Bob Geldof tried to stop his daughter Peaches ‘running away from rehab’ while she was staying at a centre in Utah in 2013.
Peaches, who died in 2014, aged 25, following a heroin overdose, had sought out treatment at the rehab clinic over in the US to help overcome her struggles with addiction.
And while dad Bob says she was ‘initially doing well’ at the centre, she eventually walked away from her treatment, despite his attempts to stop her.
Speaking to The Mail On Sunday’s Event magazine, Bob said he knew that Peaches was taking drugs, but he wasn’t ‘specifically aware’ of the extent of her drug trouble.
‘I knew that she’d always dabbled and that the panic was always there. By 2013, we’d been through it,’ he explained. ‘The family had gone to Utah to a rehab place there. She was doing pretty well and we all flew out, because you have to.’
‘Then she ran away from there. I tried to stop her at the door, but there’s nothing you can do. She was free to leave,’ Bob said.
Bob, 68, described Peaches as a ‘clever, sweet, eccentric girl’, but said she always had a sense of ‘franticness’ about her growing up.
He also revealed how he loves to help out Peaches’ husband Thomas Cohen with the couple’s two sons Astala, seven, and Phaedra, six – proudly cooing that his grandsons are ‘beyond stupidly cute and completely hilarious’.
Bob is also dad to daughters Fifi, 37, and Pixie, 29, who he shares with ex-wife Paula Yates, who died back in 2000.
He raised Paula’s daughter Tiger Lily, 23, following the deaths of both her mum and her dad Michael Hutchence.
Boomtown Rats rocker Bob has previously spoken about his continual grief over Peaches’ death and said ‘time doesn’t heal’ the ‘ever present’ mourning you feel.
The Live Aid founder said during an appearance on The Tommy Tiernan Show in Ireland: ‘You’re driving along and you’re at the traffic lights and for no reason whatsoever, the person in question inhabits you and I’ll cry.
‘I’ll look around to make sure the people next door don’t see me or are taking a photo and posting it or something, but that happens and that happens to everyone. And so you say, “ok it’s time to cry now.”‘
Bob, who leaned on friends during the difficult time, explained that he finds grief ‘boundless and bottomless’, adding: ‘The grief and the abyss is infinite.’
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