Jamie Wachtel Weiland, the widow of late Stone Temple Pilots singer Scott Weiland, has insisted he “did not overdose on drugs”.
In 2015, it was reported that Weiland had died after taking a “toxic mix of drugs” – a claim his widow Jamie refuted in a recent appearance on the Appetite for Distortion podcast.
“I feel like when he died, everybody was kind of like: ‘That’s tragic, but of course he overdosed, which – he didn’t fucking overdose,” she said on the podcast. “I tried to get that point across. He didn’t.”
She went on to explain that the late Velvet Revolver singer did have drugs in his system when he died, so the coroner ruled it an accidental overdose.
“But the truth is, Scott died because the main artery in his left ventricle was 95 per cent blocked,” she continued. “That came from 10 years of heroin use, that came from an entire adult life of chain smoking. His heart stopped.
“Did he have trace amounts of drugs in his system? He did. Did I know he was using? No, I didn’t, because he lied to me, because I had caught him before, and it would always be this huge fight and I would be furious at him.”
At the time of his death, Weiland was said to be under intense stress while on the road with The Wildabouts, and reports emerged that he had faced both financial and personal struggles.
The latter included rumours that he was estranged from his children and had just learned both of his parents had been diagnosed with cancer, leading to accusations of self-medication. Jamie maintains that at the time of his death, Scott was “not using heroin”.
In the time since his death, she has faced criticism from fans, particularly after making a £45,000 claim against his estate in 2016. She addressed the claims in the recent interview, saying: “People can say whatever the fuck they want about things that I did or didn’t do.”
She continued: “The truth was I did pretty much all the heavy lifting myself with him. I was alone with him, trying to keep him safe and keep him calm, and get him to the right doctors – and get him on stage, get him to rehearsals. It was just me.
“I was the gatekeeper for everything. And that was really, really fucking hard. So when we talk about the comments that people make about me, about Scott, about our marriage, I basically want to tell everybody to go fuck off, [because] they weren’t there. They didn’t know.”
Scott Weiland’s son Noah has previously opened up about comparisons to his father, saying: “People want to see me be a statistic so bad,” following his struggles with addiction, which led to him being fired from his band, Suspect208.