Whitney Houston’s spiritual adviser says the pop singer’s drug problem is the result of living a high-pressure celebrity life.
“When you’ve got the demands of — of the press and the demands of your public, you’re trying to take a pill to stay up and one to lay down,” Prince Asiel Ben Israel said on CBS’ “The Early Show” Tuesday. “I think it’s that kind of lifestyle.”
Houston, 40, entered a rehabilitation center last week. Ben Israel said she’d been relying on prescription drugs, and did not have a problem with marijuana or cocaine.
In a December 2002 television interview, Houston said she’d abused drugs in the past, but that she’d gotten beyond that time through prayer.
A year ago, Ben Israel brought Houston and her husband, R&B singer Bobby Brown, to Israel to visit African Hebrew Israelites. There, he said, “she found family.”
“She found love. She found comfort. She found support,” Ben Israel said. “Can you imagine a young Christian girl finally waking up in the holy land in Jerusalem, to Jericho, the Jordan River? It was the beginning of her healing.”