I spent $3k a MONTH on crippling Fentanyl addiction… mum saved me from the ‘Elvis curse’, says Priscilla Presley’s son
FEW families have been as cursed by drugs as the Presleys — with Elvis, his daughter Lisa Marie and grandson Benjamin all consumed by addictions.
Now Priscilla Presley’s son Navarone Garcia has revealed how the painkiller fentanyl — 40 times more potent than heroin — nearly killed him.
Close to the first anniversary of his half-sister Lisa Marie’s shock death at the age of 54 after a cardiac arrest, he tells The Sun he was spending £2,400 a month on the deadly drug.
Rock singer Navarone, 36, thanks his mum for helping him to escape the grip of the class A drug.
A new film about Priscilla’s life, which came out on New Year’s Day, recalls how ex-husband Elvis gave her uppers, downers and the hallucinogen LSD during their marriage.
But she managed to avoid the crippling addictions which led to his death in 1977 aged 42, when an autopsy found 14 drugs in his system.
Navarone, whose father, Brazilian movie producer Marco Garibaldi, was with Priscilla for 21 years, knows he had a lucky escape.
He said: “I don’t recommend it to anyone because it’s very lethal.
“If you don’t have any tolerance you die the first time you do it.
“So it’s a scary, scary thing.
“I went to my mum’s house for about three weeks to a month recovering from my problem.
“My mum helped me.
“I was indisposed, I was useless.
“She helped me do everything.”
Navarone, who sings with the band Them Guns, first tried heroin at 17 but he was 29 before fentanyl took hold of him.
He said: “I don’t know how this happened but all the heroin in the United States started to contain fentanyl.
“So I didn’t even realise I was doing fentanyl.
“So suddenly I was addicted to fentanyl.
“With heroin it would last about six to eight hours, but with fentanyl you have to do it every 45 minutes or else you start to get sick.
“So it got to a point where it was very expensive.
“I was spending $3,000 a month on fentanyl.
“It was unbearable.”
His half-sister Lisa Marie knew just how tough it is to escape those demons.
She tried rehab five times to try to shake off a cocaine and opioid habit.
Her death on January 12 last year, following a cardiac arrest, was linked to a bowel obstruction that was believed to have been caused by weight-loss surgery.
Her son Benjamin also tried rehab as he sought to curb his drug and alcohol intake.
In July 2020 he ended his life aged 27 using a shotgun.
As with Elvis, it was the pressure of fame that was ultimately blamed for both premature deaths.
But with a different surname, Navarone does not feel the same weight of the Presley legacy, because it is his mum who bears that name.
He said: “Regarding having pressure, I guarantee it was worse for my sister and a big struggle for my nephew Benjamin as well.”
But even though his fame has not reached the same level as actress Priscilla, 78, who starred in the 1980s US soap Dallas and three Naked Gun movies, Navarone still faces plenty of unpleasant fan scrutiny.
Last year there were hurtful accusations by online trolls that he did not care about his half-sister’s death.
While the siblings had fall-outs over the years, Navarone said: “I love my sister and there is a big conception that we didn’t get along, we hated each other.
“I’m actually really hurt because I really did love my sister and I tried many times to have a better relationship with her.
“But it got to a point that I realised we got on better if we just didn’t see each other.
“There was a recent article saying ‘Navarone doesn’t miss his dead sister’ — that was actually really painful because that was the headline.
“The truth is there are times that I do miss her.
“More and more than that, I think it’s just strange when I think about her not being here.”
Navarone was not nearby when Lisa Marie was found at her Los Angeles home, and by the time he reached the hospital it was too late.
He prefers to remember the good times he shared with Elvis’s only child.
He thinks they were happiest on Hawaii, where Lisa Marie married Nicolas Cage in 2002.
He said: “I think that time of her life was when we both had the best connection as brother and sister.
“Also, they were a fun couple.
“The wedding was beautiful.
“It was actually one of the very first times I had a hangover.
“I almost never made it to the wedding.”
Navarone also enjoyed hanging out with Lisa Marie at her home in Rotherfield, East Sussex.
He said: “We used to go there for Christmas and the holidays and the New Year.
“We loved it.
“There was a local pub we would go to.
“There was a special bottle of liquor that had been there for hundreds of years, and it had fermented turtle penis in there.
“And when we were all drinking, the landlord decided to break open that bottle so we all took a shot of that.”
There have also been a lot of stories about a feud within the surviving Presley clan over Lisa Marie’s inheritance.
In November, Priscilla came to an agreement with her actress granddaughter Riley Keough, who takes control of 15 per cent of Elvis’s trust.
The deal names Navarone and Lisa Marie’s other children, 15-year-old twins Harper and Finley Lockwood, as beneficiaries.
But Navarone insists that Elvis — whose estate still earns £30million a year — has not made him rich.
He said: “I grew up with my mum, I live in a small house.
“I don’t receive any of Elvis’s money from the estate or anything like that.”
He also claims he does not get any support from his father, who he has not spoken to following a family row more than a decade ago.
Marco, 68, met Priscilla in 1984 and they stayed together until 2006 without ever marrying.
But Navarone thinks they would have split up earlier if it was not for Priscilla wishing to keep the family together.
He said: “She was such a good mother she didn’t want to have split custody with me and him.
“She didn’t want me to spend time just with him so she actually stayed with him until about a week before I turned 18 so that they did not have to have split custody.
“Once I was 18 I decided I didn’t want to have a relationship with him, and that was my choice.”
But mother and son are very close.
Last year he attended the premiere of her biopic, Priscilla, though he left half-way through because he was embarrassed about watching actress Cailee Spaeny portray his mum making love to Elvis.
He said: “I kind of wasn’t feeling well but I wanted to go to support her.
“Everything that I saw was really good but then it got to a certain point that was really intimate and I was sitting next to my mother and I got a little bit uncomfortable watching the intimate scenes.”
Priscilla also supported Navarone following his divorce from Elisa Achilli last year after a short marriage.
He said: “As a mother she was always there for me — anything I wanted to talk about, whether it was 4.30 in the morning.”
So far, Navarone’s music career has not taken off like those of Elvis, who sold half a billion records, or Lisa Marie, who made three albums.
He recently released a solo single and this month Them Guns will be playing in Rio in Brazil, where Navarone spends a lot of his time.
But he wants to release records without trading on the Elvis name.
Navarone said: “People always ask me if I will sing some of his songs and I tell them it’s not something I really feel comfortable doing.
“I really want to make my own name in music and don’t want to live off Elvis.”
