Cher ‘Staged an Extreme Intervention’ for Son Elijah Amid Addiction Struggles
It was a terrifying sight. On September 14, staff members at L.A.’s famed Chateau Marmont hotel discovered the seemingly lifeless body of Elijah Blue Allman facedown on the pavement near the entrance. According to reports, Elijah — the son of Cher and the late Gregg Allman — had been living at the hotel for six months and was often spotted looking strung out. Workers were able to get him inside, where he was revived. Two days later, police arrived and escorted the troubled musician out of the building.
An insider tells In Touch Cher had Elijah picked up by local authorities and taken to a rehab in Pasadena, California. “Elijah hadn’t been doing well,” the insider says. “When word got to Cher that he’d been found unconscious outside the hotel, she staged an extreme intervention and called 911 and had him moved to a treatment facility.” It’s just the latest incident in an ongoing, 30-year struggle to save Elijah, 47, from the throes of addiction. In fact, new bombshell court papers filed by Elijah’s estranged wife, Marieangela King, allege that in November 2022, Cher, 77, went so far as to have her younger son kidnapped from a New York City hotel by four security guards and sent to rehab. “Cher is desperate to help her son,” says the insider. “She’s terrified he might die if she doesn’t do something drastic.”
Cher and Elijah have had a rocky relationship for years. In 2014, the former lead singer of Deadsy opened up about feeling like the black sheep of the family. “When you go to boarding school at 7 years old, it’s kind of hard to feel like you’re not being shunned,” he told an interviewer. Cher — also mom to 54-year-old Chaz Bono with late ex-husband Sonny Bono — was married to Elijah’s father from 1975 until 1979. They split because of Gregg’s substance abuse issues (the Allman Brothers frontman died in 2017 of liver cancer).
Indeed, Cher wasn’t on speaking terms with Elijah when he married Marieangela at their Beverly Hills home in 2014. Elijah has said he and his mom would often go years without communicating. “We have a history of not talking,” he said. “When I first started my band we went a long time, maybe a couple of years.”
The “Turn Back Time” singer has when it comes to her kids. “Elijah is my heart,” she said. “I’ve said I truly regret some of my choices. My children are my children. They do exactly what they want. We’re close, but we butt heads. All of us.”
Elijah was just 11 when he began experimenting with drugs including marijuana and ecstasy. “I mean, it’s just what you did,” he said. “It’s just what everybody did. It seemed normal at the time.” He later moved on to heroin. “I [was] just looking to escape all the things in my past, and that’s when you turn to those kinds of drugs, you know, heroin and opiates,” he told ET in 2014. He got sober in 2008 but it didn’t last. The insider says Cher tried to get him on the straight and narrow multiple times. “Elijah was a difficult kid and he resented his mom a lot, but she did her best and took care of him financially, paying for his rehab stints and his rent and other expenses.
Cher didn’t approve of Elijah’s romance with Marieangela from the start. (He met the singer of the band KING in Germany when he was there getting treated for Lyme disease.) “She thought Elijah’s wife was a bad influence who was steering Elijah down a dangerous path that she’d seen before with Gregg,” says the insider, adding, “Cher tried to help Gregg so many times but she couldn’t save him. Elijah reminds her so much of his dad.”
In the court documents, Marieangela claims she and Elijah were trying to work on their marriage during a November 2022 reunion in NYC when the four men took Elijah away. She also alleges that Cher had kicked her out of her home after Elijah began to receive unspecified medical care in August 2022. “In my husband’s absence, I was asked to leave our family home. I was not allowed to retrieve all my belongings from our primary home and residence, nor was I given the opportunity to inventory our assets.” Notes the insider: “Marieangela painted Cher as
a controlling, coldhearted person.”
Cher’s focus is on Elijah. Back in March, she was spotted checking up on him at the Chateau Marmont and she reportedly had hired a caretaker to keep an eye on him before his collapse. “While Cher isn’t happy this is all coming out, she’s not sorry about her actions,” says the insider. “She’s doing what any loving, devoted mother would do in these circumstances.”
