Bobby Brown speaks candidly about his late ex-wife Whitney Houston, his sobriety, and more in a new interview with Fox News Digital.
The singer, who has been promoting his new tell-all documentary “Biography: Bobby Brown”, discusses being blamed by the press for Houston’s tragic death in 2012.
They tied the knot in 1992 but called it quits in 2007. Brown says Houston didn’t get clean from drugs when he did, which impacted their marriage.
Houston died from a drug-related accidental drowning at age 48.
READ MORE: Bobby Brown Thinks Whitney Houston Would Still Be Alive If They Hadn’t Split
The star, who quit hard drugs while he was incarcerated in 2000, shares, “That was pretty rough. Not many people knew what was going on. Not many people knew how [those accusations] affected me. Not many people knew what they were talking about. They weren’t living, breathing, or waking up with us. They just took it to the outer limits of expressing what they thought was going on. But the truth is, they really didn’t know what was going on.”
Brown explains how, despite quitting drugs, he struggled with alcohol addiction for years. He’s now sober.
“I work on my sobriety every day,” he says. “It’s a day-to-day thing. As long as I work hard every day on it, I continue to get great results. I have a loving family and a loving wife. I just want to be better for them. I want to be better for myself, also. It’s been an uphill battle, but it’s been a battle I continue to win with prayer. That and therapy, along with love, have saved me.
“There were so many times that I said to myself, ‘I want to get clean.’ And I actually got clean from narcotics. That was so long ago and I’m thankful for it. But alcohol had played a big part in my life. I just had to get that one thing off my back. It’s been a long time since I’ve wanted to be full of life again. I finally had the chance and I’m taking full advantage of it.”
In the doc, Brown opens up about being sexually abused by a priest as a child. He shares how his mother was beaten and arrested by police after she attempted to intervene in the arrest of some neighbours. Brown was then sent to temporary custody by social services.
“It was supposed to be a religious place, but it wasn’t a very nice place to be for a child,” he explains in the doc. “One of the priests tried to molest me. He tried to touch my private parts…. At that time, I was a young boy. I didn’t know what sexual boundaries were. I just knew I didn’t like being touched. Some things are hard to forget.”
Insisting it was important for him to be honest with the public, Brown shares: “The misconception that I feel [the public] has about me is that they don’t understand me. They haven’t [understood me]. They don’t know how hard I’ve worked at being a better-built Bobby.”
The New Edition founding member tells the publication of growing up in the public eye, “I wish I would’ve taken more time to grow up, to become an adult. I think that growing up in this business, you grow up pretty fast. You have to grow up pretty fast to be able to navigate through this industry. But I wish I could go back and tell myself to take my time.”
“Biography: Bobby Brown” premieres Monday on A&E.
