More than half a year since her death, Nick Gordon has opened up about the passing of his late girlfriend Bobbi Kristina Brown – and spoke about her drug use leading up to the fateful bathtub incident in January last year.
In an episode of ‘Dr. Phil’ due to be broadcast later this week, Gordon revealed to the host how Bobbi Kristina’s life seemed to spiral downwards after the death of her mother, Whitney Houston, three years previously, and that her use of drugs “got really bad” from that point onwards.
Nick Gordon and Bobbi Kristina Brown in 2014
On January 31st 2015, Bobbi Kristina – the only child of the late singer, who passed away in 2012 – was found unconscious, face-down in a bathtub in suburban Atlanta. She was found at the time to have had marijuana, alcohol, benzoylecgonine (a cocaine-related substance), benzodiazepines (for sedation and anxiety treatment) and morphine in her body at the time of the incident. She never regained consciousness, eventually passing away nearly six months later on July 26th at the age of 22.
This appearance, due to air on Thursday (April 28th), represents the first time Gordon has spoken publicly about the incident and the events leading up to it. In the sit-down interview, Dr. Phil reportedly asks Gordon directly: “did she have a drug problem?”
Stating that Bobbi Kristina’s indulgences led her at first to “smoke a little bit… socially” but then got worse quite quickly. “It got really bad after Nippy passed away,” he says, referring to Whitney Houston. “It's unfortunate, but at the time it's the only way we knew how to deal with what had happened.”
Gordon is facing a $10 million wrongful death lawsuit filed by Bobbi Kristina’s conservator Bedelia Hargrove, filed last August, claiming that she had died after a “violent altercation” with him and accusing him of having “injected her with a toxic mixture”. His attorney has vociferously denied the accusations, calling them "slanderous and meritless".
He was also the subject of headline-grabbing intervention by Dr. Phil in the months after her death, and recalled about that incident: “I was drinking so much at the time because I could not deal with what was happening to Krissy. It mentally broke me. That's the lowest part of my life right there… …rehab was something I needed and I'm thankful I got that opportunity.”