Elijah Blue Allman, age 37, is the son of the legendary rocker Gregg Allman, of the Allman Brothers Band and Cher, who were married during the 70’s. In Gregg’s recent biography, “My Cross To Bear” he reveals his addiction to alcohol, heroin and other drugs. It was the catalyst to his break-up with Cher as she wasn’t willing to deal with his addiction.

His son Elijah may have inadvertently followed in his footsteps, as evidenced when he stated, “I started using drugs at age 11.”

What followed was a long battle with addiction, which led to some “close calls” with mortality, he revealed in a recent interview with Entertainment Tonight.

He explains, “I started with drugs around the same time that we all did, around 11,” adding that he first experimented with weed and ecstasy. “I mean, it’s just what you did, it’s just what everybody did.”

He didn’t stop there though, he moved onto the 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.”

Sadly, just as so many heroin addicts have died, with the most recent being the actor Philip Seymour Hoffman whose death has brought the drug and its dangers into the light, Elijah admitted to nearly overdosing more than once:

“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.”

But it is certain that Elijah learned a lesson or two from his experiences, as he got sober and has stayed clean since 2008.

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