Back in February we lost a music icon. Whitney Houston. I was sad after losing another person I had grown up listening to. She was also someone I met a long time ago before she became a singer. She was two years older than me and a kind and sweet 18 yr old. At the time she was taking some sort of acting class near where I took piano lessons. We chatted (instigated by me the extrovert) and two years or so later I bought her 45 and Sam Goody.
This is how I will remember her, at her best, with her life in front of her. Long before the addiction, before the paparazzi was stalking her every move and before we were judging those very decisions and actions.
I will not judge Whitney Houston for her addiction, or her downfall from grace. I can't, I haven't walked in her shoes. What I will say is that it was a shame that she was unable to save herself. From what I can tell you about addiction is that it is not a choice, or even a question of will power, the disease is more perverse to the mind than that. It wrecks havoc not only to the addict but to those around them. It becomes easier to enable them not because you don't care but from the hope that it will pass, they will get it and one day soon the addiction will end. Unfortunately it doesn't work that way. There is an AdCouncil campaign that says it best; Denial is the worst addiction.
So to the Houston family, my sympathy on your loss. To you reading my blog, if you are suffering from addiction get help, if you know someone suffering try not to enable their disease and get yourself some help. To the parents of young people, open a dialogue with your kid(s) so you can make certain they don't fall way of this. Because really, there but by the grace of God goes anyone of us.
"I will persist until I succeed. Always will I take another step. If that is of no avail I will take another, and yet another. In truth, one step at a time is not too difficult.... I know that small attempts, repeated, will complete any undertaking."—Og Mandino
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