Six years after Whitney Houston’s death, her ex-husband Bobby Brown insists drugs did not kill the legendary artist.
The New Edition member and breakout soloist, who was married to Houston from 1992 to 2006, told Rolling Stone that her demise was caused by a deeper, more internal struggle.
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“This month marks the sixth anniversary of Whitney’s death. What do you think was the most misunderstood thing about her?” an interviewer asked Brown.
“Um … whoa [long pause] – I don’t think she died from drugs,” he claimed. “She was really working hard on herself to try to be a sober person and she was a great woman.”
His wife and manager, Alicia Etheredge-Brown, interjected to tell him, “There were drugs in her system,” to which he replied, “Well, I don’t think so.”
Continuing to claim that Houston’s addiction was not the cause of her death, he theorized that she died from “just being broken-hearted.”
The “I Will Always Love You” singer was found underwater in the bathtub of her room at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California on February 11, 2012. Houston was discovered only after her hairstylist and bodyguards realized she’d been in the bathroom longer than normal and failed to respond to several knocks on the door.
Her security officers later retrieved Houston’s body from the tub and administered CPR in hopes of resuscitating her before paramedics were brought to the scene, but she could not be revived and was pronounced dead at 3:55 p.m. PT.
The official coroner’s report revealed that Houston died of accidental drowning, with heart disease, cocaine and other drug use referenced as contributing factors to her death.
Brown wrote in his 2016 memoir Every Little Step, that he and Houston endured a doomed love story and that drugs helped lead to their demise.
“The drugs wasn’t her,” Brown said during a 20/20 sit-down with Robin Roberts at the time. Revealing that he first saw his former wife doing cocaine just before she was to walk down the aisle at their wedding, Brown added, “She did drugs but the drugs didn’t do her. She knew how to handle herself.”
During their 14-year explosive marriage, the couple welcomed a daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown, who died in July 2015 at the age of 22, six months after she was placed in a medically induced coma after being found unresponsive in a bathtub of her Atlanta home.
A judge found her boyfriend Nick Gordon “legally responsible” for Bobbi Kristina’s death in a civil case after her conservator filed a $50 million lawsuit alleging that “Ms. Brown died due to a violent altercation with [Gordon] after which he placed her in a bathtub, unconscious, after he injected her with a toxic mixture.”
Following her death, Bobby Brown started the Serenity House, an save haven and advocacy center for victims of domestic abuse.
“Domestic violence is just the worst s— in the world… We started the Serenity House because women will go through it and think they are wrong like it’s their fault. So we’re doing this to build houses like safe havens for women that are being abused to get away from the relationship and get some therapy spiritually and mentally,” he told Rolling Stone.
“We want to let women know that they don’t have to be scared and stay in that relationship. This isn’t a f—ing game. You either are going to be healthy or you’re going to end up dying. And I don’t want to see another father or mother have to go through what I went through,” he added.
