The Secret Life of Whitney Houston Inside the Troubling Drug Addiction That Destroyed Her Life

Whitney Houston was infamous for living hard and fast, but the party came to a sudden and tragic end when the singer was discovered facedown in a hotel bathtub.

The coroner’s report showed that she had accidentally drowned, with heart disease and cocaine use as contributing factors. A member of Houston’s personal staff found her body.

Houston’s agonizing death occurred in just 13 inches of near-boiling water in her suite on the fourth floor of the Beverly Hilton Hotel on the eve of the 2012 Grammy Awards ceremony. Her passing was a heartbreaking finale for the 48-year-old performer, who friends and family always feared would be gone too soon.

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The powerful entertainer first shot to fame in 1985, but after a tumultuous marriage to musician bad boy Bobby Brown, Houston couldn’t put her drug problems behind her.

However, Houston’s drug use was just the tip of the iceberg. Houston hid many shocking secrets and scandals from friends, family and fans during her time on Earth.

Houston, photographed not long before she died, wasn't looking great in her final days. Despite her rough appearance, the Los Angeles County coroner’s 42-page report laid bare the many plastic surgery procedures she underwent in the years before her death.

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The autopsy detailed the “small scars” on her breasts were “associated with breast implants.” Scars on her stomach and upper thigh were also noted and that mane of brown hair that seemed so natural? It was nothing but a wig that was tightly clamped to the singer’s head when she died.

Even more shocking was the truth that Houston’s big bright smile that could light up the stage was all thanks to dentures. Experts also point out that long-term substance abusers like Houston often grind their teeth, which are already decaying due to the damage of the acidic chemicals found in harsh drugs like crack.

Houston’s shattered body showed she had developed mild emphysema from smoking. And tests proved she was strung out from drugs leading up to her death. Blood tests indicated that the musician had smoked marijuana within two weeks before dying, and both the initial and final reports revealed cocaine and prescription medications in her system. In fact, forensic toxicologist Bruce Goldberger said tests indicated she was “acutely intoxicated from cocaine” when she died and was “a repeated cocaine user.”

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. According to Crawford, their partnership began when the two were just teenagers in East Orange, New Jersey. In a rare voice recording included in a Houston documentary, the star was heard saying about meeting basketball player Crawford that she was tall and statuesque, and I was like, 'Wow, I've been waiting for this person all my life.'

In the mid-80s, Crawford reportedly moved into Houston's apartment in New Jersey's Mendham Township. Houston called Crawford her personal assistant in the 1980s. In an obit that Crawford wrote about Houston in 2012, she explained, I was her assistant and then her executive assistant and then her creative director. I was her point person for the day-to-day. I traveled all around the world first-class…her checks never bounced. You knew she was going to take care of you.”

Houston's mother Cissy once said that Crawford was the first person to tell her about her daughter's drug habit, in 1987. In Cissy's memoir,

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, she wrote that Crawford seemed worried about Houston. Robyn said that both she and Nippy were doing drugs on occasion, but that 'Nippy likes it a little too much.' Cissy said she immediately confronted her daughter about the drugs, but got the brush off.

In 1989, Houston met Brownat the Soul Train Music Awards. The two married in the summer of 1992, kicking off one of Hollywood’s most turbulent marriages.

By 2000, Houston’s problems were already spiraling out of control. She reportedly overdosed twice in hotel rooms, but both health scares were hidden by using a private doctor. In one incident at an L.A. hotel, Whitney was found unresponsive after reportedly using too much cocaine. Whitney was just moments from death when a doctor was able to revive her.

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Earlier in 2000, Whitney reacted to the drugs her and husband Brown were doing while in Denver. The singer went into shock and started convulsing. Security guards had to ice Whitney down before she was taken to a medical center and treated under a false name.The sad, secret life of Whitney HoustonArchive: From a secret lesbian relationship to a decades-long struggle with drugs, five years after singer’s death, a new film ‘Whitney: Can I Be Me’ examines what caused her tragic downfall

On February 11th, 2012, as musical royalty descended on Los Angeles for the Grammys, Whitney Houston checked in to the Beverly Hilton hotel with an entourage of family and friends. In preparation for the pre-Grammy Awards shindig thrown annually by the music impresario Clive Davis, her mentor, Houston's assistant Mary Jones laid out a dress on the bed and left the hotel to pick up alternative attire at Neiman Marcus.

At 3.35pm, Jones returned to find Houston facedown in the bathtub. CPR was administered and paramedics were called to no avail. The police who arrived on the scene found an opened bottle of Champagne and a spoon containing a “white crystal-like substance”. Weeks later, an autopsy report would contribute Houston’s death to accidental drowning, heart disease and cocaine use. There were additional traces of a muscle relaxant, Xanax, marijuana and an allergy medication in the singer’s system.

Watch Whitney Streaming Online

– sifts through the details of Houston's sad, secret life. What exactly killed Houston? Why did she drown? How did she drown? Was she simply overwhelmed by the controlling demands of her formidable mother, Cissy Houston, Svengali Clive Davis, and her record company, Arista? Did the aftermath of her toxic and co-dependent marriage to Bobby Brown send her spiralling? Or was it the dissolution of her decades-old lesbian relationship with her assistant Robyn Crawford?

In the end I think the divide between who she was and what her public persona was became more and more difficult, says Broomfield. And she just went down, down, down.

And taken up by such film-makers as Louis Theroux and Morgan Spurlock. The director has previously door-stepped various parties to create the conspiratorial music docs,

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“I remember the first time I put myself in a film, ” recalls Broomfield. “My editor was completely horrified. It was a crazy gamble. And then it worked. And then everyone wants you to do what you did last. I had some shots with me in them for Whitney. But her story was so powerful that I was made redundant.”

Broomfield says he and his editor Marc Hoeferlin fell in love with Whitney while they pored over more than a hundred hours of archive footage. Sure enough, she emerges as wildly entertaining company.

, when presenter Terry Christian asks her a cheeky question about a rumoured romance with Eddie Murphy, Houston beams and parrots his words back in a perfect Mancunian accent: Rung me up? Later, on the European leg of her 1999 tour, she lightly teases her husband, Bobby Brown, with a backstage rendition of his 1998 hit,

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Whitney Houston performing on stage during the World Music Awards at the Thomas and Mack Centre on September 15th, 2004, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

“I didn’t know that much going in, ” says Broomfield. “I went in out of curiosity. Which is pretty much how I’ve always worked. We were really choked up at the end of the edit, when we screened the film for ourselves. That is a rare experience. There have only been a couple of people who have really made me feel that way. But you couldn’t help but fall for Whitney. She was so, so funny. It’s all so unfortunate.”

The new film will finally allow diehard fans to see extensive archive material shot by German director Rudi Dolezal for an unfinished documentary about the singer's 1999 My Love is Your Love tour. Dolzezal, who receives a co-director credit on

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These live performances, even with a voice that is already damaged by drug use, are quite something to behold. I'm playing behind her, recalls drummer Michael Baker. And I'm watching the muscles in her back expand. She was like a doggone bodybuilder. And that's how she sang every night. Every song.

“The live performances are so much more compelling than her records because she put so much gospel in it, ” says Broomfield. “She’s this completely passionate, unbelievable performer even during some of those late performances. And you can see that she’s struggling. But she’s still giving it more than you’ll see anyone else give. She’s belting it out.”

– was scheduled to premiere on television in spring of 2000, before it was cancelled and shelved. The footage proves a treasure trove, particularly in terms of the imploding relations between Houston, Brown and Crawford.

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Magazine that Houston was bisexual and that she once had an affair with Tupac Shakur. He went on to say that Houston kept her relationship with Crawford hidden because of Cissy.

“I really feel that if Robyn was accepted into Whitney’s life, Whitney would still be alive today, ”

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