Mary J. Blige Talks about Marriage, Her Triumph Over Drugs, And The Day That Changed Her Life

Ebony, June, 2000 by Kevin Chappell

SHE had completed one photo shoot and was being chauffeured to another when it happened. Right there--in the back seat of her stretch limo--Mary J. Blige seemed to discover the true meaning of life.

"Starting today, I'm living for the moment," she proclaimed as she reached into her designer purse, pulled out a plastic sandwich bag, scooped out its rolled-up contents and asked for a light. Sinking her small frame even deeper into the plush black leather seat, Blige took a long drag, cracked the window, and blew a thick stream of smoke into the hazy New York City air. "That's my new philosophy," she said, taking another puff. "Live for the moment."

Had the 29-year-old product of the Yonkers, N.Y., projects chosen this time and this place to put an end to the rumor that she had cleaned up her life and re-energized her career by publicly swearing-off drugs, denouncing unsafe sex, and mellowing enough to shoot a video with Michael Jordan and record songs with the likes of Aretha Franklin and Elton John?

Had Blige, on this spring day at the dawn of the new millennium, decided that no amount of crossover success was worth living a lie, living the rest of her life saddled with the "mainstream Mary" moniker she had fought so hard in the past to distance herself from ?

After all, rebelling against the system is nothing new for Blige, who spent much of the '90s on a very public mission to find the answer to life's questions at the bottom of plastic sandwich bags. Back then, she almost lost everything--she almost died--before realizing getting high wasn't the answer that she was looking for in her life.

But that was then. Today, things really do seem to be different for Blige. Now, when the Grammy Award-winning singer says she's "living for the moment," it doesn't signal the start of high times and reckless behavior. On this day, it simply meant taking time out of her busy schedule to enjoy a cherry-flavored cigar she had stashed away in her purse, time to enjoy a laugh with her sister/manager LaTonya, and time to enjoy what has become her life and her career. Because more than anyone else--more than her family, friends and fans who watched her personal struggle to go from a crackling-voice, impressionable teen sensation to one of popular music's most powerful singers and confident women--Blige says she realizes the mistakes she has made, and what those mistakes could have cost her.

When Blige talks about the mistakes of her past, her usually stoic face fills with a matter-of-fact emotion, the kind of deep emotion that's usually only reserved for her music. She says she was introduced to drugs one night at a New York City nightclub when she was 16. "It was fun at first," Blige admits. "But soon it became something that I needed, to be who I was. I used to do it because I thought it would make me forget about things. It made me forget about it for the moment. But the next day, it was seven times worse. Because the reality is that everything I was trying to run from was still there."

Constantly trying to run from her newfound fame, Blige says she reached her lowest point in 1994 when she was 23. Only two years after the release of her debut album, What's the 411?, Blige says she had reached a point where she had no self-esteem. "I didn't give a damn about me," she says, "because I was destroying my body with different substances."

Things had gotten so bad for her that, she says, she was taking almost anything that almost anyone would give her with little regard for how much she took or when she took it. In the morning, before an interview, during a recording session, in the middle of the night--it didn't matter. Even though she knew that a pusher could never be trusted because "they sell you the stuff that ain't the stuff you're looking for," she kept using anyway. "I had a set of people in my life who couldn't care less whether or not I ended up dead," she says. "It took almost dying to realize how important my life is."

Blige says her life changed on Friday, June 30, 1995, the day singer Phyllis Hyman committed suicide from a drug overdose. "That day I said, `I'm not doing this anymore.' [Phyllis] was so beautiful. That was the day when 1 said `no more. No more. I can't do this anymore.'"

On that day, she says she became a woman. "I've experienced every feeling that drugs have, every effect that they have tin you," she says. "And the real deal is that it doesn't feel good. It consumes your brain cells. It consumes your body. And if you don't quit, it will kill you. You will die!"

Blige says she feels free to talk about her drug use because she wants kids to understand what could happen to them if they experiment with drags. "I'm not embarrassed because I'm not that person anymore," she says. "I don't mind talking about it. I don't mind talking about where I was so that I can better move on. I have to remember where I came from so I can move on. It could happen again. If it does, at least I know I was real to myself. And that's the most important thing."