Joana Balavoine talks about her fight against drugs – The HuffPost

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BOOKS – Discreet, Daniel Balavoine’s daughter comes out of the shadows. On the occasion of the publication in September of the Sleeping lions, a comic recounting his fight against drugs, Joana Balavoine indulged in Parisian, this Thursday August 26.

“As I am lucky to be out of it, I felt like I had to bear witness. This comic is an opportunity to reach as many people as possible, through the story of what I experienced. Invite people into a dialogue with themselves. The problem is not drugs, but to understand why we take drugs ”, blows the young woman of 35 in the columns of the day-to-day.

It was at the age of 16 that she started using drugs, while doing an odd summer job in the restaurant business. “There, I was offered ecstasy, cocaine,” she recalls. Things have, it seems, quickly escalated. “I was taking cocaine to tell myself that everything was fine,” she continues.

She blames this dependence on her father’s disappearance. The interpreter of Singer disappeared when she was only 5 months old. “Being a posthumous child is the first seed. I am built on this trauma. I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to have a daddy. Because of this absence, I had no limit ”, she concedes.

“Some people held out their hand to me”

Growing up in the shadow of Daniel Balavoine has not always been easy. “In the eyes of the people, there is a terrible projection. It’s heavy sometimes, ”says the young woman, also a singer. She officiates in a group called Gentle Republic.

Today she is doing well. She says she quit drugs three years ago, following drug rehab. She now lives in the country, takes care of her vegetable gardens. Comics Sleeping Lions, written by her friend the screenwriter Sylvie Gaillard, is “an opportunity to reach as many people as possible through the story of what I lived”.

Joana Balavoine wants to get involved in the fight against drugs. “You know, when I was at my worst, people reached out to me,” she recalls. […] If it hadn’t been the case, I don’t know where I would be today, maybe died of an overdose. So if someone tomorrow needs me to reach out to them, I can’t refuse. ”

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