one else was there for this intervention. “It was ridiculous because Demri was in the room with him, and this was at the point where everyone said Demri was Satan, and she wasn’t. They were trying to keep those two apart, like when they were on tour, like the only people that were allowed in their room was me because I wasn’t out to break them up. I had no interest in breaking them up because they were doing what they were doing. There was no one to blame for his drug addiction.”

Biro explains, “He was in love with this girl. Now, by trying to break them up or trying to play a game with him, what he did was put up a wall. So, I go to this place, and I find out they’re doing this intervention. I’m going, ‘Holy shit.’ I was blown away. I had no idea. So I hang around long enough, they pack some bags, they’re checking him out of the hotel in an attempt to make sure Demri leaves, which was a load of shit in itself.”

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.