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R.I.P. Natalie Cole

PriestTheyCalledHim

PriestTheyCalledHim

Bluelighter
Joined
Oct 7, 2005
Messages
14,685
Rest in peace Natalie Cole.

I put this in sober living since she had major problems and became addicted to heroin, cocaine, and other drugs. But she did get sober, and she helped me realize that when we become addicted to drugs or anything that you're not a weak person for needing help or asking for help, and that it's not a flaw or something to be ashamed of, that living a happy sober/clean life is possible if you want it, and that drug use does lead back to addiction or is playing with fire/fate.

Houston Chronicle said:
Natalie Cole remembers the intervention that got her into rehab and saved her life: Her attorney, her business manager and her personal manager cornered her one day in 1983.

"They all came to my house like the undertakers - they were all in dark suits and they were very serious and very sober," she said. "They looked at me and they said, 'We just know you're going to die.' "

The R&B singer, daughter of the late Nat "King" Cole, went "dragging and screaming" to a rehab facility in Minnesota and spent the next six months kicking her cocaine addiction. She's stayed clean for 30 years.

Cole, 64, will share her story May 1 at the Waggoners Foundation Speaker Series luncheon, a fundraiser for the Council on Alcohol and Drugs Houston. She's going to do what she learned to do in recovery meetings, Cole said: "Tell them what happened, what it was like - and what it's like now."

Cole tried marijuana in high school; in college, it was LSD and heroin. "In the late '60s, everybody was doing drugs," she said. "Not everybody was addicted."

Cole, though, became addicted to heroin almost instantly, and she nearly derailed her fledgling music career before she quit cold-turkey in 1975. "I almost died so many times on the heroin," Cole said, and she thought she was through with drugs for good. But just a couple of years later, she started snorting cocaine at parties and fell right back into addiction.

For the next several years, Cole's life fell apart piece by piece. She missed shows, got into car accidents. Her young son nearly drowned in the backyard pool because she was inside getting high. Her career and marriage crumbled. Her mother took over her business affairs.

Cole went to rehab in 1982, but it didn't work: "I was in there for 30 days," she said. "I came out, and I went right back to my drugs."

A year later, those dark-suited business associates pushed her into rehab again, and for Cole, it was the right help at the right time. The first month was miserable. "I just did not want to be there," she said. "But somehow, at some point halfway through those 30 days, I went from not wanting to be there to being afraid to leave. I was starting to get it."

What she learned in rehab - that addiction is a disease, not a moral failing or lack of willpower - changed her life, Cole said.
Click to expand...

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/lif...hares-secret-to-beating-addiction-5421263.php

 
I know seriously....I heard the news last night...so I started listening to some older songs.....yep, this is a big loss..
 
I always feel sad when a great artist leaves the world. I guess I feel happy, though, that she had those people around her that stepped in and forced her to go to rehab over and over--unlike Amy Winehouse where those around her didn't care as long as she kept producing to keep them rich. I always get so sad thinking that her own father persuaded her NOT to go to rehab. I also feel happy that Natalie had such a stellar career and most of it was unclouded by addiction.
 
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