http://wonderwall.msn.com/music/chers-son-elijah-blue-opens-up-about-heroin-abuse-1795511.story?ocid=answw11Cher's son Elijah Blue opens up about heroin abuse
Entertainment Tonight, Tuesday, February 4, 2014, 1:42pm (PST)
Cher and Greg Allman's son, musician and artist Elijah Blue Allman, recently opened up to ET about his battle with drug addiction, which he says began when he was just 11 years old.
"I started with drugs around the same time that we all did, around eleven. I mean it's just what you did, it's just what everybody did," Allman, now 37, told ET's Rob Marciano, saying that he started with weed and ecstasy.
He later turned to harder drugs.
"I [was] just looking to escape all the things in my past and, that's when you turn to those kind of drugs, you know heroin and opiates," he said. "[Heroin] kind of saved me … If I didn't have that at that point, I don't know what I would have done …You may jump off a bridge. If you can only just go through that time period and live through it and then get help."
He also admitted to having some scary close calls when it came to overdosing.
"I did have some close calls and some moments of really feeling at the edge of mortality ... I always kind of kept it a little bit safe but you never can do that. Even though you think that in your mind, of course the wrong things can happen," he said. "The wrong combination of things can happen and you can just slip into the abyss. I knew it was wrong and I knew that I was very unsatisfied with life at that point."
Allman says he's now been sober since 2008.
