Late singer Sonny Bono's 20-year-old son has been hired as an assistant to Barry Manilow's tour manager after kicking his addictions to painkillers and heroin. Chesare Bono turned to drugs at the age of 14, five years after his father was killed in a freak skiing accident.
It took him five years, three stints in rehab and the help of Lindsay Lohan to get clean.
Bono Jr. tells People magazine, "I was in seventh grade the first time I tried alcohol. By the end of the eight grade I went out into the desert with a bunch of older buddies to smoke pot. One day when I couldn't get any pot, my friend offered me Oxycontin. It soon became the perfect drug for me.
"By senior year, I'd become a fiend. I started stealing from my mom, sister and friends. I pawned all my videogames, guitars, even my father's ring.
"At the most I was spending $120 a day on drugs."
After one unsuccessful stint at America's Betty Ford Clinic, Bono was kicked out of his mother Mary Bono MACk's home. He returned to the rehab only to be ejected for using heroin.
Chesare finally found peace in 2007, during a stay at Utah's Cirque Lodge, where Lohan was a fellow patient.
He adds, "That turned out to be a pretty cool place where I learned all the things you can do to have fun without drugs. Lindsay and I were in treatment together, and we got pretty close. That's where it hit me that I can never use again.
"My life is pretty good now. I'm back at school and I also work as Barry Manilow's tour manager's assistant. I've come along way."