The Tragic Story Of Cher's Son Elijah Blue Allman

Growing up in a celebrity household may sound like a dream come true, but Hollywood is full of cautionary tales about children of the rich and famous who end up in rehab, jail, or worse. True, it's a life filled with perks and privileges, but there are perils and pitfalls, too. Just ask Elijah Blue Allman, the son of iconic singer Cher from her lightning fast relationship with rocker Gregg Allman. He is the latest celebrity offspring making headlines for his mental health issues and struggles with addiction to alcohol and drugs, including heroin. Allman has struggled with these issues for the majority of his life and has checked into rehab multiple times but has continued to return to his old ways. Recently, his behaviors have escalated, causing his legendary mother to file for a conservatorship of her youngest son to protect his assets.

So, what caused this adorable, towheaded little boy to grow into a man who turned to hard drugs and self-destructive behaviors? Perhaps it's genetic. Allman's late father was a notorious hard-partying rock star who used drugs. Maybe Allman's sad relationship with Cher contributed to his issues. Or, maybe it was his unusual upbringing. In a 2014 interview with Entertainment Tonight, he shared while his upbringing wasn't too crazy, "you know there were a lot of big parties and there was an era for that," he said. Whatever the reason, Allman's story is yet another tragic Hollywood tale. 

From their first date, which Gregg Allman described in his book "My Cross to Bear" as "the worst ... in the history of mankind," it was clear that Elijah Blue Allman's parents were in for a wild ride. Between Allman's drug use, their spontaneous Vegas wedding, and Cher filing for divorce  before the ink was even dry, the troubled twosome kept the tabloids going strong. And, somewhere in the middle of the chaos, Elijah Blue Allman was born. It was his birth that helped reunite his parents after yet another separation and looming divorce. 

The birth of Elijah Blue in 1976 served as a Band-Aid for the troubled celebrity marriage for a while, and the happy family was featured in People looking as wholesome as The Brady Bunch. In the article, Cher claimed that her husband had gotten sober and that she finally felt they would make it as a couple. She was wrong. Allman went back to his hard-partying ways, once picking up Chastity Bono (now Chaz, one of Cher's two sons) from school and forgetting how to get home. Bono told Howard Stern that it took several hours and that Allman stopped at a bar along the way. Cher finally called it quits for the sake of her children, telling Parade, "I stayed with him until I knew I couldn't because I didn't want the kids to be around it."

After splitting from Elijah Bue Allman's father, Cher found herself trying to parent two kids, manage her demanding career, and juggle an active dating life that included Val Kilmer, Tom Cruise, and Gene Simmons, to name a few. In what one can only assume was an attempt to provide some stability in her young son's life, Cher sent Allman to boarding school when he was just 7 years old. Though the decision may have seemed to be the right one at the time, it unfortunately had a detrimental effect on Allman, who told Entertainment Tonight in 2014, "When you go to boarding school at 7 years old, it's kind of hard to feel like you're not being shunned." He added: "But I'm at an age where I'm making peace with it because you just have to. But I still ... it doesn't mean it's right. It's still wrong to do that."

Allman bounced from school to school over the course of his academic career, once landing at a military school for a year as a form of punishment by his mother for his school shenanigans. While time away from his family may have contributed to his strained relationships with them, Allman does credit boarding school for giving him some perspective on celebrity life and all its superficiality. As he told the Daily Mail in 2014, "Superstars are a difficult and unique breed." 

By age 11, instead of playing video games or playing outside, Elijah Blue Allman was out scoring drugs. During school breaks spent visiting his family in New York, he could be found roaming the streets of Harlem, buying marijuana and ecstasy. He confessed to Entertainment Tonight that while that might sound "crazy," for someone so young, to him, it was just a typical day with friends. "It seemed normal at the time."

Eventually, his behavior would go from seeming normal to being normal as Allman followed in his musical parents' footsteps and formed his own post-high school band called Deadsy. The group never achieved a high level of success, but Allman achieved a high thanks to the hardcore drugs favored by his late father, which included opiates and heroin. "I was taking lots of drugs on the road. I was smoking dope [heroin], taking a lot of pills, any painkiller we could get and drinking," he revealed to the Daily Mail. Like others struggling with drug use, Allman admits to using drugs as a way to avoid feelings of shame and depression. He suggested to Entertainment Tonight that heroin may have kept him from taking his own life. "[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."

Elijah Blue Allman is the only child of Cher and Gregg Allman, but he isn't the only child in the family. Those old enough to remember "The Sonny and Cher Show" might recall an adorable little blond girl named Chastity, the only child of Cher and Sonny Bono. Chastity was 7 years old when Allman was born, and according to Cher in a 1976 People interview, the little girl was "reconciled to her baby half brother." While that doesn't sound like a lot of sisterly love, the two eventually enjoyed a bond for a few years until life sent them down separate paths that included different East Coast schools. Allman says the physical distance contributed to an emotional distance as well. As he told Entertainment Tonight, "[W]e kind of grew apart when we started going to different schools and just not being geographically around each other."

Then there's the fact that Allman's half sister became his half brother. Chastity Bono transitioned to Chaz Bono, legally changing his name and gender and undergoing chest surgery to remove his breasts in 2009. Bono's transition wasn't easy for Cher to accept at first, and little has been said about Allman's reaction to the news or the subsequent award-winning documentary "Becoming Chaz," which also dished on some of Bono's own tragic life details. However, in a 2014 interview (via the Daily Mail), Allman did describe their relationship as "rocky" and said they weren't on speaking terms, adding, "For me, the most important thing is that people should be happy in their own right, whatever that means."

In one of the more bizarre stories in Elijah Blue Allman's life, the musician-turned-artist contracted a case of Lyme disease so severe it nearly killed him. Allman, who reportedly thinks he contracted the tick-borne disease while in India in 2005, said his condition went undiagnosed for years, even after multiple tests. As he continued to deteriorate, Allman turned to natural remedies, one of which landed him in the ICU. As he told the Daily Mail, "I felt probably the closest to death I've ever been. It's like my life force was just being drained out of the bottom of my feet."

By 2010, Allman was still suffering and checked himself into a popular, yet costly, alternative medicine facility in Germany run by Dr. Ursula Jacob. For months, he underwent expensive and ultimately unsuccessful treatments to try and restore his health. It was a frightening time in the young man's life and one he experienced without his mother at his side. He told the Daily Mail, "You absolutely need unconditional parental love in those dark hours, that was lacking from that direction." To add insult to injury, Allman said his mom thought he was fabricating the illness. "The going notion for a lot of years was that it was imaginary because that's just easier," he said. Eventually, Allman experienced relief at the hands of another alternative doctor.

Cher might make the VIP list everywhere she goes, but she didn't make the cut at son Elijah Blue Allman's wedding to Marieangela "Queeny" King, lead vocalist for the rock band King. The couple, who met on a blind date in Cologne, Germany, eloped in 2013 without the "Believe" singer in attendance because she failed to acknowledge their engagement. "I wasn't going to wait for anyone's approval and congratulations just like I've never waited for any of that my whole life," Allman told the Daily Mail. Cher then excluded them from her family Christmas celebration, with Allman noting the lack of invitation by his mother rather than an explicit diss.

The self-described "black sheep" of his family, Allman and his fiancée had been staying with Cher since their return to the States. But as tensions grew, they found a home of their own, which is where they tied the knot surrounded by their closest friends. The incident served to deepen a rift between mother and son that has raged off and on for years. "It's like a Mexican standoff, but we have a history [of not talking]," Allman told the Daily Mail. For her part, the megastar once told Robin McGraw on "Dr. Phil" (via People) that being a mother didn't always "mix well" with her career. She also expressed regret over not providing her sons with more "stability" as they were growing up. If only she could "Turn Back Time."

Elijah Blue Allman may have grown up without his dad, but there was no shortage of men around in his life thanks to Cher's highly publicized dating life. Movie stars such as Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer, along with rockers Richie Sambora and Gene Simmons, were just a few of the famous faces that drifted in and out of Allman's young life. While Cher may regret a few of those relationships, Allman was grateful for Cher's celeb romances. "I was lucky to have them in my life because my dad wasn't around, so I really kind of looked to them," he told the Daily Mail, recalling that he and Sambora would "sit up all night playing guitar." 

Still, a boy needs his father. Ultimately, Allman and his dad reconnected in 2014, and the two began repairing their relationship and finally getting to know one another. It was not a moment too soon, as the Southern rock icon died from liver cancer just three years later. As Allman described his relationship with his dad to the Daily Mail, saying, "It's not that it's been bad [their relationship]. [It's] just been very absentee. I've forgiven him for that. I've seen my dad a lot more in the last year [than] I have in a long time." He added, "That was something that was absent when I was growing up, and it's important to mend fences now in our relationship."

He may have been too young to remember their tumultuous relationship, but Elijah Blue Allman's marriage to Marieangela King closely mirrored that of his famous parents, from the drug use to the on again, off again petitions for divorce. Allman and King were married in 2013, and even though it caused yet another dent in his damaged relationship with his mother, Allman seemed happy, telling the Daily Mail that King was "the love of [his] life" and detailing that they were happy just staying home watching TV together. 

The honeymoon phase didn't last, however. By 2020, the couple had separated, and Allman filed for divorce the following year. But like his parents before him, Allman decided to give it another go, and he and King reunited in 2022 to try and resolve their issues. Their attempt was foiled by yet another strange story involving Allman getting whisked away in an alleged kidnapping incident staged by his mother (more on that below). King filed for a continuance for their divorce trial, asking for the date to be moved until things were sorted out. However, in the aftermath of Cher filing a petition for a conservatorship of her son, Allman filed to dismiss the divorce entirely. Whether that's a coincidence or a calculated move remains to be seen, but a spokesperson for King claimed to USA Today that "[t]he couple have been working on their marriage and have reconciled." 

Cher has been described as many things over the years, from an outspoken diva to an iconic legend, but an accessory to kidnapping would be a new one. In a plot that sounds straight from a Hollywood script, Cher was accused of hiring men to kidnap her son, Elijah Blue Allman, in November 2022. Divorce papers filed by Allman's wife, Marieangela King, alleged that Allman was removed from his New York hotel room by four men, one of whom claimed they were hired by none other than the "Mamma Mia!" star. In the documents (via People), King accused the singer of staging the "kidnapping" as a way to thwart the couple's efforts to reconcile because she was "concerned for her son's well-being."

It's no secret that King and her Grammy award-winning mother-in-law weren't the best of friends, but to accuse Allman's mother of going to such lengths to keep them apart seems a little extreme, especially to Cher, who denied any involvement in a supposed "kidnapping." As the megastar told People simply, "That rumor is not true." But while she denied the kidnapping fiasco, she did express her concern for Allman and his substance misuse. "I'm a mother. This is my job — one way or another, to try to help my children. You do anything for your children."

Many of Hollywood's most notable names have found themselves at the Chateau Marmont on Sunset Boulevard. It's a place known for housing actors who have something to hide or who are looking for something to hide. Perhaps most famously, it was the place where John Belushi overdosed in a bungalow, Jim Morrison jumped off a balcony, and parties and scandal abound. And, for several months in 2023, while he was estranged from his wife, it was the place Elijah Blue Allman called home. "Virtually every morning and afternoon Elijah could be seen in front of the hotel on the sidewalk either leaning against the wall or sitting on the sidewalk smoking," one staff member at the famous hotel told the Daily Mail, adding that he looked "strung out" and "messy." 

The staff shared their concerns with Allman's mother, who had hired a caretaker (albeit unsuccessfully) to keep an eye on her son. In September 2023, hotel staff found Allman unconscious in front of the property. Not long after, he was removed from the landmark hotel by police and readmitted to rehab. In an effort to protect her youngest son, who was clearly struggling, Cher filed for a conservatorship by the end of the year.

If the word "conservatorship" gives you Britney Spears flashbacks, you aren't alone. But in the case of Elijah Blue Allman's substance misuse, Cher's attorney, Gabrielle Vidal, called the action a "life-and-death proposition" (per NBC News). Those words may sound extreme, but there is sound reasoning behind them. Allman receives a sizable income from a trust established by his late father. Court documents obtained by People regarding Cher's request state, "Elijah is entitled to regular distributions from the Trust, but given his ongoing mental health and substance abuse issues, [Cher] is concerned that any funds distributed to Elijah will be immediately spent on drugs, leaving Elijah with no assets to provide for himself and putting Elijah's life at risk."

Allman submitted his own filing in response, in which he claimed to be on the road to recovery. Court documents stated that, at the time, he attended AA meetings and had stayed sober for going on three months. "While I understand that my mother, the proposed conservator, believes she is looking out for my best interests and I appreciate her love and support, I do not need her unsolicited help or support at this time," the 2024 filing read (via NBC News).

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

Although her first attempt at a temporary conservatorship for her son Elijah Blue Allman was denied, Cher tried again, this time citing more than just his substance abuse issues. "There is a secondary issue in that he suffers from schizoaffective disorder that leads to periods of psychosis," her attorney Gabrielle Vidal told the court (via Rolling Stone). The attorney went on to claim that Allman's famous mother feared for his life. "This proceeding was filed because Cher was told unequivocally by the doctors treating him, that if she did not take this step as his mother, the concern was that he would once again end up on the street," Vidal said.

Judge Jessica Uzcategui once again denied Cher's request. "I don't question the motivation behind Cher's request as having been driven by concern for her son," Judge Uzcategui said (via Rolling Stone). However, she ruled that there lacked "sufficient evidence" to justify putting a conservatorship in place, given that Allman seemed to be functioning well independently and had submitted several negative drug tests. Allman agreed in his submitted objection to his mother's request. "I am and have been capable of managing my own financial resources and resisting fraud and undue influence," he wrote, per People. "I do not need a conservatorship." In light of the judge's decision, both mother and son agreed to call a halt to any future legal proceedings and take a stab at a private mediation to resolve matters on their own.

He may have fired the first shot back in 2021 when he filed to terminate his marriage to Marieangela "Queeny" King, but Elijah Blue Allman found himself on the receiving end of divorce papers in 2025. In what she described to People as the "hardest decision of her life," King cited irreconcilable differences in a marriage that had seen more than its fair share of ups and downs. "We had love. But we also had pain," King told People. "My cage has never been so rattled before. And I never thought that I could lose myself, and I did. I didn't know who I was."

King and Allman met on a blind date and, despite a significant age difference, bonded over shared experiences. "We found a simpatico, and I had never met anyone who could relate to my story, and I don't think he has ever met anyone who could relate to his story," she said. That could be what allowed them to survive his years of mental illness, substance abuse, family conflict, and more until King finally reached her breaking point. "It's not what I want," she said. "That day I filed for divorce; there was no other option." King, who said she still thinks of Allman as her husband, is shifting her focus to healing and focusing on her own music. She credits her family, friends and her faith in God for helping her through. "I do feel peace that I haven't felt before," she described. "It's priceless."

Her peace may be priceless, but Marieangela King's divorce from Elijah Blue Allman came at a pretty high cost. In fact, Allman, the only son of Cher and the late rocker Gregg Allman, could lose his inheritance to his estranged spouse. Allman was reportedly ordered to pay $6,500 in monthly spousal support to King, along with $10,000 for her legal fees. In court documents, King stated, "I have not received any payments from [Elijah]. To my knowledge, he is staying at an expensive hotel and ignoring his obligations" (via US Weekly).

As the wife of a man who descended from music royalty, King enjoyed all the benefits of an A-list lifestyle. She has claimed that in order to maintain the quality of life she has grown accustomed to, she requires a monthly payment of $12,000 just to sustain herself. "I need support to pay rent and cover my basic needs and money to seek further education and employment in order to become self-supporting," she stated, per US Weekly. In her divorce filing, King pointed out that Allman's famous mom helped to fund their lifestyle, and that her ex had "major contributions coming to him from family and his mother" (via People). With an estimated $3,500 in monthly entertainment and dining out expenses, on top of $5,000 for rent and an additional $1.500 in grocery costs, it's easy to see how King's "basic needs" could quickly drain those contributions.

Just when it seemed like Elijah Blue Allman was getting his life together, he was rushed to a California hospital after an alleged drug overdose in June 2025. The event came not long after Allman and his famous mom, Cher, had agreed to mediation in regard to her request for a temporary conservatorship of her son. Details of the supposed overdose were not clear, but a report by the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department stated that they were called to a residence for a man acting "erratically" (via People). However, witnesses told The U.S. Sun that Allman was standing outside while behaving "zombie-like" in 104-degree heat. He was also badly sunburned. Footage obtained by the publication showed a very disheveled Allman carrying what appeared to be drugs wrapped in aluminum foil into an AirBnb that was owned by Kayti Edwards, ex-girlfriend of Matthew Perry. Additional photos inside showed what appeared to be heroin and fentanyl.

Allman has been open about his problems with drugs in the past, including his addiction to heroin. He also acknowledged that he had come close to overdosing more than once. "I did have some close calls and some moments of really feeling at the edge of mortality," he told Entertainment Tonight in 2014. "I always kind of kept it a little bit safe but you never can do that," he continued, adding, "The wrong combination of things can happen and you can just slip into the abyss." 

It's no mystery why so many people are concerned about Cher's son. After his release from the hospital, which he was reportedly admitted to for a drug overdose, Elijah Blue Allman was once again spotted acting erratically, this time outside of the Chateau Marmont hotel. Allman was spotted in August of 2025 wearing a Chateau Marmont T-shirt while using a walking cane in front of the famed hotel. He was seen sipping on a Starbucks beverage and smoking a cigarette while speaking on the phone. This scene recalled snapshots taken of Allman earlier in the year following the end of his conservatorship battle with his mother, Cher. Photos taken in June, before his alleged overdose and hospitalization, showed him stumbling out of the same hotel with a vacant expression, disheveled clothing, and visible leg sores.

Cher has not commented publicly on the photos, but his estranged wife, Marieangela King, told People that she still supports Allman and wishes him the best. "Like many, he continues to confront his inner struggles — but it is important to recognize that he does so from a place of strength, not defeat," King said. "I want to state, without hesitation, that I will always root for him," she added. "My support is steadfast and comes from a place of deep respect for the person he is and the resilience he continues to show." It is unclear what the future holds for Allman, but sources told TMZ that Cher's main priority is helping her son get well, and she is doing whatever she can to support his health.