Marianne Faithfull has had more than a few near-death experiences throughout her life, but the one that nearly ended it all came in the summer of 1969. Faithfull was in Sydney, Australia, with her then-boyfriend, Mick Jagger, when she overdosed on sleeping pills. The overdose occurred on July 9, 1969, and Faithfull was rushed to St. Vincent’s Hospital, where she remained for several weeks. Faithfull wasn’t comatose during her entire stay, though she was in a coma for six days.
“I was unconscious for six days and nearly died, so that could have easily been me. Mind you, I was 22” (via Independent). Faithfull wrote about her coma in her 1994 autobiography, “Faithfull.” In the book, she described her experience, detailing how she had a conversation with Jagger’s recently deceased bandmate Brian Jones as she slipped into unconsciousness. At the end of their talk, Jones asked Faithfull to join him in the afterlife — she declined and awoke six days later (via The Irish Times).
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Faithfull recovered from her overdose, but it wouldn’t be her last brush with death. The singer became addicted to heroin in the early 1970s, which she described in her autobiography: “At that point, I entered one of the outer levels of Hell.” It took her a decade to kick the drug, but she succeeded. Faithfull also survived hepatitis C, breast cancer, and COVID-19, setting her on the unfortunate path of Long COVID. She told The Irish Times, “You don’t want to get this, darling. Really.”
