Singer Whitney Houston described her ex-husband Bobby Brown as my drug and told Oprah Winfrey in an interview broadcast on Monday that her mother saved her by forcing her into a drug treatment program.

Houston, 46, making a music comeback after seven years told Winfrey in a wide-ranging interview that she and Brown took cocaine and marijuana during their marriage. The pair divorced in April 2007 after a 15-year marriage.

He (Brown) was my drug, Houston added. I didn't do anything without him.

Houston, who has previously admitted drug use, 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.

Brown was there at the time. She said, 'If you move, Bobby, they're gonna take you down. Don't you make one move,' Houston told Winfrey. And he stood there like -- he was scared.

Houston said Brown was emotionally but not physically abusive during their marriage, although she recalled a time when he spat on when he had been drinking.

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's interview with Winfrey is being broadcast over two days. It 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.

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