Cher Repudiates Sonny's Anti-Marijuana Message in Her New Memoir

Chapter 12 ("I Got You Babe") of Cher's new autobiography addresses the anti-marijuana PSA her former partner Sonny Bono released in 1968. 

She writes: 

The mid '60s brought in the counterculture, with ideas advocated by people like beat poet Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary, the Harvard psychologist who recommended the use of psychedelic drugs for mind expansion. Leary became famous for his "Turn on, tune in, drop out" message, which I thought was dumb. I never took drugs, and the idea of taking acid didn't turn me on. I was already pretty tuned in, and I had no intention of dropping out. 

So, while everyone was tripping, playing acid rock, or marching in the streets to protest the Vietnam war, Sonny and I were the straight, square couple who sang middle-of-the-road songs, didn't engage in drug culture, and now, in the era of free love, we became uncool for being married. 

Sonny was never a "march in the streets" kind of guy, but for some reason he felt compelled to abandon his anti-political stance, and he released a statement condemning the use of marijuana, which made us look like part of the establishment and alienated our younger fans. I didn't want to smoke pot myself, but I didn't care if other people did. My uncle smoked pot, and even my mother sometimes did. Him speaking out against it struck me and our audience as so uncool. 

Sonny & Cher in the '70s

"Drugs might not have been our thing, but I was far more liberal in my views and didn't agree with telling people what they should or shouldn't do," she continues. "His anti-drug stance seriously backfired, because our record sales dropped almost immediately, and offers began to dwindle. [Their agent] William Morris even switched us from the musical concerts department to the personal appearance department, which we knew was the first nail in our coffin." 

"Keeping us relevant and in the public eye required a great deal more time and energy after that, and the more Sonny took on, he moodier he became. Looking back, I think some of his mood swings at this time could have been because he was starting to abuse prescription meds." How ironic. Cher relates that she would sometimes take "a quarter of one of Sonny's Valiums to take the edge off" while dealing with stage fright on the road.

While in her teens and working (for no pay; only Sonny was paid) as a back-up singer for Phil Spector, she wondered how the older people kept going during long, into-the-night recording sessions, finally figuring out they were doing drugs. Still only 19 years old when "I Got You Babe" knocked even the Beatles out of the #1 song slot, Cher got stuck under Sonny's thumb. He insisted she give up her acting classes, and wouldn't let her wear miniskirts or perfume, or go out without him (except to go shopping). When she tried to assert herself, he would make derisive comments like, "why don't you go out and buy something." 

She finally left him by going into the room where their band would get high before the shows, and stepping out with a guitarist named Bill. She tried smoking pot once with him, but smoked too much and seems to have gotten paranoid, hearing Sonny's voice saying to her, "I told you something bad would happen if you left me" while in the bathtub. Another time she smoked with a girlfriend before they went shopping and again couldn't handle the effect, leaving the clothes she'd picked out at the counter. "And that was the last time I did drugs," she wrote, adding, "well, maybe one time in Aspen." 

Cher with her mother, Georgia Holt

Cher's mother Georgia Holt, who "sometimes" smoked pot, was a singer and actress who appeared on shows like "I Love Lucy" and nearly aced Marilyn Monroe out of her breakthrough role in "The Asphalt Jungle." Georgia married early and often, including to Cher's father, a gambler and heroin addict. Cher describes her (pot-smoking) uncle as "one of the funniest persons who ever drew breath," citing him as an inspiration for her turn into comedy in her nightclub act with Sonny, leading to their TV series. She relates that her Cherokee great-grandmother Margaret was one of the Original People who was called upon to gather medicinal herbs in the forest to heal fellow tribal members. 

This first installment of her memoir covers her marriage to musician Greg Allman, a heroin addict who tragically threw away his methadone before their Jamaican honeymoon, with disastrous results. In another incident she tells in the book, she testified against a dealer who was pushing a fatal combination of methodone and heroin after witnessing the results. (She may be distancing herself from rumors about her and drugs: in 2018 a fentanyl dealer was arrested at her Malibu home.) 

Sonny went on to have a political career, first as mayor of Palm Springs and then as a US Congressmember from 1995 until his death following a skiing accident in 1998. His widow Mary Bono was elected to fill his seat and served in Congress until 2013, where she staunchly opposed medical marijuana and co-founded the Congressional Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention Caucus and Mothers Against Prescription Drug Abuse. In August 2024, she interviewed drug policy wonk Dr. Beau Kilmer on her "Sagely Speaking" podcast.