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Whitney Insider Tells of Drug Use, Failed Intervention

Houston's woes continue with upcoming expose

Posted Jun 07, 2000 12:00 AM

While Whitney Houston's three-week-old Greatest Hits proves the soul diva still has clout with music consumers, speculation around the singer's private life continues to suggest there is something profoundly wrong. A story in this Friday's US Weekly (which, like Rolling Stone, is owned by Wenner Media) suggests that Houston's high-profile slip-ups of the past year can be traced back to an incident last July when friends and family (including Houston's mother Cissy) as well as two drug specialists attempted to send her to rehab following an ugly series of events that landed her husband, Bobby Brown, in a local hospital.


According to US, a source close to Houston reported that the intervention group found Houston in a daze following a show in Los Angeles. At 3:30 the previous morning, Brown created a ruckus at the entrance to the Beverly Hills Hotel. "It was clear Bobby was high," a witness said. While Brown was whisked away to the hospital, Houston's entourage tried to get her to seek treatment. "You have to have standards. If you don't, people won't respect you," Cissy Houston was reported as saying.


The event fell in the middle of Houston's first world tour in several years, which had been marred by a number of cancelled shows. Following the intervention, Houston cancelled her next gig in San Francisco fifteen minutes before show time, citing illness. Three high-profile incidents followed in 2000 including a marijuana charge on January 11, when several grams of pot were found in one of Houston's bag as she and Brown left Hawaii for San Francisco. Two months later she dropped out of performing at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame ceremony (ten minutes before the show's start), at which her mentor Clive Davis was honored. Later that month, Houston's performance at the Academy Awards was nixed, though some uncertainty remains as to whether Houston cancelled or was fired by music supervisor Burt Bacharach. In May, Houston's longtime personal damage-control center, Robyn Crawford, resigned, leaving her without a P.R. backup.


Houston is currently on the promotional circuit in support of Greatest Hits, but all is not well. Brown remains in a Fort Lauderdale jail following a May 10 arrest for violating his probation. And Friday's story paints a harrowing portrait of Houston's room at the Beverly Hills Hotel that night. "It was a wreck. Broken beer bottles were everywhere," claimed a source. But despite the intervention efforts, "there was nothing her mother could say that night to make her pay attention."


Calls to Houston's company, Nippy, Inc., were unanswered at press time.


ANDREW DANSBY
(June 8, 2000)


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