A DRUG-ADDLED Whitney Houston sought the comfort of her mother after learning that The ENQUIRER was getting ready to publish chilling photos of her filthy “drug den” in 2006, Cissy Houston writes in her new book.
“Nippy called to tell me that The National ENQUIRER was about to print some photos supposedly taken in the bathroom of her house,” Cissy – calling her daughter by her nickname – explained in “Remembering Whitney.”
“I had no idea about what the pictures showed, who took them, or who was in the house at the time. The one thing I knew – and the only thing I cared about, really – was that my daughter had reached out, and she needed me…So I got on the first flight out of Newark that I could, and I went down to Atlanta.”
The shocking photos, published in our April 10, 2006, issue, were damning proof of Whitney’s tragic addiction to drugs. Taken by her close friend and former sister-in-law Tina Brown, they showed the singer’s private bathroom after she had locked herself away for days on another self-destructive binge. The room was littered with leftover food, empty beer cans, crack cocaine and drug paraphernalia.
Cissy writes that she had only learned the true extent of Whitney’s drug problem the year before during another visit to the Atlanta mansion. She says the walls of the once-opulent home had been spray-painted with “big glaring eyes and strange faces.”
In another room, a large framed photo of Whitney hung on the wall, but her head had been cut out.
“It was beyond disturbing, seeing my daughter’s face cut out like that,” Cissy writes. “It was frightening.”
