El DeBarge has had many starts and stops.
He was raised in Detroit and Grand Rapids as a child. El’s parents had a tumultuous marriage that involved domestic abuse and child abuse on the part of El’s father Robert. El has remained mum on his relationship with his father and many other elements of his family life, later documented in books written by his mother Etterlene, sister Bunny and brother Tommy.
El has had a history of drug abuse. He stated that his addiction started after he began receiving prescription medication for toothache pain after having a tooth pulled by a dentist. Up until then, El DeBarge had been seen as reliable, especially in comparison to his siblings, whose accounts of drug abuse started during the tenure of the group. By the mid-1990s, El had become addicted, and his addiction resulted in his career faltering after its peaks in the 1980s. Following a prison sentence in which he served 13 months, El declared himself born again and announced that he had found sobriety after an addiction that he said had lasted nearly 25 years, stating he had also acknowledged his problems with the law in the past.
However in February 2011, while promoting Second Chance, DeBarge’s label announced that the singer was canceling all public dates and appearances as he went back to rehab following a relapse. DeBarge has since returned to work and made an appearance at the 54th Grammy Awards in February 2012.
S2S Publisher Jamie Foster Brown dances with El Debarge before sitting him down to encourage him to stay strong in his recovery from drug addiction and to not get married again! Find out why the Debarge family reality show, which was reportedly going to document the family’s effort to recover from addiction and dysfunction, has not started production.
Watch the video here.
If you have never seen the heart breaking full interview of the DeBarge struggling with addiction and Dr Drew, watch here.
Make sure to watch this: A Look At What Drug Addiction Has Done To The Debarge Family
