Photo: Richard Young/Startraks
In 2005, Cissy Houston knocked on the door of her daughterWhitney Houston’s Atlanta home after her son Gary warned her the singer “was in trouble.”
When Whitney appeared at the top of the stairs, the once-stunning star who sold more than 170 million records and racked up six Grammys “looked like someone I didn’t know,” Cissy told PEOPLE in 2013. “I knew my daughter was in grave danger.”
The star tragicallydied at 48 from accidental drowning(she was found to have cocaine in her system). The swirl of stories and drama — including her mother’s book detailing her anger and anguish over Whitney’s drug addiction and the later feud between the Brown and Houston families overBobbi Kristina’s hospitalizationand death— has continued.
In his 2016 memoirEvery Little Step, Brown opened up about their doomed love story and how drugs helped lead to their undoing.
“The drugs wasn’t her,” Brown said in a 201620/20interviewwithRobin Robertsto promote his book. Revealing that he first saw Whitney taking cocaine just before she was to walk down the aisle at their 1992 wedding, a tearful Brown told Roberts, “She did drugs but the drugs didn’t do her. She knew how to handle herself.”
The Pressures of Fame
“There were a lot of expectations in terms of who she was and who people thought she was,” a close family friend told PEOPLE in 2016. “I think not being able to be herself 100 percent was a hell of a burden for her to have to carry. Someone may look good on the outside, sturdy and strong . . . [but] on the inside, you have someone who had insecurities and family issues and emotional personal issues and struggles.”
After Davis signed her to his label in 1985, she “had to do what he said, wear what he said to, sing what he wanted her to sing and act like a goody two shoes when she was really a down and dirty girl from Jersey,” said a record executive who worked with her. “Whitney definitely resented that.”
Added a music source: “Clive made her into a mainstream pop star and allowed all of her wildest dreams to come true, but being this massive pop star came at a price. She had to act a certain way in front of the cameras for the label. That wasn’t the real Whitney.”
A Life of Rebellion
Entering a romantic relationship with Brown (the two wed in 1992 and had anexplosive marriagethat ultimately ended in 2007) and using drugs were “her rebellion against it all,” said the family friend. “There has to be some outlet. For her, it became drugs.” According to a record executive who worked with the singer for years, Whitney “did drugs to escape her pain.”
At first, she was able to keep her drug use hidden, but “things got worse and worse,” says a family source. “Suddenly, when she was using, she had no idea who she was or who you were and she became angry and lashed out. We’d take turns checking on her in Atlanta when things were bad.”
Family Rendered Helpless
When no one else was around, it was Houston’s daughter Bobbi Kristina who looked after the singer. Once showing up at Houston’s Atlanta house, the family source recalled a then 11- or 12-year-old Bobbi Kristina answering the door.
“Bobbi said Whitney wasn’t feeling well so [she] put her to bed,” recalled the family source. “I went upstairs to her bedroom and the room was a disaster.” With piles of clothes and dirty dishes strewn about and Houston asleep in the midst of it all, the family source said, “It was the bedroom of a junkie.”
Though she entered rehab multiple times throughout her adult life, Whitney struggled with addiction until it ultimately took her life.
“She was in pain from all the pressure she was facing and the pain from living almost a double life,” said the record executive. “She was doing ridiculous amounts of hard drugs and sacrificed her God-given talents for that.”
source: people.com
