Priscilla Presley's Son Navarone Garcia Says He Gave Up Fentanyl Cold Turkey at His Mom's House

Navarone Garibaldi Garcia is opening up about his recovery from fentanyl addiction.

In this week's issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, the 35-year-old Them Guns musician — the son of Priscilla Presley and her former longtime partner Marco Garibaldi — describes how his problem with drugs began in his teen years, when he started using heroin.

"I would dabble in it," he says. "I would maybe do it once every three months, or if it was around."

He later became addicted to fentanyl, a synthetic opioid that is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times stronger than morphine.

"I was under the impression I was doing heroin, but then it'd turn out to be fentanyl," he says. "That was a whole different beast. I became so addicted that I'd need it every 45 minutes. It went downhill quickly."

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For a long time, Navarone says he was scared to go cold turkey.

"I knew I wasn't ready to quit for a while, and I knew that if I was forced to quit, that it would be almost impossible to do it again without dying," he says. "I was afraid I would get back to having zero tolerance. But I reached the point I was ready."

David Livingston/Getty Navarone Garibaldi Garcia and Priscilla Presley

Navarone finally got clean from hard drugs and opioids in 2020, in part so he could visit his now wife Elisa (whom he married in 2022) in her home country of Switzerland.

"When COVID happened, I wanted to go there and see her for more than three or four days. I didn't want to have to bring a pound of fentanyl with me anywhere I went," he says. "I buckled down and said, 'Let's see how bad this can get.'"

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From there, he spent a month detoxing at his mom's house.

For more on Navarone Garcia, listen below to our daily podcast PEOPLE Every Day.

"I was pretty much in my bed in the fetal position all day," says Navarone, who still smokes marijuana and drinks alcohol. When he'd feel up for it, he'd sit in her steam room.

"It feels like a different lifetime, almost," he says. "The whole world got a lot better [afterward]."

Navarone Garibaldi Garcia

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Even Navarone's musical spark was reignited after he got clean. On Friday, he and his band will release their new song "Acid Plane."

"We wrote a whole album as soon as I got ready to go," he says, as bandmate Kyle Hamood notes he's "incredibly proud" of where Navarone is now. "It's a night-and-day difference. It's like we have the old Navarone back."

For more on Navarone Garibaldi Garcia's life, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands everywhere Friday.