Whitney Houston's tragic death at the age of 48 came amid her spiralling descent into debt after blowing her $100million fortune on drugs.
The talented diva, known around the world for her powerful vocals, drowned in a bath at the Beverly Hilton hotel in February 2012, having binged on cocaine, cannabis and prescription drugs before her final moments.
Her passing sent shockwaves through the world of showbiz, following the deaths of Michael Jackson in 2009 and Amy Winehouse in 2011.
While Whitney had attempted to keep her drug abuse under wraps during the 1990s, but later admitted to Oprah in 2009 that she'd started heavily using Class As after the success of her 1992 film The Bodyguard.
"After The Bodyguard it started getting heavy – cocaine, marijuana," she told the chat show host, explaining she'd got hooked after marrying Bobby Brown.
"We were lacing our marijuana with base (cocaine). We would buy a kilo. We were not doing pipe smoking. You roll it up and you smoke it in your weed."
Having famously declared in 2002, "I make too much money to smoke crack. Crack is wack", Whitney admitted seven years later how bad the situation had become, confessing she'd spent seven months living in her pyjamas.
"You're living in the same house, and you're sitting next to that person and you're not saying a word for a week. And you just sit there watching TV. That bad," she told Oprah.
"I didn't think about singing any more – I'd totally forgotten about that life. I had so much money by that time."
But her enormous fortune was swiftly frittered away as Whitney cranked up her spending on crack cocaine.
An attempt to get clean in March 2004 failed when Whitney walked out of rehab after five days, followed by another stint the following year.
But in 2006, leaked pictures taken in Whitney and Bobby's Atlanta mansion showed the full extent of their shocking lifestyle.
Taken by Whitney's sister-in-law Tina Brown, the grim images revealed drug-encrusted paraphernalia littering their filthy bathroom.
"The truth needs to come out. Whitney won't stay off the drugs. It's every single day. Everyone is so scared she is going to overdose," Tina said at the time.
She told of how the I Wanna Dance With Somebody singer was living amid piles of rubbish strewn around her mansion, biting and punching herself as she hallucinated demons who were trying to attack her teenage daughter, Bobbi Kristina Brown.
"She'll point to the floor and say, 'See that demon. I'm telling you somebody's messing with Bobby'. She always thinks it's something to do
with Bobby. But it's her, hitting herself," said Tina.
Whitney's paranoia grew to the point where she broke a hole into her bathroom wall so she could keep watch for intruders.
She would lock herself in the bedroom for days, using sex toys and calling up her drug dealers to deliver eight-balls of crack that she would then shove inside cigars and smoke all at once with cannabis.
While high, Whitney would regularly wet herself and wore nappies to prevent accidents.
The squalor and her mum's erratic behaviour terrified young Bobbi, who died in similar circumstances after being found face-down in a bathtub in January 2015.
Whitney told Oprah in 2010 that she was drug-free at least, although she still hankered for the illicit substances. However, she pulled out of a string of planned gigs in the UK and America that same year, citing ill health, then returned to rehab in 2011.
Her final days in February 2012 were marred once again by her drug use.
Whitney appeared "dishevelled" and "erratic" shortly before her death and was spotted wandering aimlessly through the Beverly Hilton hotel with wet hair, waving her arms around and smelling of booze.
Her last ever public appearance came on February 9 when she took to the stage in Hollywood with Kelly Price to sing Jesus Loves Me.
She was later seen with blood pouring down her leg following an altercation with X Factor star Stacy Francis, having accused the other singer of talking to her boyfriend Ray J.
Just two days later, Whitney was found unconscious in the bathtub of Suite 434. Paramedics attempted CPR but pronounced her dead at the scene.
Toxicology reports found Whitney had a mix of cocaine, cannabis, Xanax, Benadryl and Flexeril in her system.
Her cause of death was confirmed as drowning and the effects of heart disease and cocaine use.
Whitney was laid to rest in Fairview Cemetery in New Jersey, buried next to her father.
Her sister-in-law Tina later opened up about her regrets in taking pictures of the grim bathroom,
"During the time the picture was taken, in 2006, my sister Whitney and I were at a very low and self-destructive point in our lives, it was not only her mess, it was mine as well," she told The Blast in January 2018.
"Together, she and I decided to take the pictures in the bathroom and share with the world, the pain we were going through … it was a united cry for help."
She spoke out after Kanya West bought a licence to use the worst bathroom snap on the cover of Pusha-T's Daytona album.
Tina accused the rapper of "open[ing] old wounds" after he insisted to Pusha-T: "This is what people need to see to go along with this music."
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