Whitney Houston Recounts Drug Use, Abusive Relationship with Bobby Brown

In the first segment of her two-part comeback interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Whitney Houston described her “crazy love” for her former husband, Bobby Brown, and their descent into drug addiction.

Houston attributed her drug abuse to her passion for her husband. “He was my drug,” she said. “I didn’t do anything without him. I wasn’t getting high by myself. It was me and him together, and we were partners, and that’s what my high was—him. He and I being together, and whatever we did, we did it together. No matter what, we did it together.”

That included drug use, constant fighting, and bizarre behavior that included Brown spray-painting “evil eyes” on the walls, carpets, and closet doors of their home. “Evil eyes that were looking at every point in the room,” Houston said, adding that at one point Brown also cut the heads off pictures of her. “I’m looking at it and going, ‘Lord, what’s really going on here?’ Because I was getting scared, because I felt something was going to blow, something was going to give.”

Aside from the drug use — Houston said her drugs of choice were marijuana and crack cocaine, while Brown allegedly preferred alcohol and marijuana laced with cocaine — the singer said their marital problems also got physical.

“He slapped me once, but he got hit on the head three times by me,” Houston told Winfrey, saying that she had hit Brown so hard that he fell down bleeding as their daughter, Bobbi Kristina, now 16, walked into the room. During another argument at their Atlanta home during a party she threw for her husband, she said Brown spat in her face in front of Bobbi, which left her “very hurt, very angry.”

Houston said the drug use got so bad at one point that her mother, Cissy Houston, showed up at the couple’s Atlanta home with a court injunction and asked police to help force Whitney into rehab. “She said, ‘I’m not losing you to the world. I’m not losing you to Satan. I want my daughter back,’ ” Houston’s mother said. “She said, ‘Either you do it my way, or we’ll go on TV and [say] you’re gonna retire.’ ”

Her mother warned Brown not to interfere with that intervention, Houston told Winfrey. “She said, ‘If you move, Bobby, they’re gonna take you down,’” Houston said. ” ‘Don’t you make one move.’ And he stood there like he was scared.”

Houston said she’s trying to re-start her career now because, as she put it, “I needed my joy back.”