Melissa Etheridge’s son, Beckett, dies at 21

Family announces he had struggled with opioid addiction

Beckett Cypheridge, the son of musician Melissa Etheridge and her former partner Julie Cypher, died Wednesday in downtown Denver, having succumbed to an opioid addition, according to his family.

The 21-year-old was pronounced dead about 2 p.m. Wednesday in the 1600 block of Wewatta Street in downtown Denver, according to a news release Thursday from the Denver medical examiner’s office.

An official in the medical examiner’s office said Cypheridge was in an apartment when he died.

The medical examiner’s office is still investigating the cause and manner of his death, but Etheridge said in statement late Wednesday that Cypheridge had struggled with opioid addiction and succumbed to it Wednesday.

“We struggle with what else we could have done to save him, and in the end we know he is out of the pain now,” Etheridge said in a statement posted on Twitter.

Etheridge and Cypher conceived the boy using sperm from musician David Crosby, founding member of Crosby, Stills & Nash and the Byrds. Cypher and Etheridge split up in 2000, two years after Cypheridge’s birth.

Although he also has gone by the name Beckett Cypher and has been identified that way in news reports about his death, the 21year-old used the name Beckett Cypheridge on his Facebook page and was identified as such by the medical examiner’s office. According to his Facebook profile, Cypheridge had studied at Colorado Mountain College’s Aspen campus and worked at the Westin Snowmass Resort.