Rock star Jon Bon Jovi has opened up, revealing his “worst moment as a father” was the day his 19-year-old daughter overdosed on heroin in November last year.
The 51-year-old muso recalled the moment his daughter, Stephanie Bongiovi, rang him from a hospital in upstate New York, after she allegedly overdosed in her Hamilton College dorm room.
“It was horrible, a horrible moment. It was my worst moment as a father,” he told the UK’s Daily Mirror.
“The first thing she said, ‘I’m all right,’ but then she said this is what happened.”
“You wake up, you shake it off and put your shoes on and say, ‘OK, I am on the way home.'”
Despite his rock-star lifestyle, Jon claims he has never touched drugs, but says the incident was a wake-up call for him as a father.
“She was by no means sticking needles in her arms,” he says.
“But there’s a lot of synthetic stuff in the world and a lot of temptation and access and pressures that just a generation ago you and I didn’t know about.
“I know personally people whose sons and daughters, where it was a lot, lot worse. That could have been Stephanie.”
Initially, Stephanie and her fellow student Ian Grant were arrested and charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance. However, the charges were later dropped because New York state law prohibits prosecution of people who have overdosed, as well as those who help them seek medical attention.
Jon says his only daughter, who is the eldest of his four children with wife Dorothea Hurley, is making a great recovery.
“She’s doing great. I’m just blessed she’s healthy and whole and we’ll get through it,” he told Katie Couric on her talk show.
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