Whitney Houston, Elton John, Keith Richards and Eric Clapton have all battled addiction in years past and they’ve spoken out about some of the scariest episodes in their battles with drugs and alcohol.
Houston was doing drugs every day by the time she began working on “The Preacher’s Wife,” she told Oprah in 2009. Her narcotics of choice? Cocaine and marijuana.
When asked about her lowest point, Whitney said, “When you don't speak and you live in the same home and you're sitting right next to that person and you're not saying a word for a week? You're just sitting there? And you're just watching TV? That's bad.”
Sir Elton confessed that years ago, drugs came “very close” to killing him. “I would have an epileptic seizure and turn blue, and people would find me on the floor and put me to bed. And then 40 minutes later I’d be snorting another line,” he told Piers Morgan in 2010.
“This is how bleak it was,” he continued. “I’d stay out. I’d smoke joints, drink a bottle of Johnny Walker. And then I’d stay up for three days, and then I’d go to sleep for a day and a half, get up and because I was so hungry [since] I hadn’t eaten anything, I’d binge and have like three bacon sandwiches, a pot of ice cream and then I’d throw it up because I became bulimic, and then go do the whole thing over again… When I look back I shudder at the behavior and what I was doing to myself.”
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, whose past drug use is the stuff of grim legend, recounted one experience that disturbed even him. "It was in Switzerland. I was totally comatose, but I was totally awake,” he told New Musical Express in 2007. “I could listen to everyone, and they were like, ‘He’s dead, he’s dead,’ waving their fingers and pushing me about, and I was thinking, ‘I’m not dead!’ So that’s sort of the worst one.”
Finally, guitar god Clapton, who has battled drug abuse and alcoholism, recalled one of his lowest moments before becoming sober. “It was the fishing rod that told me I had hit rock bottom,” he told Esquire in 2007. “I had always thought of myself as a good fisherman. I drove to the River Wey and found a spot. I had just managed to get my gear set up when I lost my balance, fell over onto one of my rods and broke it. I could no longer even fish. Bang, I was at rock bottom. You are not a fisherman, mister. Wake up.”
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