Whitney Houston Question

[Cyno]

Hi David,

I was pondering a couple statements I had heard women comment about how Whitney Houston had it all, but couldn't seem find what brought her true peace.

Then it hit me, could it be that Whitney did not, so much, have her personal "hell hounds", but rather is the perfect example of a woman living on the extreme far right of the female emotional scale?!

It's actually somewhat rare to see someone all the way over, but consider for a moment....... She had more adventure, travel, money, fun, excitement, thrill, admiration, anxiety, stress, etc. than 1,000 people might hope to experience in a lifetime.

Could it be that her addiction to drugs was actually her way of trying to get back to the middle of her emotional scale, to a more "normal" level of emotional inspiration, when life itself was always pulling her back to the far right, ....to emotional overload?

What do you think?

Cyno

[Think-First]

Many celebrities with this problem claim it's because they can't just be themselves anymore. That everyone expects them to be these amazing people and they throng them wherever they go with adulation, praise and to be noticed by them. Every bad thing they do, mistake they make or place they go is endlessly analyzed and critiqued. Fame has a price. Yet how the individual handles that shows the true character of the individual. There are many rock start, movie stars and famous people who don't do these negative actions. We here all about the ones who screw up but rarely about the ones who handle it just fine and live their own lives no matter what. There may be a transition for them but they do adapt and move on.

However if someone has a low self esteem, been abused or mental instability no matter how small at first, the enormous pressure that comes with that fame will either help them to overcome it or will undermine and destroy them. If their doubts and internal confusion about what they deserve challenges the fame they have, they will seek ways to bury them. If they believe in themselves, their music, their whatever they will find a way to celebrate and enjoy that for what it is. Doubts and fears about people finding out who you REALLY are underneath from someone who appears to have it all will come to light in many nasty ways.

Think about the abusive nature of her relationship with her ex husband and understand that while she may have appeared to be popular, beautiful and a great singer she chose to live with and marry a man who treated her like a punching bag and a piece of trash. And at the time he was in many ways more popular and well known than she was for awhile. Others warned her about him because it was well known about his penchant for abusing women. His own fear of failure when your fame that you want so badly can be so fleeting and his was already beginning to wane. While she rose higher than he ever did, he descended further into abusive behavior.

Yes there's enormous pressures if fame is what you seek to prove you are and not what you believe yourself to be. But that's true of anyone. If you seek the approval of others as proof of who you are and to validate your own existence, then any mistake or failure of anything that happens becomes an enormous glaring failure in your eyes. Now multiply that many times over with someone who is a world famous singer and what do you think will happen?

Sure emotions play a part of it but here you saw what happens to someone who never truly believed in herself and made choices that proved she didn't. Every person I know or talked to who's conquered their addiction to drugs says the same thing. That you have to believe you deserve better. That the high you get from the drugs is not as good as the high from living life well because while one delivers a short high it also demeans and degrades you while you seek to constantly lose yourself in it. A life well lived is a constant feedback loop of accomplishment and fulfillment that builds on itself. That delivers a confidence in yourself that no matter what happens you will conquer it and prosper. Drugs or alcohol are a poor substitute for the confidence to live your life on your terms.

[David Cunningham]

I haven't been following Whitney Houston's death because I don't follow celebrity shenanigans; unlike many people, I don't assign perfection to people just because they're famous, attractive, a musician or other artist, etc., but since the question has come up, I'll dig around and see what I can find out. We just finished unloading the moving van last night and won't have Internet service activated until February 24, but I should be able to get away for a bit somtime in the next couple of days to research it. All I know at this point is that she supposedly came from a very sheltered background and they really tried to play up her "wholesome girl next door image" in the beginning of her career, and that drug use was suspected as cause of death. The first thing that came to mind was mid-life crisis because even the rich and famous can wake up one morning and realize they have missed a lot of living and want to make up for lost time, but I don't have any facts to support that, so I'll chime back in when I do have some facts to analyze.

[David Cunningham]

Here's what appears to be the full story: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lano...cials-say.html. I've not found anything in any article that tells much of anything about her emotional state, but it's a foregone conclusion that if she was doing drugs and boozing to the level reported she had self-esteem issues, because people who feel good about themselves don't abuse themselves that way, especially not to that degree. I wish I could give you a better answer, but there are no facts available to me to support any more of an answer than I've given.