Whitney Houston tells Oprah Winfrey that her mom staged an intervention
by Vicki Hyman/The Star-Ledger
Friday September 11, 2009, 3:25 PM

GEORGE BURNS/HARPO PRODUCTIONS/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Oprah Winfrey, right, and Whitney Houston at their highly-anticipated sit-down at Town Hall in New York. The two-part season premiere of ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ will air Sept. 14 and 15. Whitney Houston tells Oprah Winfrey that her mother Cissy showed up at her home with deputies during the dark days of her drug addiction to force her into rehab.

According to the excerpt from the much-anticipated interview, set to air Monday and Tuesday as Winfrey’s season premiere, Houston says that Cissy threatened to sic the deputies on Bobby Brown, her then-husband, if he made a move.

Winfrey, the East Orange native who once infamously denied doing crack because she’s too rich (”Crack is whack,” she told Diane Sawyer in 2002), did check into rehab in 2004. “I’m not losing you to the world,” Cissy said during the intervention, Houston recounts. “I’m not losing you to Satan ... I want my daughter back. I want you back. I want to see that glow in your eyes, that light in your eyes.”

Houston is embarking on her long-in-the-making comeback, promoting her first studio album in seven years, “I Look To You,” which debuted at the top of the Billboard charts. (This despite her “Good Morning America” appearance right after her “Oprah” interview not going as well as she had hoped. To put it mildly.)