Tina Brown, Whitney Houston’s ex-sister-in-law, back in 2006, alleged that the singer was addicted to crack cocaine and was living in squalor.
Tina Brown, Bobby Brown’ sister claimed that she knew this because she used crack cocaine with Whitney Houston.
The British tabloid, The Sun, had reportedly received photographs of Whitney Houston, depicting drug paraphernalia including a crack pipe, rolling papers and cocaine-covered spoons in the singer’s bathroom.
Tina Brown was quoted by The Sun as saying: “The truth needs to come out. Whitney won’t stay off the drugs. It’s every single day. It’s so ugly. Everyone is so scared she is going to overdose.”
The addiction was reported to had become so bad, Whitney Houston hallucinated. Sky Showbiz reported at the time that: “Tina claims drugs have made Whitney so paranoid that she sees demons everywhere and once made a hole in the bathroom wall as a spy hole.”
Elaboration came from a quote on The Sun from Tina Brown, who said: “She’ll point to the floor and say, ‘See that demon. I’m telling you somebody’s messing with Bobby’. She always thinks it’s something to do with Bobby. But it’s her, hitting herself.”
Tina Brown had reportedly revealed photographs of Whitney Houston’s bathroom, depicting drug paraphernalia including a crack pipe, rolling papers and cocaine-covered spoons
The reports also claimed that Whitney Houston was completely ignoring her own personal hygiene, was using copious amounts of crack cocaine at a time, and was using sex toys to pleasure herself.
Whitney Houston was reported to have used an entire 8-ball (1/8 of an ounce) of crack at once, by emptying out a cigar, and filling it with the crack rock and marijuana. Habitual users will regularly break an 8-ball into several smaller pieces, using smaller doses at a time.
Reports also claimed that Whitney Houston’s mother, Cissy, had forced her to go to rehab clinics in March of 2004. It’s reported that Whitney Houston used crack in the car en route to the rehab session. Once at the clinic, she would do her best to dodge drug tests.
The New York Daily News said she would tell workers at the clinic: “I’m not giving you no pee today. I don’t have none right now.”
The New York Daily News also reported: ” Whitney allegedly loses her $6,000 set of false teeth when she’s high and once appeared toothless, scaring the kids at her niece’s school.”
As well: “In 2004, a drug dealer called Bobby Brown and ordered him to remove the paranoid and out-of-control Whitney from his crack house. <<Come get your wife. I’m sick of this b****>>, the dealer reportedly complained.”
Other instances of how Whitney Houston’s addiction was ruining her life include The Sun’s report of how: “Whitney was also rushed to hospital in 2003 with blood gushing from her nose – and emerged with a bizarre bandage on it.”
At the time, a source said: “Everyone wondered what happened to Whitney’s nose.”
It was rumored that the money Whitney Houston made from selling 100 million plus albums has most been squandered to her drug habit.
Having apparently forgotten about her Diane Sawyer interview on ABC, where Whitney Houston had stated: “Crack is Whack!”, concern for her well-being was the motivating factor behind the publicizing of her addiction, explained Tina Brown.
At the end of the interview, Tina Brown said: “I understand what she is going through. Addiction is a disease. Maybe this interview will help save her life.”
By the end of her life, Whitney Houston had thrown away every last scrap of the poise and beauty that had made her the ultimate diva of her generation.
Leaving a Hollywood nightclub two days before her death, Whitney Houston was drenched in sweat and disoriented a wad of mint chewing gum visible in her gaping mouth.
Blood from a cut trickled down her leg, but the singer herself, surrounded by party-loving hangers-on, didn’t seem to notice.
Alternately waving and cursing, this was not the Whitney Houston who conquered the world – a church-going supermodel with a once-in-a-generation voice of exceptional power and sweetness.
This was a woman who, despite at least three attempts at rehab in the past eight years, appeared fully in the grip of drug addiction: wired, wrecked and out of control. Inside the club, it is claimed, Whitney Houston nearly came to blows with a partygoer who she felt had “got into her face”.
So why could nobody save Whitney Houston? In truth, having spent almost two decades destroying herself, she was past saving.
Her voice, with her signature, high-octave power note, had been pitifully diminished by years of abuse, particularly the smoking of crack cocaine. The soaring vocals had become a soft, whispery falsetto.
“She doesn’t want to come, my soprano friend,” Whitney Houston told a booing concert audience in London in 2010.
The years of material plenty were behind her, too. Whitney Houston was reportedly once again “flat broke”, even though she should have had a fortune well in excess of $160 million.
Indeed, despite earning up to $30 million with a colossal 50-date global tour only two years ago, she was reportedly this month reduced to asking her great benefactor, Clive Davis, the music mogul who “discovered” her, for hand-outs yet again.
Whitney Houston’s home in New Jersey was said to be in danger of being repossessed. Another home in Atlanta already had been.
The legendary singer was partying at the Beverly Hilton only because she was on someone else’s tab: the record label was paying for her to be with them in the run-up to last night’s Grammy awards.
There were hopes of yet another album from Whitney Houston, despite the relatively poor performance of her comeback in 2009, and she had recently been in the studio. She had also finished making a film, Sparkle, a showbiz saga about a trio of singers, which Sony has announced will still be released in August.
Whitney Houston’s most recent romantic partner was a 31-year-old rapper, Ray J, who is chiefly famous for being the man in a homemade sex tape shot in 2003, which made reality star Kim Kardashian famous.
Ray-J is also the cousin of rapper and drug advocate Snoop Dogg, so he was not the kind who might have been counted on to keep her on the straight and narrow.
Whitney Houston and Ray-J had an on-and-off four-year liaison, which her fans felt had depressing echoes of her mutually destructive marriage to “bad boy” rapper Bobby Brown, who she divorced in 2007.
Whitney Houston pictured in 2006, sick and haggard
Whitney Elizabeth Houston was born in 1963 in Newark, New Jersey, and her mother was the successful gospel singer, Cissy Houston. Her cousin was Dionne Warwick and Aretha Franklin was her godmother.
Known as Nippy as a child, Whitney Houston was the youngest of three children. Her mother divorced John Houston, an Army serviceman, but Whitney remained close to both parents.
They supported her in her dreams of stardom – a fact she later said accounted for her enormous self-confidence.
From the age of five Whitney Houston would sing in the choir at the All Hope Baptist church in Newark, where the family worshipped.
As a teenager, Whitney Houston started to get involved in the music business. Aged 15, she sang backing vocals on the Chaka Khan hit I’m Every Woman.
Clive Davis of Arista records first laid eyes on her in 1983, when she was 20, and was bowled over.
Her first album, Whitney Houston, was released two years later, yielding the No 1 hits The Greatest Love Of All, How Will I Know and Saving All My Love For You. It remains the best-selling debut album by a female artist in music history.
Her second album, Whitney, released in 1987, included the hits I Wanna Dance With Somebody and Where Do Broken Hearts Go. It sold 25 million copies worldwide.
Whitney Houston would often travel with her mother. Also always present was her “executive assistant” Robyn Conway, her best friend at school, who she said was “like a sister” to her. She put Robyn Conway on her payroll, but was she something more?
Whitney Houston always denied the persistent rumors she was bisexual, and claimed people got the wrong impression only because she didn’t start dating until she was in her late 20’s.
In 1989, Whitney Houston met Bobby Brown at a music awards show, and they married in 1992. Daughter Bobbi Kristina was born a year later.
Whitney Houston was at the peak of her fame, thanks to the film The Bodyguard and the colossal cover version I Will Always Love You.
But outside the spotlight, her life was far from perfect. Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown had settled in a huge mansion in New Jersey, complete with a pool and recording studio, but the marriage was not happy. He was accused of domestic violence against her in 1993. Whitney Houston said he had slapped her during a jealous argument.
In his autobiography, Bobby Brown hints she deceived him about her true sexual orientation and that their marriage was designed to cover up her bisexuality.
“I realize Whitney had a different agenda than I did when we got married,” Bobby Brown said in his book. “I believe her agenda was to clean up her image; mine was to be loved and to have children.”
Talk of her impossible behavior began to circulate as Whitney Houston started failing to turn up to events, including a celebration of the career of her mentor, Clive Davis.
Whitney Houston admitted in a recent interview that she would take cocaine “every day” in the mid-Nineties.
The singer became skeletally thin and appeared disoriented at times. She was fired from a slot on the Oscars ceremony in 2000 after singing the wrong song at rehearsals.
Later that year, Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown were found to be carrying marijuana on a trip to Hawaii.
In 2002, Whitney Houston gave a notorious interview in which she denied taking crack, on the grounds that it was “too cheap” a drug for her.
“We don’t take crack. Crack is whack,” Whitney Houston said. Nobody was very convinced by her denial.
Clive Davis tried to get her into rehab in 2004, with an ultimatum that they could not work together again if she didn’t clean up.
In 2005, Whitney Houston’ sister-in-law leaked pictures to the Press of her bathroom in Atlanta – a sordid, dirty space covered with crack pipes and other drug paraphernalia – to try to shock her into sobriety.
In 2005, Whitney Houston’ sister-in-law leaked pictures to the Press of her bathroom in Atlanta, a sordid, dirty space covered with crack pipes and other drug paraphernalia
In 2006, Clive Davis tried again. Whitney Houston recalled in an interview: “Clive called me one day and said: <<OK, are you ready now? I’m tired of seeing what I’m seeing. I want you back.>>”
In denial about her problems, Whitney Houston said she resisted because she was happy being a mum to Bobbi Kristina. Finally, though, Clive Davis persuaded her that she needed to conquer her addictions and attempt a professional comeback.
The singer Courtney Love had told Clive Davis that the one person who could help Whitney Houston was a former addict named Warren Boyd.
Fabled in Hollywood as the person who got actor Robert Downey Jr. off drugs, his view is that addicts need to have a sober coach to live with them 24/7.
After residential rehab for several months in Pennsylvania, Warren Boyd “secured the perimeter” around Whitney Houston, relocating her to a rented beachside shack in Laguna, Los Angeles, and keeping her away from family and friends – and dealers – in New Jersey for months at a time.
Eventually, Whitney Houston felt strong enough to end her marriage to Bobby Brown. It had been the unhappiest of unions, raven by jealousy and drug use. They were divorced in 2007.
Whitney Houston said she and Bobby Brown started doing drugs together daily around the time of The Bodyguard film, and that Brown couldn’t handle her stardom.
“I think somewhere inside, something happens to a man when a woman has that much control or that much fame.”
Whitney Houston also said that he was unfaithful. “The only thing I did was the drugs. He was too promiscuous, dragging dirt into my home. It disturbed me.”
Getting her off drugs cost more than $1,300 a day for three years – the bill being picked up by Clive Davis. He also paid off a $1.2 million debt on her home.
The debt was pretty extraordinary given that Whitney Houston had sold more than 140 million albums worldwide by then. In the event, the subsequent album, I Look To You, was a damp squib. Released in 2009, her five-octave vocal register was gone thanks to smoking and crack use.
And when she launched the album at a hotel in London, it appeared that without the help of Warren Boyd she had fallen back into her old ways. A nugget of what seemed to be crack cocaine fell from one of her pockets.
There were repeated problems on the tour. Whitney Houston couldn’t hit the high notes and seemed to struggle even to chat with the audience. High-profile promotional gigs – singing on TV chat shows – revealed her ragged form.
And there were still plenty of signs of her infamous temperament. She wouldn’t film in the mornings, and refused all offers of live televised interviews. Clive Davis called her “the most impossible person” he had ever worked with.
Whitney Houston said repeatedly that her teenage daughter Bobbi Kristina helped her to sobriety. In 2009, she said: “She was with me every step of the way.” But the truth seems rather darker.
Her daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, now 19, was pictured last year snorting lines of cocaine at a party, smoking joints and drinking beer.
A former boyfriend told the National Enquirer magazine: “Krissi is addicted to cocaine. I’ve tried to stop her, but all she said was: <<I’m just like my mother!>>
“It was difficult to stop her from buying alcohol and drugs because her mother gave her $1,000 a week.”
Last May, Whitney Houston entered rehab for one final time. Sadly, it appears not to have worked. She was out of control on an airplane to Houston in the autumn, when she narrowly avoided arrest after refusing to buckle her seatbelt.
It seems that despite global fame and a constantly supportive family, nothing was enough to keep her clean.
“I have a mother who is very strong and a family that surround me and constantly tell me they love me. And my daughter is my greatest inspiration. She loves me,” Whitney Houston said in an interview earlier this year.
A shocking picture of Whitney Houston’s bathroom took at her home in Atlanta, Georgia, shows how the star’s life spiraled into chaos at the height of her crack addiction.
The deplorable image, shot in 2006, shows a room littered with drug paraphernalia, including a crack-smoking pipe and spoons covered in white powder.
Despite her fame and wealth, Whitney Houston had descended into squalor, her sister in law Tina Brown, who took the photo, revealed at the time.
Drug paraphernalia can be seen in the room, where Whitney Houston holed up for days, according to Tina Brown, the sister of the singer’s husband Bobby Brown.
Whitney Houston, 48, smoked as much as an “eight-ball” (1/8 of an ounce) of crack at a go, blending it with marijuana inside in a cigar wrapper, Tina Brown, also a self-confessed former addict, told the National Enquirer.
Tina Brown said: “The truth needs to come out. Whitney won’t stay off the drugs. It’s every single day. It’s so ugly. Everyone is so scared she is going to overdose.”
A shocking picture of Whitney Houston's bathroom took at her home in Atlanta, Georgia, shows how the star's life spiraled into chaos at the height of her crack addiction
The drugs made Whitney Houston so paranoid she saw evil apparitions and once drilled a spy hole in her bathroom to keep an eye out for demons, Tina Brown claimed.
Whitney Houston at one time claimed she didn’t do crack, telling Diane Sawyer in 2002 that she made too much money to ever take the street drug. “Crack is whack,” she famously declared.
But her stunning looks later seemed to be ravaged by her habit.
And although Whitney Houston subsequently got clean, recording a comeback album in 2009, the years of abusing her body also took their toll on her voice.
At her comeback tour in Australia in 2010, Whitney Houston shocked fans when she had to take a 20 minute break to rest her voice.
Whitney Houston was set to make a return to the big screen later this year having filmed Sparkle, due to hit cinemas August 10. But the pressure to succeed was overwhelming.
“Her voice was ruined, and her comeback wasn’t what it was supposed to be, because her voice wasn’t what it used to be,” a friend told People.
Whitney Houston “was in pain from all the pressure she was facing”, the source said.
“I know from when she was recording her most recent album – her comeback album (I Look to You in 2009) – her voice was shot. That bothered her.”
“In the music industry, you’re only as good as your last hit, even if you are Whitney Houston. Then she had people gossiping about her … It was a lot to deal with.”
Whitney Houston had blown a massive fortune, earned over decades of royalties and concert tours on her drug habit and was “broke as a joke”, it was last week claimed.
“Whitney’s fortune is gone,” a source told Radar last week.
“Music industry heavy hitters are supporting her and her label is fronting her cash against her next album, but no one knows when that will be released.”
“She might be homeless if not for people saving her. She is broke as a joke.”
The legendary singer had been reduced to begging friends for help.
“She called someone to ask for $100,” the source said.
“It is so sad. She should have Mariah Carey money, and she’s flat broke.”
