“I Realized I Was Going To Die If I Didn’t Stop Drinking”: Mary J. Blige Contributes Aaliyah’s Passing To Becoming Sober

Mary J Blige said early on in her career, “If you looked in my life and see what I’ve seen…” and it couldn’t ring more true.  Not many people have gone through what the singer has gone through in her life and survived, much less built a strong, long-lasting career that has stood the test of time and continues to thrive.  Her road to where she is now, however, was mired with many struggles. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mary J Blige (@therealmaryjblige) on Oct 25, 2020 at 10:42am PDT

It’s no secret that Mary’s life hasn’t been easy, as she has shared her struggles in past interviews, as well as pouring every bit of her emotion into her music.  During her teenage years, Blige began to use substances, which would only intensify as her career began to rise.  She credits the early use to a terrifying incident that occurred at the young age of five; a moment she wouldn’t share with her mother until she was 33 years old.  

“It only happened once, but after that, there was so much else in my childhood that happened,” she confessed to Los Angeles Confidential Magazine in a 2013 interview. “So many dark moments — which all added up and that’s what sprung on the addiction, trying to numb it all. The depression. The lack of love for myself. The lack of people loving you around you. The abandonment issues. Daddy not being there all the time. Mommy not knowing how to handle it all. Although she loves you, she abandons you at some point too. I’m not saying that to be down on my mom. She was just a cursed woman as well.”

Blige finally met success when her debut album What’s the 411 hit the shelves in 1992, however, she was still not in the greatest living situation and her habits would only get worse.  “People want to buy your records, they want to see you,” she said in another past interview. “But, people in the neighborhood want to [hurt] you for it. So you plucked this girl from the hood and throw her in all of this stuff and so, she’s going to survive the only way she knows how.”

She continued, “People from the outside looking in would think everything was great, but I was in hell. I was spiraling down. I didn’t think I was going to make it. It was like, ‘Whoa, okay now what?’ Sing for your life. Literally, sing for your life.”

One of many artist’s dreams is to hit the Grammy stage and accept accolades in honor of their achievements.  When it was Mary’s turn to see her dream in real-time, she was intoxicated.  She tells LA Confidential Magazine, “Back then? Shoot. When I got that Grammy (best rap performance by a duo or group) I was high. Not at the Grammys, I don’t think. But I was drinking like a crazy person.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Mary J Blige (@therealmaryjblige) on Sep 9, 2020 at 11:54am PDT

The My Life album was more of a confessional where the artist says she was pleading for help via the music.   “I didn’t think anybody would pay attention to my call for help, but my fanbase did,” she explained.  “They all came out and bought my record… so I took all this depression and all this oppression I was dealing with and just put it in my music. I made the choice, I chose life.”

Her career still in the early stages, she said in a separate past interview that she would get ripped off often because she didn’t care about contracts or whether any malicious intent occurred as long as she got her fix.  “As long as I had my supply, they could keep robbing me and telling me anything,” she revealed. “I was pretty much, trusting people that weren’t trustworthy. So you wind up signing your life away and then later on you have no money and you have nothing because they steal everything from you.”

However, at some point, she decided that enough was enough.  “I realized I was going to die if I didn’t stop drinking. If I didn’t stop doing drugs, I was going to lose my career completely,” she recalls.  Blige also attributed the death of singer/actress Aaliyah in a plane crash as a “bit of a wake up call” for her. 

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Aaliyah Haughton (@aaliyah) on Jul 27, 2020 at 3:25pm PDT

“I was doing a show at the Apollo Theater in Harlem,” she told Oprah in an interview for O Magazine. “Kendu and I weren’t married yet, and I overheard him say, ‘If Mary comes in this house drunk tonight, I’m gonna leave her.’ So during the performance,’”I kept thinking, I’m going to go home sober and tell him I’m not gonna drink anymore.’ After the show, I received a call from the girl who always got the [stuff]. When I went to her house, she had the biggest bottle of wine she could find on the table. I took off all my makeup and just sat there. ‘You want a glass of wine?’ she asked. I said no. I got up and left for home at 10 o’clock that night. Normally, I’d be stepping in the house at 4 in the morning. When I came in without alcohol on my breath, Kendu said, ‘I’m so proud of you.’ That same night, we got the call: Aaliyah was dead.”

Another artist’s passing that hit close to home for her was that of pop legend Whitney Houston.  “Whitney Houston’s passing really affected me. Her passing is another reason I stopped. I really do think I’m done. I looked at how that woman could not perform anymore,” she admitted.  

Although she once credited her now ex-husband as the hero that saved her from her addiction, the “Queen of Hip-Hop Soul” renounced that claim in a recent interview with Self Magazine.  “He did not deserve that credit,” she admitted. “I wanted a savior,” she explained. “I’d been hurting so long, and so much, and so bad.” Her inner strength and belief in God is where she attributes her healing, as she chose not to go the route of rehab.  “I believe that anything man himself can do for me, God can do for me in a greater way,” she says. “I decided to pray and to seek God on my own. I just stayed in The Word. And it worked.”