Whitney Houston to Winfrey: husband painted evil eyes in house

Singer Whitney Houston performs during a taping of Good Morning America on ABC in New York September 1, 2009.[Agencies]

LOS ANGELES - Singer Whitney Houston said in an interview aired on Monday that life with former husband Bobby Brown descended into a nightmare of drugs and fights, and that at one point he painted "evil" eyes on the walls of their home.

Houston, 46, making a music comeback after seven years, told chat show host Oprah Winfrey in the interview broadcast on Monday that that her and Brown's drug-of-choice was marijuana mixed with cocaine. The pair divorced in April 2007 after a 15-year marriage.

Houston said that during the couple's narcotics-filled days, Brown would break glass objects in their home, and at one point he began painting eyes in their bedroom.

"Evil eyes that were looking at every point in the room," Houston said. She added that Brown, a singer who had a hit with the song "My Perogative," would paint on rugs, walls and closet doors, and that he used spray-paint.

"I'm looking at it and going, 'Lord, what's really going on here?'" Houston told Winfrey. "Because I was getting scared, because I felt something was going to blow, something was going to give."

Houston told Winfrey her addiction got so bad that her mother, soul singer Cissy Houston, turned up at her home one day with a court injunction and enlisted the help of police to force her into rehab.

"She said, 'I'm not losing you to the world. I'm not losing you to Satan. ... I want my daughter back,' " Houston recalled. "She said, 'Either you do it my way or we'll go on TV and (say) you're gonna retire."

She said she tried to play down her fame during the marriage, which took place as her career exploded with the box-office hit movie "The Bodyguard" in 1992 and the hit single "I will Always Love You."

"Something happens to a man when a woman has that much fame... I tried to play down all the time. I used to say' I'm Mrs. Brown, don't call me Houston."

Houston recalled a time when Brown spat on her when he had been drinking.

Brown, in an interview with celebrity TV show "The Insider" conducted before Winfrey's interview with Houston aired on TV, said he and Houston "corrupted each other."

"I don't think she hurt me or I hurt her," he said. "I just think we had a ... marriage that had its ups and downs and not many people understood it."

Houston's interview with Winfrey follows the release two weeks ago of the singer's first studio album in seven years -- "I Look To You" -- which entered the U.S. Billboard 200 chart at No. 1. Houston's record label Arista said the album also debuted at No.1 in Canada, Germany, Italy and Switzerland.