The trouble with being Rod's son

Sean Stewart is evidently nervous about offending his famous father, Rod. At one point he calls the singer 'the most amazing dad ever', and is at pains to stress how he regards him as a 'best friend'.

But this is the father who, in 1984, walked out on Sean's mother, Alana Hamilton, for model Kelly Emberg, leaving Alana to look after their two young children, Kimberley, now 24, and Sean, 23.

What Sean is referring to, it emerges, is Rod's continued support for his son throughout his battle with drugs and alcohol.

It was Rod who paid for him to go into rehab several times for drug abuse, and who twice took the dramatic step of cutting off Sean's allowance in a bid to save his son from becoming consumed by his addiction to drink and drugs.

But even Sean has to concede that Rod was unable to help in a more personal way.

Ironically, Sean believes his drug abuse was very much to do with living in the shadow of the legendary singer with a £100 million fortune and a less-than-conventional private life.

'Being Rod Stewart's son is a curse and a hindrance,' says Sean.

Telling his nightmarish story for the first time exclusively to the Mail, Sean reveals that when he was at his lowest ebb he took heroin 'day and night', washing it down with alcohol and illegal prescription pills.

Like so many of his peers whose fathers are also famous, all Sean wanted to do when taking drugs was to escape reality.

'All celebrity children are f***** up. It's called the Rock 'n' Roll Royalty Curse,' says Sean, who is liberally tattooed and sports inky black dreadlocks.

He has seen friends such as Kelly and Jack Osbourne (the offspring of Ozzie) go through the mill of rehab and overdoses, and his less-troubled sister, Kimberley, has sought the help of Alcoholics Anonymous.

'We were able to get into any Hollywood club we wanted to from an early age, and a lot of people wanted to be our friends just because of who our parents are.

'Other people want to live this life, but they don't know all of it. It's tough growing up when your dad's one of the world's greatest rock 'n' roll stars.'

Stewart, it seems, was never around when he was young, always touring, and as a child, Sean took the absence to mean that his father didn't love him.

'I think a lot of us celebrity kids are pretty lonely because our parents are out of town a lot and it makes us feel like we're unwanted.

'My dad's a big rock star and he was away touring the world. Now I've come to terms with it, I realise he does love me - he was just doing his job.'

He pauses and then adds: 'He was always on the end of the phone. I could always call him.'

But, for ten years, Sean didn't call very often, and didn't see much of Rod who had by then worked his way through several women and was busy raising children with his new, younger wife, Rachel Hunter.

Sean started to drink when he was 'around 13' and a student at Beverly Hills High School.

'I would go to parties at that age and drink and smoke cannabis and cigarettes. It was very easy for me to get drugs. I would just walk into a party and someone would hand them to me. I hardly ever paid for them.

'First, I got really badly into Ecstasy. Then I started on the prescription pills like Vicodin, and then cocaine. And finally I got into heroin.'

By the time he was 19 he had a fully developed drugs habit, an alcohol addiction and had been expelled from college.

Rod, in public at least, did not fully admit what was going on with Sean. He said that his son was 'OK' and 'sober', and that he had played him the Oasis song, Cigarettes And Alcohol, as a warning of the temptations he'd encounter, and their consequences.

Given the scale of Sean's problems, it seems an almost comically inadequate attempt at parenting, but his mother and father had made no secret of the fact that they had done drugs themselves.

'It's hard for me to moralise,' said Rod in an interview at the time. 'I try to cut down my intake, but I still take drugs now and then. My children have been surrounded by huge parties and drinking all their lives. I just hope they see the pitfalls and learn from it.'

Over time, Rod realised that there was a problem.

'My parents wanted me to go into rehab,' says Sean. 'My response to that was: "F*** off!"

'But they said: "We are cutting off your allowance." So I went to the Meadows in Arizona when I was 19 or 20, but I didn't take it seriously and I got kicked out.

'My parents wanted me to go to Sober Living [a programme for drug addicts similar to Alcoholics Anonymous, but with a 10pm curfew], but I just couldn't take it and walked out. I tried another and got kicked out of there, too.'

Alana took her son back into her home, but it did little good.

'I started getting high there, and drunk. Finally, when I was 22, my parents stopped giving me money and took away my car. But I didn't give a f***.

'When you are an addict you don't care about your family, you don't care about your friends. All you care about it getting high, escaping reality.

'You come to a point in your life when the drugs and alcohol make you hit rock bottom. I realised that either I would end up dead or in jail for ever.

'I was doing heroin every single day and night. I was mixing it with alcohol and pills. I was smoking the heroin and snorting it. I didn't inject it.

'One night, on Sunset Boulevard, I overdosed. I was so high on pills that I collapsed and got arrested. I had to go to court and was ordered to do rehab again.'

This was not Sean's first brush with the law. At the time of the overdose, he was already on bail after an ugly incident in December 2001, when he was involved in a fight with a 19-year old student, Jason Rogland, in the car park of a restaurant in Malibu.

According to Rogland, Stewart punched him in an unprovoked attack and then kicked him repeatedly in the head as he lay on the ground.

Rogland lost consciousness and was treated at the scene by paramedics.

Stewart was jailed in September 2002 for the attack and a civil case is now pending, with Rogland seeking large damages.

Going to jail was Sean's rock bottom moment. 'When I got my sentence, dad told me: "Just get it done. Be strong and get it over with." That's when I knew I had to turn it around. Reality hit me when I walked through the door of the jail. I felt trapped and alone.

'My mum came to visit me every single Saturday of the 90-day period. My dad came to visit every time he was in town.'

Sean was then sent once again to a rehab facility, this time for nine months in Idaho. 'On one visit home a friend had drugs on him. We started smoking heroin, but after that experience I said: "I can't do this any more."

'I just couldn't do it, the guilt and the shame - the guilt for my family. Suddenly, I just didn't want to do it.'

So what will Sean do now with his life? He has rented a place of his own in LA and is still living on a monthly allowance from his father. His dreams of becoming a musician have been shelved.

Instead, he is taking acting lessons, and in a few weeks will begin filming a reality TV show for the music channel VH-1. Called Hollywood Family, it will feature Sean, Alana, her first husband, actor George Hamilton, and Sean's half brother, Ashley Hamilton, who has had problems of his own.

'It's been a rough couple of years for me, but I decided to clean up now because I want to live my life, live it for myself.

'Drugs make you become someone you are not. I became a very mean, cold-hearted human being. And I'm not like that - I am very loving and sensitive. I like helping other people.

'I'm talking now because I want to send a message to people that drugs do ruin your life.'