Scott Weiland's ex-wife Mary Forsberg pens emotional open letter asking people not to glorify singer's death

The former wife of Scott Weiland – the Stone Temple Pilots singer who died on Thursday – has written an open letter asking for his death not to be “glorified”.

Mary Forsberg Weiland penned an emotive letter in Rolling Stone magazine asking for people to focus on children who may be in a similar situation to her two, Noah, 15, and Lucy, 13.

She begins by explaining December 3 is “not ‘the day Scott Weiland died’, it is the official day the public will use to mourn him” and claims her children “lost their father years ago”.

“[The letter] is the final step in our long goodbye to Scott. Even though I felt we had no other choice, maybe we never should have let him go. Or maybe these last few years of separation were his parting gift to us – the only way he could think to soften what he knew would one day crush us deep into our souls.”

Weiland, who was found dead in his tour bus during a stop in Minnesota had a well-documented history of cocaine and heroin addiction.

His Scott Weiland and the Wildabouts bandmate, Tommy Black, was arrested on drug charges after police found small substances of cocaine in his room and in the room where Weiland slept.

While not wanting to “downplay Scott’s amazing talent”, Ms Forsberg Weiland chronicles Weiland’s addiction and recalls his “paranoid fits” and “filling him with coffee just so that I could drop him into the audience at Noah’s talent show, or Lucy’s musical”.

Ms Forsberg Weiland alleges there were times child protection services would not let the children be left alone in his sole care.

“You might ask, “How were we to know? We read that he loved spending time with his children and that he'd been drug-free for years!” In reality, what you didn't want to acknowledge was a paranoid man who couldn't remember his own lyrics and who was only photographed with his children a handful of times in 15 years of fatherhood.”

She also claims that once the couple divorced and he married Jamie Watchel in 2013 her children were “replaced”.

“They were not invited to his wedding; child support checks often never arrived.”

Explaining her motives behind revealing such personal information, which Rolling Stone claim she wrote with her children’s help, she explains: “I don't share this with you to cast judgment, I do so because you most likely know at least one child in the same shoes….

“Our hope for Scott has died, but there is still hope for others. Let's choose to make this the first time we don't glorify this tragedy with talk of rock and roll and the demons that, by the way, don't have to come with it.

“Skip the depressing T-shirt with 1967-2015 on it – use the money to take a kid to a ballgame or out for ice cream.”

Ms Forsberg and Weiland were married for seven years, from 2000 to 2007.

She has documented parts of their relationship before in her 2009 memoir Fall to Pieces. In it she noted an instance where the couple, both suffering with drug addiction, took a limousine to rehab together.