Whitney’s lethal cocktail
Last photo shows dishevelled, sweating star in clash with security staff
LOS ANGELES: Whitney Houston reportedly died after mixing a cocktail of Xanax and other prescription drugs with alcohol.
Her family have apparently been told by Los Angeles County Coroner officials that there was not enough water in her lungs to conclude that she had drowned in her luxury hotel bathtub, and in fact died before her head went under water, said gossip website TMZ.
The revelations come as it emerged that her daughter, Bobbi Kristina, 18, apparently fell asleep in a bathtub in the same Beverly Hilton hotel just 24 hours before her mother died. TMZ claims that security was called to unlock the door and to help the teenager.
Relatives now fear that Bobbi Kristina has become suicidal – after she was taken to hospital twice in the 24 hours following the discovery of her mother’s body.
The teenager was first admitted after passing out, after drinking alcohol, then taking a sedative given to her by one of her mother’s entourage to calm her down upon hearing the devastating news.
She was then pictured being taken out of the Beverly Hilton on a stretcher at 10.30am yesterday and being rushed to Cedars-sinai Hospital, where she was treated for extreme anxiety.
She was released several hours later, but friends and family are still worried about her mental state.
It has also been reported that Houston and her daughter had a huge row on Thursday night that ended in physical violence.
The pair were at a Hollywood club and had a fight that sources say accounts for blood seen on Houston’s leg.
Houston, 48, was found dead under the bathwater in luxury suite number 434 at the Beverly Hilton on Saturday afternoon.
The room is said to have been littered with bottles of the prescription pills Lorazepam, Valium and Xanax, and a sleeping medication.
County coroners will request copies of the singer’s medical records and will compare them with those bottles, a source told British newspaper The Sun.
If anyone gave Houston the drugs illegally, they could be charged.
“(Authorities) need to determine that no one is criminally negligent. There still could be charges in this case,” the source said.
Houston is said to have gone on a “wild binge” on Thursday, when she clashed with security guards. This incident was captured in the accompanying photo, the last one taken of her. The next evening she “partied heavily, drank and chatted loudly” with friends at the hotel bar.
The drugs were believed to have acted as sedatives, causing her to fall asleep in the bath once they had been mixed with alcohol from the previous evenings.
Paramedics tried to revive the singer, but she was pronounced dead at 3.55pm, just a few hours before she had been due to perform at a preGrammys party at the same hotel.
Before Houston’s body was released to her family, the coroner’s office refused to comment on rumours that water was found in her lungs, indicating that she had drowned. It said details would not be officially released until a police investigation was completed, which could take between one and two months.
Reports vary about who found the body. Some suggest that it was her aunt, Mary Jones, while others say it was her hairdresser.
At first it was thought that singer and reality TV star Ray-j, Houston’s on/off boyfriend, who at 17 years younger dated her between 2007 and 2009 and was believed to have rekindled the romance, found the star.
But the brother of pop star Brandy said he “was nowhere near the scene but no less distraught”. He added he had received “missed calls” from his ex and had said: “We all gotta live with that.”
Houston’s ex-husband, Bobby Brown, with whom she had a turbulent 14-year relationship ridden with drug use, was in Nashville at the time of her death.
Brown, who Houston blamed partly for her drug problems, was said to be “in and out of crying fits” upon hearing the news, but performed on Saturday with his band New Edition, and cried out “I love you, Whitney!” during the concert.
Houston’s body landed at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey for a funeral to be held at the end of the week.
A hearse, under heavy police escort, drove to the Whigham Funeral Home. – Daily Mail
LONDON: By the end, Whitney Houston had thrown away every last scrap of the poise and beauty that had made her the ultimate diva of her generation.
Leaving a Hollywood nightclub two days before her death, she was drenched in sweat and disoriented, a wad of mint chewing gum visible in her gaping mouth.
Blood from a cut trickled down her leg. But the lady herself, surrounded by partyloving hangers-on, didn’t seem to notice.
Alternately waving and swearing, this was not the Whitney who conquered the world – a churchgoing supermodel with a once-in-ageneration voice of exceptional power and sweetness.
This was a woman who, despite at least three attempts at rehab in the past eight years, appeared fully in the grip of drug addiction: wired, wrecked and out of control. Inside the club, it is claimed, she nearly came to blows with a partygoer who she felt had “got into her face”.
So why could nobody save Whitney Houston? In truth, having spent almost two decades destroying herself, she was past saving.
Her voice, with her signature high-octave power note, had been pitifully diminished by years of abuse, particularly the smoking of crack cocaine. The soaring voice had become a soft, whispery falsetto.
The years of material plenty were behind her, too.
She was reportedly once again “flat broke”, even though she should have had a fortune well in excess of £100 million (R773m).
Indeed, despite earning up to £20m with a colossal 50-date global tour only two years ago, she was reportedly this month reduced to asking her great benefactor, Clive Davis, the music mogul who “discovered” her, for hand-outs yet again.
Her home in New Jersey was said to be in danger of being repossessed. Another home in Atlanta already had been.
She was partying at the Beverly Hilton only because she was on someone else’s tab: the record label was paying for her to be with them in the run-up to the Grammy awards.
There were hopes of yet another album from Whitney, despite the relatively poor performance of her comeback in 2009, and she had recently been in the studio. She had also finished making a film, Sparkle, a showbiz saga about a trio of singers, which Sony has announced will still be released in August.
Her most recent romantic partner was a 31-year-old rapper, Ray J, who is chiefly famous for being the man in a homemade sex tape shot in 2003, which made reality star Kim Kardashian famous.
The two had an on-and-off four-year liaison, which her fans felt had depressing echoes of her mutually destructive marriage to “bad boy” rapper Bobby Brown, who she divorced in 2007.
Whitney said repeatedly that her teenage daughter helped her to sobriety. In 2009, she said: “She was with me every step of the way.” But the truth seems rather darker.
Bobbi Kristina, now 19, was pictured last year snorting lines of cocaine at a party, smoking joints and drinking beer.
A former boyfriend told the National Enquirer magazine: “Krissi is addicted to cocaine. I’ve tried to stop her, but all she said was: ‘I’m just like my mother!’
“It was difficult to stop her from buying alcohol and drugs because her mother gave her $1 000 a week.”
Last May, Whitney entered rehab for one final time. Sadly, it appears not to have worked. She was out of control on a plane to Houston in the autumn, when she narrowly avoided arrest after refusing to buckle her seatbelt.
It seems that despite global fame and a constantly supportive family, nothing was enough to keep her clean.
“I have a mother who is very strong and a family that surround me and constantly tell me they love me. And my daughter is my greatest inspiration. She loves me,” she said earlier this year.
Tragically, neither the support of her family nor her love for her daughter could save her. – Daily Mail