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It’s no secret that Jelly Roll‘s personal life has been impacted by the horrors of drug addiction. He’s a former drug dealer himself who did jail time on drug-related charges, and his mother has struggled with addiction in the past.
He’s also shared the story of his 15-year-old daughter Bailee Ann’s mother, Felicia Beckwith. Beckwith has battled addiction for years, and she has been incarcerated herself.
Jelly publicly praised Beckwith’s sobriety in 2020, but when he testified during a recent U.S. congressional hearing geared towards the current fentanyl crisis, the singer’s statements implied that she had relapsed.
“Every single day I have to wonder, me and my wife, if today will be the day I have to tell my daughter that her mother became a part of the national statistic,” Jelly said during one particularly powerful part of his speech, which he gave in January.
He didn’t share exact details about Beckwith’s sobriety status, but this week, Bailee is telling her story directly. She appears on the newest episode of the Dumb Blonde podcast, hosted by Jelly Roll’s wife, Bunnie Xo.
The star and Bunnie officially gained custody of Bailee eight years ago, and she’s been living with them ever since. But Bailee says that in 2020, just two days shy of her 12th birthday, her mom — who was sober, had been released from jail and was living in recovery housing — got back in touch. They began to rekindle a relationship, which Jelly and Bunnie supported.
But things started to go downhill a couple of years later, when Bailee — then 14 years old — went to spend the summer with her mom. At the time, she and the rest of the family knew that Beckwith had gone back to having an alcoholic drink here and there, but she was reportedly not actively partaking in the drugs that she had struggled with the most.
However, Beckwith started providing her underage daughter with alcohol and marijuana, actively encouraging her to participate in both.
“We start drinking together, and I’m like, ‘Okay, you’re just a cool mom,'” Bailee remembers. But by July, their drug usage had ramped up to a harder substance. The specifics of which drug they did together are bleeped out in the Dumb Blonde episode, though Bailee does specify that it was her mother’s “drug of choice.”
“Nobody knew except my mother, who manipulated me and convinced me to do [redacted],” Bailee explains.
Bailee goes into detail about the first time she tried this drug, which took place in an “empty Dollar General parking lot” when she was already “drunk as s–t” after a Fourth of July party. She didn’t want to try said drug, especially since she was already intoxicated, she explains.
“And I wound up doing it, because she’s, like I said, manipulative,” Bailee says of her mother. “She did the mom thing. It’s weird to say, ‘Did the mom thing,’ but it’s the best I can put it in terms of how persuasive she was. It’s not a mom thing, but it’s my mom thing. She did the Felicia thing; it worked.”
For the next couple of months, Bailee says, she was “never sober:” “Whether it was weed or I was drinking or I was vaping or snorting Valiums or Xanax or whatever I was doing,” she recounts.
Jelly Roll and Bunnie had no idea what was going on as this was happening. They knew something was wrong with Bailee when she came home, but they didn’t realize it was anything more alarming than normal teenager moodiness.
Looking back, Bunnie says, she’s horrified by the thought of how much worse things could have gotten.
“It infuriates me so much though, because what if that s–t had fentanyl in it?” Bunnie admits, pointing out that Beckwith’s sister took fentanyl in front of Bailee during this time. “What if she killed her own daughter? Would she have any remorse?”
Bailee knew that she wanted to quit doing drugs, especially since she was a freshman in high school, and an intensive therapy session with Jelly and Bunnie helped her make the move towards getting sober. She also cut off all contact with Beckwith during this time.
Bailee’s story of reconnecting with her mother — then watching her relapse, and experiencing a bout of drug use of her own — is part of a larger conversation on the podcast. The singer’s daughter discusses working through trauma and a difficult mental health chapter, as Bunnie shares a parent’s perspective on watching her child go through that period of pain and growth.
The full podcast episode will be available on Wednesday (Feb. 21), but it’s currently up for subscribers to Bunnie Xo’s Patreon.
Jelly Roll: 23 Stunning Facts About the ‘Save Me’ Singer
Jelly Roll is country music’s most fascinating character. His life has taken dozens of wild twists and turns, and he’s been honest about all of it. Here are 23 facts about the “Save Me” singer and his family.
Gallery Credit: Billy Dukes
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