The Daily Times

Pop superstar Whitney Houston’s death over the weekend got me thinking about the way she lived her life.

At the time of this writing, a cause of death has not been determined. Given the shadow that drugs and alcohol cast over her career in later years, I can’t help but wonder if they may have played a part. Regardless, her passing at such a young age is a tragedy, as is that of any young person who departs this world too soon.

What I keep coming back to, however, is this — addiction knows no boundaries.

I remember well my own dark days caught up in the grips of misery and pain, a slave to the needle and unable to find any hope in life. I often fantasized about being wealthy; riches, I thought, would give me access to all of the drugs I craved so desperately, or afford me access to treatment for as long as it took to break the chains of addiction.

Wealth, I mistakenly thought, was the answer. Like many people who don’t have it, money was something I equated with happiness. I naively assumed a treasure chest of vast amounts of cash would allow me to buy my way into oblivion or salvation.

Icons like Whitney Houston, I assumed, couldn’t be miserable. They had money. They had the adoration of millions. They were loved, and I was nobody — another junkie hurting the people who cared about him, who wouldn’t be missed if I were to die.

How wrong I was, and Whitney proved that as well as anyone.

Consider her success, according to Wikipedia: In 2009, the Guinness World Records cited her as the most-awarded female act of all time. Her list of awards includes two Emmy Awards, six Grammy Awards, 30 Billboard Music Awards, 22 American Music Awards, among a total of 415 career awards as of 2010. Houston was also one of the world’s best-selling music artists, having sold over 170 million albums, singles and videos worldwide, and she was the only artist to chart seven consecutive No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hits.

And yet none of those accolades, none of the money from that success, could stop her own slide into oblivion. In death, her legacy includes all of those things, but the stain of her addiction will forever be a part of it as well.

And that, to me, proves what I’ve learned since finding recovery — addiction does not discriminate.

In fact, it’s a cautionary tale of one of the underlying truths of addiction and recovery — the search and accumulation of things on the outside can never make us feel better on the inside. Our insides — or rather the spiritual and emotional deficiency with which we’re born, or the one that develops through environmental factors — can never be fixed or made whole with money or fame or prestige or another person.

All of the money in the world couldn’t make Whitney Houston happy. I realize that now, having looked within and having seen the gaping hole in my own soul in which I poured drugs and women and work and everything else external over the years.

That hole can never be filled in with something external. It’s an inside job — through self-examination and work and finding a spiritual source of strength and addressing the wreckage of my past and working to overcome character defects. Only in realizing that, and then doing some serious work to accomplish those things, was I able to find some long-term peace of mind.

I don’t know if Ms. Houston ever found that. I hope she did, and if she did not, her death will be all the more a tragedy to me … because she didn’t have to live like that. Recovery is available to everyone — rich and poor, famous and faceless. Just as addiction doesn’t discriminate, recovery can work for all.

For that, I’m grateful. Just for today, I hope others — those with money and without — will find the serenity with which I’ve been blessed and realize that they’re not alone in facing their own demons.

Steve Wildsmith is a recovering addict and the Weekend editor for The Daily Times. Contact him at (stevew@thedailytimes.com) or at 981-1144.

You must be logged in to Facebook to comment. If you're not logged in to Facebook, a login window will open when you click "comment". Or you can log in now. You may need to refresh your page after logging in via that link.