Whitney Houston First Tried Cocaine At 14, Best Friend Says

There has been much speculation about the inception of Whitney Houston's drug use. Many blame her husband pop star Bobby Brown for introducing her to drugs but the "Every Little Step" singer emphatically denies introducing his wife of 14 years to drugs. "It wasn't me that started her [on drugs]," he told Robin Roberts in an emotional 20/20 interview in 2016.Houston's best friend and alleged lover Robyn Crawford appears to back-up Brown's denial in her recently released a memoir titled A Song For You: My Life with Whitney Houston which details their relationship as well as Whitney's turbulent and prolific relationship with cocaine.Romantic RumorsIn the book, Crawford says the "I Will Always Love You" singer admitted that she had first tried cocaine when she was 14 years old. Crawford first met Houston when they were teens and they became fast friends...and then more.For years, romantic rumors swirled around the duo but were often kiboshed by those in Whitney's camp, including her mother, Cissy Houston. In A Song For You, Crawford laid those tumors to rest by confirming that the two were romantically involved. “Whitney told me her mother said it wasn’t natural for two women to be that close,” Crawford wrote, “but we were that close.”According to Crawford the pair "never talked about labels, like lesbian or gay. We just lived our lives and I hoped it could go on that way forever.”When Whitney began pursuing her music career, Crawford was by her side as her personal assistant though they had to end the physical aspects of their relationship due to pressure from Whitney's team about how their queer relationship could possibly derail her budding career.Cocaine In The SpotlightAs the singer's career began to take off in the 80s, she noted that the drug use could be a problem as she ascended the heights of stardom.“Whitney would often say ‘Cocaine can’t go where we’re going.’ [But] we weren’t ready to give it up quite yet,” Crawford wrote.Success came in waves for the talented singer but she continued to use. Crawford says she warned Whitney, “I’d say, ‘Nip [Whitney's nickname]  we’re here already. And it’s [cocaine] still here. It shouldn’t be.’ And she’d say ‘I know, I’m going to stop.'”But Houston didn't stop.“She admired that I could stop. She said, ‘I’m going to stop but I’m just not ready yet.'”And the drug use continued and escalated. Crawford put an end to her imbibing but the pressures of fame helped push Houston deeper into addictionAfter being the legendary singer's personal assistant throughout her career, Crawford decided it was time to hang up her hat and extricate herself from the situation in 2000. “I had done all I could do,” she wrote, according to People.“and for the first time I realized that I needed to save myself.”After Houston's death, Crawford confronted the late singer's agent about sending her out on tour while she was in the midst of a harrowing addiction to cocaine.“She said to me, ‘Because she and her daughter would have been out on the street. And my response was, ‘Is that what you guys have been telling her?'”Crawford assumed that there would be time for them to reunite after her departure but in 2012, Houston passed away from an accidental drowning at 48.“I thought we had time but in an odd way, Whitney was waiting for me and I was waiting for her,” she noted. "I owe it to my friend to share her story, my story. Our story. And I hope that in doing so, I can set us both free."

Morning Roundup: Nov. 7, 2019

Elton John Feared He Wouldn't Be Able To Perform Sober [NME]Cocaine, Molly Becoming More Popular In The NHL [The Athletic]100 Pound Marijuana Bust Just Legal Hemp, Owner Says [The Patch]How Danny Trejo  Has Stayed Sober For 51 Years [Variety]Narcan Now Sold Online In Tennessee [The Tennessean]US Ready To "Wage War" On Drug Cartel "Monsters," Trump Says [The Hill]Naltrexone May Help Stop Meth Cravings [KCUR]

Jamie Lee Curtis Talks Sharing Drugs With Dad, AA In Variety's Recovery Issue

The legendary Halloween actress detailed how she became addicted to painkillers and what led her to get help with Variety magazine for its first-ever recovery issue. Like so many people with opioid addiction, Curtis's dependency on painkillers began when she was given Vicodin after a routine cosmetic surgery for pain."They gave me Vicodin as a painkiller for something that wasn’t really painful," Curtis said. Her experience is all-too-common. The overprescription of opioids for post-operative pain is one of the driving factors behind the opioid epidemic. Nowadays, opioid prescribing guidelines and legislation are working to correct the course of the epidemic.Curtis also discussed how addiction impacted her family, including her father, actor Tony Curtis. Sharing Drugs With Dad"I knew my dad had an issue because I had an issue and he and I shared drugs. There was a period of time where I was the only child that was talking to him. I had six siblings. I have five. My brother, Nicholas, died of a heroin overdose when he was 21 years old. But I shared drugs with my dad. I did cocaine and freebased once with my dad. But that was the only time I did that, and I did that with him. He did end up getting sober for a short period of time and was very active in recovery for about three years. It didn’t last that long. But he found recovery for a minute."Similar to her father, Curtis was high-functioning in her addiction. "I never did it when I worked. I never took drugs before 5 p.m. I never, ever took painkillers at 10 in the morning. It was that sort of late afternoon and early evening — I like to refer to it as the warm-bath feeling of an opiate. It’s like the way you naturally feel when your body is cool, and you step into a warm bath, and you sink into it. That’s the feeling for me, what an opiate gave me, and I chased that feeling for a long time."Curtis described the moment her facade slipped in 1998. A friend witnessed her taking five Vicodin with a sip of wine in her kitchen and confronted her. “I heard this voice: ‘You know, Jamie, I see you. I see you with your little pills, and you think you’re so fabulous and so great, but the truth is you’re dead. You’re a dead woman.’”This stern warning didn't deter her from using and neither would a later confrontation with her sister Kelly about stealing her pain pills. She finally decided to get help a couple months later after reading an article about recovery in Esquire.Her First AA MeetingGoing to AA for the first time can be intimidating but there's an added set of worries when you're a Hollywood superstar trying to privately deal with addiction. "I was terrified. I was just terrified that someone in the recovery community was going to betray my trust. But it is my experience that that doesn’t really happen and that my fear was unfounded. There is no guarantee in the world that someone won’t betray your confidence. There are also ways for people to get recovery help privately. There are ways for people to understand that public figures need privacy in order to be able to disclose and talk about this shameful secret that has dogged and plagued them their whole lives. Now, Curtis is 21 years sober, something she doesn't take for granted. She holds recovery meetings in her trailers when she's working, if none are available."I am a very careful sober person. When I work, if there are no recovery meetings available, I make them. I put a sign up by the catering truck saying, 'Recovery meeting in my trailer.' When I was in Charleston making Halloween, I was in a coffee shop near where I was living, and I met somebody in recovery, who told me, 'Oh, those two ladies out on the patio are sober too. There’s a women’s meeting near here.' I went out and introduced myself to the ladies, and a day later I was at a women’s gathering 100 yards from where I was living. Literally 100 yards. When I was making The Tailor of Panama with Pierce Brosnan and John Boorman, I was swimming in the Gatun Dam, but on my day off, I found a recovery meeting that only spoke Spanish, didn’t speak a word of English. I didn’t understand a word anybody said, but I went and sat down and met people, shook hands and talked."

Makeup Artist Finds Cocaine In Sephora Package

A New Jersey-based professional makeup artist got more than she bargained for in a shipment of cosmetics from Sephora earlier this month.Inside The Mystery BoxAmong her foundation and false eyelashes, 30-year-old Christina Milano found a “good amount” of white powder wrapped in a dollar bill along with a small straw cut for snorting the substance, plus a female Sephora employee's company ID. There was also a forklift operator's card and a photo of a young girl in another part of the package.How these items ended up in Milano’s package is unclear, but the makeup artist was able to identify the powder as cocaine.“I’ve seen it and I’ve been offered it in the past,” she told the New York Post. She became fairly upset when she realized what she had due to the high penalties associated with shipping illicit drugs through the mail. “I could have gotten in trouble for this,” she said to local New York news affiliate PIX11. “What if there was a random check at the post office?”$100 Store Credit For Her TroublesMilano quickly took photos of what she discovered, including the white powder, and sent them to Sephora. After she was assured that she would be contacted after the company’s investigation, she was informed that the Sephora had credited $100 to her account and asked her to dispose of the “foreign items.”The makeup artist was unsatisfied with this response.“It was kind of like, here’s $100, like, you know, don’t talk about it,” she said, saying the idea made her angry. So she went to the press, who investigated further.Getting To The Bottom Of ItA Post reporter was able to use the information and photos provided by Milano to track down an address associated with the woman whose name was on the company ID.However, the owner of the house said that the Sephora employee was her sister and that she no longer lived there.“She’s on the grid, off the grid. She’s always changing her phone number,” the sister said. “She lived here that one time, but I haven’t spoken to her in a month. And even then it was only for 15 minutes.”She confirmed that the Sephora employee had a history of drug use, but according to the report, declined to give further details.Sephora, of course, has a zero-tolerance policy around employees using illicit drugs, particularly while at work. Milano, though not entirely pleased with how the cosmetics company handled the situation, says she remains loyal to them.“I would still love a more personal apology from them but truly I still will shop at Sephora,” she admitted. “I love them.”Sephora provided a statement to Newsweek about the incident."We have investigated the matter and taken appropriate actions," it read. "Sephora prides itself on our delivery and supply chain experiences and have a zero-tolerance policy around illegal substances in the workplace. We have apologized to the impacted client for this unfortunate experience and are working with her directly to resolve it."

Finland May Be Next Country To Decriminalize Marijuana

Finland's Parliament is reportedly considering the decriminalization of marijuana after more than 50,000 residents signed a petition to revise the country's current laws.The proposal sought to remove criminal penalties for the possession of 25 grams or less of cannabis, as well as the cultivation of up to four plants, both for personal use; the organization behind the measure, Kasuva Kannabiksesta, cited the deleterious impact of marijuana convictions on Finnish citizens, who can be barred from education or work opportunities for minor convictions, as a primary factor behind the petition.Advocates are hoping that the sheer number of signees, as well as those that support their efforts but did not sign the petition, will help to push the Finnish government towards ratifying decriminalization.The People Of Finland Support DecriminalizationThe petition's primary sponsor, activist Janne Karvinen, said that the majority of the 50,000 signatures were gained in its final month, which he credited to a strong social media push.He also believed that the actual level of support for decriminalization in Finland was even greater than the number of signees. "There's certainly more than 50,000 – or even more than 100,000 – people in Finland who support this issue," he told, Yle, Finland's national public broadcasting company.In addition to the aforementioned allowances for personal use, the petition would also call for new penalties for individuals who use marijuana in public areas where children are present.Even Minor Drug Charges Impact Job Opportunities In The CountryIn terms of the current policies regarding marijuana use, the petition's authors stated that they have done more harm than good by imposing severe penalties on cannabis users; individuals convicted of even minor drug charges can be barred from more than 60 job and educational opportunities.It also noted the financial toll of employing police officers to make arrests on such charges and then processing individuals through the legal system.By calling for decriminalization and not legalization, the petition's authors said that Finland would remain within the requirements of United Nations (UN) obligations, which do not allow member nations to regulate and sell cannabis. As the petition states, "The ban on an act may not be completely abolished or made legal, but the punishment for the act will be abolished or the act will be transformed into a mere offense, for example, a fine."As Marijuana Moment noted, this language may address how Canada and Uruguay have remained within the UN regulations while still allowing for cannabis legalization.Karvinen told Yle that he believed the Finnish Parliament would pass the initiatives called for in the petition on the grounds that members "do not want to oppose the benefits decriminalization would bring."However, the newspaper also quoted Mika Luoma-aho, a researcher on drug policy from the University of Lapland, who opined that the government is most likely not ready to accept such a measure "But it will force a debate," said Luoma-aho. "I want to hear the discussion that quashes the initiative and then continue the dialogue on that basis.

Kanye West Talks Porn & Sex Addiction

Kanye West is back with his latest album, Jesus is King, and on the eve of its release, he candidly spoke with Beats 1 about being addicted to porn and sex.West started with a ritual many young boys go through, finding an issue of his dad’s Playboy, which he called a “gateway to a full on pornography addiction. It has impacted every choice I have made in my life from age five to now, having to kick the habit. And it just presents itself in the open like it’s okay and I stand up and say, ‘No, it’s not okay.’” Drowning Himself In Sex — A Rock Star ClichéWest saw himself living a cliché that many musicians fall into.“That was such a script out of a rock star’s life. You know that Playboy that I found when I was five years old was written all over the moment when I was at the MTV awards with the Timberlands, the Balmain jeans and the Hennessy bottle. My mom had passed a year before. And I said some people drown themselves in drugs, and I drown myself in sex.”West said that sex “fed the ego too. Money, clothes, paparazzi photos, going to Paris fashion week, all of that.” Asking Employees To Abstain From Premarital SexComing to his realization about porn and sex addiction also affected how he crafted the Jesus is King album. “I was asking people to…this is gonna be radical what I’m about to say. There were times where I was asking people to not have premarital sex while they were working.” West has openly spoken about his mental health issues, including publicly disclosing that he’s bipolar (he subsequently claimed he was misdiagnosed), and he’s used it as material for his lyrics as well.On the cover of his album Ye, “I hate being bipolar it’s awesome” is scrawled in neon green. And as he told radio personality Big Boy, “I am so blessed and so privileged because think about people that have issues that are not Kanye West, that can’t go and make that [music] and make you feel like it’s all good. I’d never been diagnosed and I was like 39 years old. That’s why I said on the album it’s not a disability, it’s a super power.” 

Morning Roundup: Oct. 29, 2019

This Town Turned Its Opioid Nightmare Into a Haunted House. And It's Terrifying. [Washington Post]A Maryland county with a serious opioid problem is the site of a different kind of haunted house this Halloween, featuring frightful scenes from a life of substance use disorder. "It's a walking, shrieking, living, screaming PSA." In Philadelphia Opioid Crisis Zone, Children Get Lessons in Coping [WHYY]Students in Philadelphia's opioid problem zone are getting a special education on drug abuse and coping. The area's visible drug problem has affected not only school enrollment, but the overall quality of life of these children.  Shame, Fear, Stigma: Recovering Addicts Address Meth Abuse in 'Crystal City' [NBC News]The documentary Crystal City debuted on Sunday at NewFest film festival. It is a chronicle of methamphetamine abuse in New York City's gay community. "Without consciously acknowledging it, I was preparing to die." Drug Policy: Family of Teenager Who Died from Ecstasy Supports Drug Legalization [Guardian]A mother who lost her son to a fatal overdose on ecstasy is determined to use her voice to promote drug policy reform. She and her daughter are expanding awareness of how a policy of prohibition is more dangerous than not. NJ Student Athletes Undergo Mandatory Opioid Addiction Training [NBC 10]New Jersey student athletes are required to learn about opioid use disorder to prepare them for potential injuries and how to treat pain. NBC 10 reports from Sterling High School in Somerdale.Dear Abby: Non-alcoholic Bachelorette Party Presents Dilemma [Press Democrat]"Is it rude to drink in front of a pregnant bride?" A bridesmaid ponders the sober rule imposed by the pregnant bride. "I feel we're all adults and should be able to make our own choices." Rehab Racket: High Costs of Addiction Treatment and Questions Over Efficacy [WBUR]Is the high cost of treating substance use disorder a "rehab racket"? "It's crucial not to settle for a one-size-fits-all approach, even if those worked for someone you know." Filmmaker Asks How Adults Can Help Digitally Obsessed Teens Tackle Mental Health Challenges [Washington Post]The next chapter of Screenagers is a new documentary that explores the role that adults can play in helping young people build resilience to stress to make it easier to overcome life's adversities.