Cher Reveals She Contemplated Suicide While Married to Sonny Bono

Cher, 78, is opening up about her tumultuous marriage to late ex-husband Sonny Bono in her new memoir "Cher: The Memoir, Part One.”

The singers got married in 1964, but didn’t make it legal until 1969, eventually divorcing in 1975.

Despite their public image as a playfully battling couple, Cher confessed their relationship got so bad in real life she contemplated suicide.

The star said he was so controlling he had even rewritten their contracts to make her an unpaid employee. She recalled, "There I was, twenty-six years old and in what had become a loveless marriage… He just lost interest."

She claimed he was unfaithful with assistants, as well as a “dancer, actresses, waitresses, even hookers… I couldn’t imagine where he found the time!”

While the couple was in Las Vegas for their 1972 residency at the Sahara, Cher was nearly at a breaking point. 

She wrote, "I stepped barefoot onto the balcony of our suite and stared down. I was dizzy with loneliness. I saw how easy it would be to step over the edge and simply disappear. For a few crazy minutes I couldn’t imagine any other option.”

The Grammy winner said she considered suicide “five or six times” during that period, until she realized, “I don’t have to jump off, I can just leave him.”

Around the same time, she said Sonny got upset that she was interested in their guitarist Bill.

Per her book, he allegedly told her, "You know, after you went off with Bill that night at the Sahara, I seriously thought about throwing you off our balcony.”

He insisted, "I figured I’d plead insanity like Spade Cooley and get seven years in jail before they released me. Then I’d get a book deal and my own show."

She recalled telling him, "Oh, you did, did you? Well, there would have been no need to push me because I was gonna jump!"

At that point, she said they could only laugh.

Afterward, Sonny and Cher, who shared son Chaz, now 55, continued working together and sharing a 12,600-square-foot mansion. They were seeing other people at the time, eventually getting divorced in 1975. 

Following her split with Sonny, Cher began seeing Gregg Allman of the Allman Brothers.

She wrote, “I didn’t know whether my relationship with Gregory would last or not. I was living each day as it came. Then I found out I was pregnant, and we decided to get married.”

They had a quick wedding — four days after she finalized her divorce from Sonny — in Las Vegas, and Cher recalled, “I was no longer Cher Bono but Cher Allman, Gregory’s third wife. There was little about our wedding day that was romantic. There would be no honeymoon.”

It was a rocky relationship, and nine days after the wedding she was filing for divorce.

The breaking point was her finding a “plastic bag full of white powder” in his toiletry bag and her friends telling her Gregg was planning to leave her.

Allman, however, went to rehab, and she visited him there. The musician confessed he was feeling the “pressure to be Mr. Cher.”

Cher and Gregg reconciled and decided to take a belated honeymoon to Jamaica, where she said she witnessed him drinking rum. A huge fight ensued, and she left.

She later learned he was a heroin addict, and nearly threw in the towel.

“I don’t remember what date I’d chosen exactly. It was something arbitrary,” she explained. “I had had it with us repeating the same pattern again and again, and had told him over the phone, ‘I’m just so tired of doing this, Gregory. I’m so tired of going to rehab with you.’ He was quiet on the other end of the line. ‘But I keep going,’ he said softly. His answer stopped me in my tracks, because it was true. He kept going to rehab, kept trying to get clean, kept making an effort despite failing in the past. In that moment, instead of thinking of my own exhaustion, I empathized with him.”

Their son Elijah Blue was born in 1976, but afterward Cher witnessed Gregg acting paranoid, which worried her.

“Gregory had a paranoid breakdown one night and insisted he saw men with guns in the backyard,” she said. “‘This is the last straw,’ I thought. ‘Whatever he is now, it’s not safe for kids.’ It only happened once, but I couldn’t risk it.”

The couple split again and eventually finalized their divorce in 1978.

Bono died in a ski accident in 1998 at 62, while Allman died from cancer in 2017 at 69.