Whitney Houston Comes Clean

Harpo Productions, George Burns, AP

By Ashley Neglia

Iconic music legend Whitney Houston’s candid September 14 interview with Oprah Winfrey shed light on her disastrous fall from grace. The megastar is now coming clean, admitting that her unmanageable fame and turbulent marriage to Bobby Brown fueled her addiction to marijuana and rock cocaine.

Houston admits that she began using cocaine before "The Bodyguard" was shot in 1992. Her drug abuse began to escalate after the film, and by 1996, during filming of "The Preacher's Wife," she was a full-blown addict. “I would do my work, but after I did my work, for a whole year or two, it was everyday,” she tells Winfrey.

Following a controversial 2002 interview with Diane Sawyer where Houston uttered the infamous line, “crack is whack,” the singer stepped out of the spotlight amid rumors of addiction. Houston and Brown didn’t officially go public again until 2005, when they starred in Bravo’s reality show, “Being Bobby Brown.” However, instead of clearing the air, the show only fostered more rumors about the couple’s substance abuse.

Houston now admits that her codependent relationship with Brown furthered her addiction. “He was my drug. I didn’t do anything without him. I wasn’t getting high by myself. It was me and him together,” she told Winfrey.

“Dysfunctional relationships do accelerate people’s substance abuse,” says Dr. Drew Pinsky, addiction medicine specialist and host of "Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew," who has not treated Houston. “And that seems to be what was happening here.”

In a codependent relationship, if one person is using drugs, there’s a high likelihood that the other person will do the same. “It’s usually a very chaotic relationship,” says Dr. Reef Karim, assistant clinical professor at UCLA and director of The Control Center for Addictions in Beverly Hills, who also has not treated Houston. “That person’s identity is rooted in you. You need that person to define you. You don’t have the backbone, the awareness, the fortitude to be able to lead an independent life.”

Houston also attributes her addiction partly to the mega-stardom that followed “The Bodyguard” and a desire to live a normal life. “When I became ‘Whitney Houston’ and all this other stuff that happened, my life became the world’s. My privacy. My business. Who I was with. Who I married. And I was, like, that’s not fair,” she told Winfrey. “I just wanted to be normal.”

According to Dr. Drew’s research, celebrity actually has no impact on addiction. “[Fame] just allows them to act out their psychology. [Houston] was an addict who escalated,” he says. “[Being a celebrity] is not more stressful than working at a factory or trying to live in today’s unemployment environment. You arrive at celebrity with your pathology, and then it just expresses itself.”

However, Dr. Reef disagrees. “I do think there are certain stressors and pressures associated with being a celebrity in regard to privacy issues, not having downtime and not having a good foundation for coping and dealing with all this crazy stress,” says Dr. Reef. “You’re surrounded by an entourage that feeds off of your celebrity status, and it’s hard to find people that will stand up to the addiction in addition to standing up to you.”

Drugs are most often used as a way to self-medicate and drown out emotional pain as well as to escape from stress. Houston also admitted to Winfrey that she believes Brown was jealous of her fame and success, which led to emotional abuse that may have accelerated her addiction. “It fed the violence and the chaos,” says Dr. Drew. “If he [was emotionally] aggressive toward her because of jealousy or envy, it could have increased her pain and escalated her substance abuse.”

While Brown’s emotional abuse clearly took its toll, Houston also confessed that Brown slapped her in the face on at least one occasion. “If you’re using stimulants, there’s almost always violence of some kind. You can’t blame it all on addiction, but that’s a big, big piece of it here,” says Dr. Drew. Morever, an altered state of mind coupled with a history of rage or abuse can be a destructive combination and lead to physical violence, says Dr. Reef.

“[Bobby] pushed me against the wall ... I was on the phone and I went back in and I took the phone and I hit him over the head with it,” says Houston. “He just fell out on the floor. It was just drama. My daughter came down the stairs. She’s, like, ‘Daddy?’”

For children of addicts, such as Houston and Brown’s daughter, 16-year-old Bobby Kristina Houston Brown, the likelihood of growing up and having a substance abuse problem is really a flip of the coin. “It’s 50 percent,” says Dr. Drew, who attributes addiction, at least in part, to genetics. “She’s either going to inherit that gene or she’s not.” However, Houston also admits that their daughter observed the abuse that went on at home. Even if she doesn’t share the addiction gene with her parents, their daughter will still be severely affected by the chaos and trauma she experienced, says Dr. Drew.

“You can’t really predict what’s going to happen,” says Dr. Reef. “Some kids are able to have enough protection either by their own genetics or a healthy caregiver that they end up protected from the whole thing. [But other kids] either repeat the behavior or are affected in other negative ways, such as having problems with anxiety or depression.”

Houston attests that after going through rehab, she is now working at maintaining her sobriety. According to Caron, a leading provider of drug and alcohol treatment, relapse rates for addictive diseases usually range from 50 to 90 percent. So the real question now is, will her sobriety last?