Commentary
Some of us understood too well what killed Whitney Houston
By Kate Moos
Kate Moos is executive producer, national news, for American Public Media.
Whitney Houston died at the age of 48 because, we surmise, she took too many prescription drugs, drank too much alcohol, and so passed out and slid underwater in the bath tub and drowned. It was an uncomely death for a power singer of such winsome looks and emotional range, regardless of how we feel about her very public and sordid path of self-destruction.
Houston used drugs because her brain told her to use drugs at a very basic and elemental level, prior to language, prior to will. Her brain told her that drugs would be better than love, better than food, better than sex. Better than a trip to Italy or a picnic on the beach, or a hug from her daughter, better than breath itself.
Your uncle in A.A., the woman in the cubicle next to you who started heroin at art school, the surgeon who pinched Fentanyl, and I know all about this. We know all about the obsession and the craving and the terrible shame and discouragement of relapse. But somehow, eventually, we got better. We found a way to string our days and weeks and finally months and years of abstinence together until they turned into sobriety. For today, we no longer experience the desire to drink or use. Tomorrow we start all over again. "Hang around for the miracle," is one of those well-worn recovery axioms that alternately cheer and irritate the faithful. Long-term sobriety is the miracle.
The day Whitney Houston died, I got a call in the afternoon from a friend I'll call M. In the 15 years since I've seen her, she's lived through periods of sobriety, stints in psych wards and years of relapse on alcohol and every street drug in the world. When I knew her in rehab she was beautiful, in her early 20s. She had some scars from various drug-induced mishaps. Things have always gone from bad to worse for M. It's like watching a skier fall down the mountain, her deathly descent slowed here and there but never halted for long. Several years ago, in the course of one of her calls, she told me she had married an over-the-road truck driver and lived in a two- story house with a picket fence circling the yard. She was happy and proud; she wanted me to share her happiness. In the same breath she confided that her husband was a jealous guy and put a gun to her head now and then. In an alcoholic's world, that can seem like a reasonable trade-off.
M. drunk-dials me maybe once a year and I'm never sure how much she remembers of our talks. I don't mind. In fact, I keep my land line in part so people like M. can find me. "I was in the wrong place at the wrong time," she told me. "I had to jump off a second floor balcony, and broke both my feet to pieces." I didn't ask for details. Was it a drug deal, or some maniac on crank run amok? Whatever scenario led to the leap, it doesn't really matter.
M. had almost 12 months of sobriety two years ago, she says. She was the miracle at a local women's meeting, and then she met a man who was also in early recovery and after awhile they relapsed together. Now she's living on disability. Nothing in the sequence of M.'s life story seems to change, an observation that could be made of every alcoholic, and a fact she is perfectly aware of. M. says she's drinking less than before the accident, drinking only on weekends and in the same breath, she says "the only thing that will come of me drinking is an institution, jail, or death." It's another recovery line we both know so well, it comforts like a favorite old song.
The first step of 12 step recovery requires us to admit that we are powerless over alcohol and our lives have become unmanageable. Some of us figure out how to keep drinking for years while doing the first step only halfway. We admit we're powerless over alcohol, but not the unmanageability of our lives. "I'm an alcoholic!" I'd whimper, or sometimes roar, on my way to that night's blackout. I still believed my life was under control. Until one morning I woke up shivering and hung over and knew the jig was up. That was the day I agreed to go to rehab, where recovery began. I couldn't drink anymore, and I couldn't stop drinking.
M. and I met originally at Hazelden, the center for treatment and recovery in Center City, Minn. We were both assigned to a unit called Dia Linn, Gaelic for "God be with us." My arrival there was colored by the overhang of the past. My mother had gone to Dia Linn too, in 1957, decades before I got there. At that time it was Hazelden's first program for women, situated in a big old house in a suburb north of St. Paul. As a child I always heard the name as "Dale Lynn" and it made me think faintly of cowgirls and country singers and big western skies. I visited her there only once, a wild ride in the Chevy station wagon with my depressed father at the wheel and the entire complement of semi-hysterical kids, ranging in age from 4 to 16. On the way my father drove into and out of a ditch, losing control and miraculously regaining it, avoiding wholesale calamity but imbuing the memory with even deeper mystery and fear.
On our arrival, dad took the older kids to visit our mother and left us three youngest in a waiting room, dangling our skinny legs off overstuffed chairs, where a kind woman with perfect white hair told me I could eat as many of the pillow mints in the cut glass bowl on her desk as I wanted. I'd never received such an extravagant invitation so I popped them happily into my mouth by the handfuls until my older sister Martha dug me with an elbow and hissed. "She doesn't mean it! She's just being nice to you!" I saw my mother only briefly. She looked neither sick, as I'd been told she was, nor all that happy to see me. Now I can imagine everything pressing in on her that day.
I've come to admire my mother and find her noble, having had decades to work on our relationship and let understanding ripen. She helped lots of women sober up back in the '60s in our small town on the banks of the Mississippi River. After treatment, she was kooky and unpredictable, a much meaner person than the sad, drinking mother I faintly recall from earliest childhood. Sobriety for her, a middle-class housewife in the 1960s, was a tightrope act. She had to shoulder her way at first into the all-male A.A. group that met weekly above a downtown bar but became one of its local legends. She was a hero to the women she sponsored and her friends in the program. And she stayed sober until her death 25 years later. In moments of family upheaval, my mother would interrupt the mayhem and say, "Where there's life there's hope," a sunny assertion in the midst of madness that always reduced me to blind fury. But she was right.
M. and I talked for about a half hour. Our conversation was becoming circular and a bit maudlin. Some people in recovery would have told her to call back sober and hung up, as a matter of principle. But I didn't want to hang up on M. Every time she calls, I'm stunned that she's alive. I could be sitting at home too, with a tumbler of Jack Daniels sweating at my elbow, talking to the television. So I tell M. I love her, and that she can always reach out for recovery no matter what, when she's ready. I take her address and phone number and put a card in the mail. I want her to know she deserves to get better. I deserve it too, and so did Whitney Houston. But of the three of us, only two are still alive.
Comments (23)
Fabulous, Kate- what understanding. Thank you for this.
Kate. Thank you for this - Mark sent it to me this morning. It's bracing
like cold clear water -- the water of life.
sending you love and gratitude. Marie
What a beautiful article. Thank you for writing this. It provides perspective for those of us who witness the malady of addiction in our loved ones.
Kate, thanks for reminding me that there is always hope for recovery. We all deserve that hope, how ever many "chances" or treatments or fresh starts it may take, and the compassion you so beautifully give to your friend M. reminds me of this. Thank you!
Beautiful, brave writing. Thank you, Kate.
I fully appreciate the honesty of this piece. Thanks, Kate, for writing it.
Thank-you, Kate, for your reflections and insights. Addiction is far too commonplace and misunderstood. It's good to hear your voice.
Thanks for fearless words on a subject too easily dealt with either in word or deed in a cowardly fashion. Confirms my long-held suspicion from afar that you were someone deserving of admiration and respect. Take care.
This article is so beautifully and thoughtfully written by someone whose educated both with real life experience and textbook pages as to the disease of addiction. "Whitney Houston used drugs because her brain told her to use drugs at a very elementary level.." Such true and powerful words.....they took my breath away. Anyone who knows addiction knows this to be 100% true. I wish that people would abandon they're uneducated and cynical approach when they speak of Whitney, empathize with the loneliness and pain she felt even on top of the world.
Regardless just understand that she was a human being who wanted above all to be accepted and loved. Though she had her struggles (and who hasnt?) that doesn't take away from the fact that when she opened her mouth to sing she could stop time itself, or the fact that her short life was spent entertaining us like no other singer will again. Whitney Houston deserves the respect and honor that her accomplishments and legend dictate. May she rest in peace....a beautiful gift from God whose voice was the greatest man will ever know. Dont be so quick to judge and when doing so think about the great impact that the point of your focus had on so many people around the world. WE will ALWAYS love you Whitney Houston the Angel with the golden voice.
"I could be sitting at home too, with a tumbler of Jack Daniels sweating at my elbow, talking to the television." The humility and grace in this statement touched me deeply. There is such a subtle space between the progressing and the desolate. Thank you for the taste of what would make a beautiful memoir.
God bless you, Kate.
First of all, STATE ACCURATE INFORMATION Whitney DID NOT DIE bececause she "took too many prescription drugs, drank too much alcohol, and so passed out and slid underwater in the bath tub and drowned." She died of "acute" use of cocaine with heart disease as a contributing factor. I don't say this to excuse her addiction, I say this because if you're in the "media" you have an obligation to report ACCURATE INFORMATION. Not USE HER to promote an article on ALCOHOLISM! Ms. Moos, you still could have written this article WITHOUT USING Whitney's name and still have been just as effective! RIP Whiteny! May you obtain in death what you could not in life, which is RESPECT AND TRUTH!
I am so proud of you Kate...Reading the comments I see how many people you have touched with your beauty.
Might I suggest that Jennifer take a deep breath and lighten up - just a bit. Your sister proud, protective big sister.
Kate: I appreciate the depth of this piece. I'd love to see more of your writing. Thanks for sharing this with us.
What a lovely essay, Kate. How fortunate to have that type of relationship with M. -- and she with you. Thank you.
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you! Your words are powerful and a reminder for those in recovery that long term recovery is possible! Your words are gracious, powerful, and so true. Those in recovery are truly blessed to have people like you that truly get it, understand what others go thru and are not afraid to voice the truth so others can see "what happened and what it is like now". Sharing your experience and hope is amazing! I have sent this article to many and will be printing and giving it to others.
Thanks for carrying on the message-These stories help many living in rural areas where sober fellowship and AA meetings are hard to come by-
Thanks for the daily reminder that builds into weeks, months... nice to see your message strikes a chord from the beauty of Madeline's Island to the anger of Boston! I particularly like the image of addiction existing/persisting/evolving amidst the innocence of 3 sets of young, dangling legs in the waiting room ... beautifully touching.
Thanks for sharing Kate. My mind is keener and my heart warmer for having pleased my eyes with your prose. M is lucky to have someone like you, and you to have someone like M. Hope she becomes ready soon. I agree with you, everyone deserves it.
PS Jennifer, what the coroner scribbled was perhaps the manner of Whitney H's death, not the cause.
No offense but the first three paragraphs made no sense!!
Everything made sense in the post. I have witnessed the person I love most in the world choose drugs over me - his mom - his family and his future. Like most addicts he has been in rehab a total of five times. He did not get 'the cure' or a sudden realization. It just finally cost too much in terms of love, family and his future.
His brain tells him that he NEEDS drugs. Like Kate said, the physiology of the brain is involved as much as the mind. My son was lucky. He was addicted to opiates. Their is Suboxone which has kept him clean for over 2 years.
Coke addicts are not so lucky. Everybody has receptors in the brain that respond to coke. After using continuously for a few weeks, the brain of coke addict has approximately 200 times MORE receptors than a non-user. This is what causes the depression and return to using. Crack is the only drug known to sever the bond between a mother and child. A crackhead will sell their children for the drug.
Alcohol is available at every street corner. Pity the alcoholic who gets to see flashing Budweiser neon displays at every ball game.
Whitney did have one thing that most addicts don't have. Money. If my son had access to that kind of money and people to 'help' him, he would be dead right now.
Its ironic that lack of money is the biggest barrier to treatment but too much money is an even greater barrier.
God love ya, Kate Moos, for staying humbly in the crucible of love and powerlessness - a terrible grace that somehow matters most. Thank you, and prayers for all our 'M's.
Thank you for sharing this story. I'm a part of an alcoholic family and even after all that's happened, I believe that they all deserve to get better too.
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