A great star bows out

Another great voice has been silenced. Whitney Houston, a music superstar whose life and career were both cut short, is gone and the world is a lesser place for her passing.

Houston had an amazing vocal range spanning three octaves, and used the power, purity, and warmth of her instrument to put together a string of consecutive #1 hits unmatched in musical history. There are few alive who could not sing along with her hits. Her place in the pantheon of singers was assured years ago.

For the last several years, she had been trying to recover from problems with drugs and alcohol, and from her troubled marriage to fellow singer Bobby Brown. That marriage, including more than a few difficult-to-watch scenes, was documented by a "reality series" called Being Bobby Brown. Anyone watching the show could see there were serious problems in that relationship.

Houston divorced Brown in 2007, and had been trying to make a comeback, both professionally and personally. Sadly, we will never know whether she could have regained her greatness, but people who had been around her lately said she was sounding good and seemed positive and upbeat. This weekend, however, she was seen looking disheveled, sounding and acting erratically compared to her appearance the last few months.

Whatever the exact cause of her death, it is clear drugs will have played a major role. Unfortunately, this is an all too common story in our society. The number of artists and musicians we have lost to drug misuse -- legal and illegal, including alcohol -- could fill a book. Sadly, this will not be the final chapter.

Growing up in the '60s and '70s, I was not unfamiliar with the recreational use of various substances. I never drank all that much, other than a handful of times in my 20s, but I smoked marijuana off and on from my junior year in high school until my early 20s. For whatever reason, I never progressed to the harder stuff, as many of my circle did. I had friends who were doing cocaine, pills (mostly barbiturates), and even heroin. More than a couple died, either from the drugs themselves or from the behaviors that frequently accompany such abuse. One killed himself with barbiturates the day before he was to go to trial for robbing a gas station to get money for drugs. He was a sophomore in high school. Talk about a waste.

I'm not sure why I didn't follow them. It might have been my upbringing, the knowledge that I was loved and cared for, that kept me from being so desperate to find some other happiness. To be sure, I experimented along with so many of my generation and had a few close calls of my own, but apparently I was not so self-destructive as to challenge death so earnestly. Whatever the reason, I am grateful to be here still. My life isn't perfect, but I'm alive and able to make my own choices. They may not always be the best choices, but I try.

It seems Whitney Houston might have been trying to get back to the right choices in her own life. Ten years younger than I, she unfortunately ran out of time. I suspect her death will be ruled an accident -- either an accidental mixing of Xanax and alcohol or, after taking something to calm her nerves before a Grammy event, falling asleep and drowning in her bathtub. Either way, there is nothing pretty or noble about such a death. It's just another senseless death of an artist lost way too soon.