In the wake of Saturday’s news that Whitney Houston had been found dead in the bathtub of the Beverly Hilton hotel, the exact cause of her death remains a matter of speculation. Houston was reportedly found submerged under water, but whether she drowned because she was unconscious or she was already dead before she slipped under water, there still remains the question of which chemicals were involved in the process.

Houston had battled publically with pills, alcohol, and cocaine in the past. There were prescription medications in her hotel room—reportedly including Xanax—and Houston was seen around Los Angeles visibly disheveled and erratic, sources say.

Houston’s death would appear to be yet another cautionary tale in an escalating story line.

Remember when Whitney Houston was supposedly a lesbian?

Long before she married Bobby Brown and became a crack addict, long before “doodie bubbles” on Being Bobby Brown, long before her supposedly clean comeback, Whitney Houston was rumored to be a lesbian. Like Gayle and Oprah, Whitney had an ultra-close best friend, Robyn Crawford, who was also her personal assistant.

She met Crawford when she was 16 in East Orange, N.J., and soon they became inseparable; Crawford later dropped out of Monmouth College to work for her friend. Houston told Time magazine in 1987, when she was 23, that Crawford was the “sister I never had.” While both Houston and Crawford denied being gay, Houston’s explanation was still very forward-thinking for the time: “My mother taught me that when you stand in the truth and someone tells a lie about you, don’t fight it. I’m not with any man. I’m not in love. People see Robyn with me, and they draw their own conclusions. Anyway, whose business is it if you’re gay or like dogs? What others do shouldn’t matter. Let people talk. It doesn’t bother me because I know I’m not gay. I don’t care.”

As close friends and family begin to absorb the news of the death of Whitney Houston, many are taking time to reflect on the last few years of a career and life they had a chance to share with the superstar—and its abrupt end.

While Houston had recently stepped away from the spotlight she dominated for so many years, her longtime hairstylist and good friend Ellin LaVar says the star remained firmly focused on two important goals in her life: keeping her marriage to Bobby Brown together (before the divorce) and bonding more with her daughter, Bobbi Kristina, who is now 19.

Close friends and family say she had been so blindly committed to her marriage to the New Edition singer that she left the familiar, comfortable surroundings of her native New Jersey to move to Atlanta, where most of Brown’s extended family lived. The two divorced in 2007.

I was in love with the Motown sound in the ’60s. Berry Gordy was my idol, and Ashford and Simpson were my favorite songwriters. They wrote two of the greatest songs in the R & B lexicon: “You’re All I Need To Get By,” sung by Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell, and “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” popularized by the ineffable Diana Ross. I am stuck in the R & B world of the late 1960s. Stevie Wonder, Aretha, Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, Holland-Dozier-Holland, Eddie Kendricks, the Temptations, David and Jimmy Ruffin, Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5, Mary Wells, Martha and the Vandellas, and Gladys Knight and the Pips ... but most especially Diana Ross and the Supremes. The music Gordy created at Hitsville is the greatest cultural export the U.S. has ever produced ... from my point of view.

One hot July morning in 1971, at Fire Island Pines, N.Y., I was introduced to Joel Schumacher. The soundtrack in the background was ’70s Supremes—“Up the Ladder to the Roof,” “Stoned Love,” and “Nathan Jones” playing over and over all afternoon. It turned out Joel and I both wanted to go to Hollywood to make movies. We immediately hit it off because we both were in love with R & B, soul, and the movies.

I said to Joel: “We have to go out to Hollywood and make a movie about these girls who are singing in the background.”

When I arrived at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on Saturday afternoon the VH1 network crew was abuzz with news that singer Whitney Houston would soon be gracing that very room with her presence. She’d agreed to do an interview for Behind the Music on Brandy, and all had to be just right for the legendary diva to sit down for a chat. We joked among ourselves that we hoped she’d indeed show up and that “you never know about Whitney.’’

None of us could have known that less than 45 minutes later, Houston’s assistant would interrupt our taping. “Whitney can’t make it.” Then later, “Whitney won’t be able to do it.” And finally, “Whitney’s dead.”

Her words hung in the air for a good long while before anyone could catch their breath.  The four of us in the room at that moment repeated them to ourselves and then to each other aloud as we tried to process the news of Houston’s demise.

“Saving All My Love For You” (1985) 
Weeks at the top: 1

“How Will I Know” (1985) 
Weeks at the top: 2

Just hours after discovering that his ex-wife Whitney Houston had died under mysterious circumstances in a Beverly Hills hotel room Saturday afternoon, Bobby Brown let loose an outpouring of emotion in the middle of a heart-rending and unexpectedly poignant concert with his ‘80s pop outfit New Edition at Landers Center in Southaven, Louisiana.

“First of all, I want to tell you that I love you all,” Brown said, tearfully, part way through the set. “Second, I would like to say ‘I love you Whitney.’ The hardest thing for me to do is to come on this stage.”

The singer’s comments provided a sad coda to Brown and Houston’s tumultuous 15 years of marriage, a union that unfolded like a gonzo soap opera across the pages of so many tabloids and a reality TV show, before crumbling under the weight of its numerous dysfunctions in 2007.

Over their time together, Houston and Brown positioned themselves as a kind of ‘80s R&B edition of Bonnie and Clyde—he, a hard-partying bad-boy pioneer of New Jack Swing, and she, America’s onetime sweetheart, the glowing beauty with a stunning multi-octave range—whose glaring personal disparities combined to create a dangerous codependent relationship. “He was my drug,” Houston told Oprah Winfrey in a widely publicized 2009 interview. “I didn’t do anything without him. I wasn’t getting high by myself. It was me and him together, and we were partners, and that’s what my high was—him. He and I being together, and whatever we did, we did it together. No matter what, we did it together.”

The toxicology reports are not yet in, but speculation that drugs were involved in Whitney Houston’s death are running rampant, and given her sad history of abuse, such thoughts cannot be totally discounted. Additionally, one report, from the hotel guest occupying the room above Houston’s in the Beverly Hilton hotel, states that she heard two loud thuds and an “urgent” male voice emanating from the room below 20 minutes before Houston’s body was discovered. First reports say her body showed no outward signs of foul play or trauma, and no one should be surprised if that voice turns out to have been that of a drug supplier.

Drug overdose, often called “accidental suicide,” is not only tragic but also ugly—very ugly. And no one, this writer included, wants to trash who once was perhaps the most beautiful and talented pop diva of her generation. But Whitney Houston’s death could be a teachable moment to a nation increasingly struggling with addiction—addiction (to myriad substances) that likely will only increase among the populace as the economy continues to sour.

If we can better understand how Houston’s life spiraled out of control due to her long-term drug abuse—no matter if drugs ultimately caused her untimely death or not—and what steps can be taken to curtail such tragedies, then perhaps we can use her death to finally begin to advocate for sane drug policies in this country. In this way maybe some degree of good can come out of this tragic loss.