Jon Bon Jovi has a special bond with his daughter Stephanie, with him writing the song ‘I Got The Girl’ for her as a child. At the age of seven, she joined him on stage for a performance of the song. In 2017, Stephanie was again on her father’s side during his rendition of the same song. This moment was significant as it followed a life-threatening incident that the frontman referred to as the most ‘tragic lesson’ of his life.
Stephanie was admitted to the hospital in 2012 during her freshman year at the Central New York school after overdosing on opioids, which deeply affected the entire Bongiovi family. The singer was sleeping at 2 a.m. when his bedside phone suddenly rang, and Stephanie called from the hospital to give the news. He recalled these challenging moments, speaking to the Daily Mirror in 2013. He said:
“It was horrible, a horrible moment. It was my worst moment as a father. First, she said, ‘I’m all right.’ But then she told me what happened. You wake up, you shake it off, put your shoes on, and say, ‘OK, I am on the way home.’ We went through something that a lot of parents do, many more than I thought.”
Reflecting on whether he knew his daughter was taking drugs, the rocker continued:
“There’s a lot of pressure on this generation. They have a lot easier access to things than yours or my generation had. She was by no means sticking needles in her arms. 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.”
He lastly added, further sharing how the incident felt to him as a parent:
“I wasn’t aware of it, not because I’m not home, but because it is a different world. Our world is much more relatable to our parents’ world than the kids’ world. I feel it was a terrible, tragic lesson of life, but I thank God every day because she is whole. I know people whose sons and daughters where it was a lot, lot worse. That could have been Stephanie.”
According to a statement from the police department, they received a call at 1:51 a.m. reporting a female in a Hamilton College dormitory who had overdosed on heroin and was unresponsive. The individual in question, identified as Bongiovi, was transported to a nearby hospital.
The officials searched the dorm, uncovering heroin, marijuana, and drug paraphernalia. Stephanie faced charges of possessing a controlled substance and marijuana, but New York state’s Good Samaritan law subsequently dismissed the drug-related accusations.
