California Black Media

"People who are on drugs are there for a reason. There's something bothering them in their lives. Mostly they're covering that pain.”

 

Former R&B star Bunny DeBarge, known most notably for “Rhythm of the Night”, which she recorded with the group DeBarge, is speaking from experience. DeBarge-which consisted of Bunny and four of her brothers El, James, Mark, and Randy, came into prominence in the 80s rising to the top of the charts with hits like “I Like It,” “Time Will Reveal,” and “Who's Holding Donna Now?”

 

DeBarge became known as a family blessed with musical talent. The eldest brothers Bobby and Tommy were members of Switch, another popular Motown group, and younger brother Chico became a solo artist in his own right.

 

Yet for all their record success, the gifted family became notorious for their problems with drug addiction. Chico was imprisoned for drug charges and served time in prison for drug trafficking. Drug abuse was cited as a key reason in the annulment of Janet Jackson's marriage to James DeBarge. El DeBarge was arrested in Los Angeles in 2007 for possible vandalism, drug possession, and alleged domestic violence and Randy-though now clean—suffered from drug and alcohol addiction.

 

Today, after battling decades of substance addiction, Bunny DeBarge has broken free, celebrating a year of sobriety from drugs, —dependent instead on the strength of God.

 

The group formally split up in 1989 after the convictions of brothers Bobby and Chico. (Mark, James, Randy, El, Bunny reunited with younger siblings Darryl and Carol along with their mom, Etterlene, for the release of a gospel album, dubbed Back On Track in 1991. It was the family’s last professional music collaboration).

 

Breaking free of drugs, however, was not going to be so easy.

 

“My drug problem started in high school,” DeBarge reveals. “I started to smoke weed and so it was nothing for me to experiment with drugs. Then it medicated me.”

 

Over time, the medication she felt fueled an addiction that would grow to include morphine, heroin, and crack cocaine.

 

“It came from the party scene and in the studio,” says DeBarge. “After we got with Motown I was able to handle the drugs, but never the less I was [still] using. After the group broke up, that's when the problem escalated. Things started to happen with El and the boys.

 

“We didn't like how things were being done so we medicated more and that caused confusion. That caused confusion. Being on drugs, you don't think that people see you reacting in a different way, but you are.”

 

Truth is, DeBarge’s issues with drugs went much deeper, as did her inability to confront certain issues from her youth that continued to haunt her into her adult years.

 

Born in Detroit to a black mother and white father, DeBarge describes her childhood as one filled with fear, embarrassment, shame, helplessness and the feeling of violation. Outside her home, her biracial family was often ostracized and school children called her and her brothers hurtful names. Inside her home, her father abused his family physically and mentally.

 

By the time she was nine her father had begun to sexually molest her. In her autobiography, “The Kept Ones,” DeBarge details how the abuse started with her father coming into her bedroom or sitting her on his lap in the living room and escalated to her father putting her in his bed with him at night while her mother was in the hospital after giving birth to her brother.

 

The abuse continued off and on for three years until her mother finally learned of the molestation, eventually moving the children to Grand Rapids, but not before her father received a brutal beating from his brothers-in-law.

 

By then the damage had been done and DeBarge would carry the scars well into her adult years.

 

“Trying to deal with the things that happened to me in my childhood and dealing with my relationship with my mother caused me to medicate even more, because I looked for mom to help me, and she could be of no help to me,” says DeBarge, who recalls her disappointment as a child in her mother who returned to her father time after time, even after learning he'd molested his own daughter and terrorized his own children.

 

“I would get up, go to church, give my life to God, and pretend everything was okay, but I cover up even more there. I'm not dealing there at all. Then I'd get back into my drug addiction. So I'm trying to deal there, but I'm trying to medicate the pain as I'm dealing,"

 

For a time, it became a vicious circle.

 

"It's like you're in a jail because you still have to come back and deal with those people that have hurt you and the drugs aren't helping the pain. It is then, but you have to do back and get more. Now you're hooked on drugs.”

 

Bobby DeBarge had been her closest sibling growing up. He was one year younger and because their birthdays were only five days apart they often celebrated together, sharing many things. It was due to his intervention that DeBarge admitted to her mother that she was being sexually abused; and after he'd come into success as an artist with Motown, he talked his talented sibling up to producer Jermaine Jackson, preparing the way for their record deal.

 

DeBarge calls his 1995 death of complications due to AIDS one of the lowest points in her life.

 

“I think when Bobby died, that was a wake up call,” says DeBarge, Admittedly, it wasn't enough to get her to quit. Years more would pass.

 

“I was tired. I said, you know what. I've got to face this. I want to be well. And through that process of dealing with drugs, I still had God because He said He’d never leave you or forsake you. So I'm talking and I'm asking God, Lord help me. You're going to have to help me. You're going to have to come here where I am because this is where I am. And God began to deal with me right in my addiction,” DeBarge recalls.

 

“I began to go back into my life and write my book and the Lord began to show me what to let go of and what the pain was when I stopped medicating. I had to get to that point because I could see that I could not depend on my mom and I could not depend on my dad. I could not depend on my husband. I had to depend on God.

 

"I wanted Him to come with me into my life and help me through it. And I cried those tears as I uncovered those things that really were bothering me and laid in His arms.”

 

Acknowledging that the struggle to remain clean is a battle she must take one day at a time, she remarks that the person she used to be is very different from who she is now.

 

“That's a very easy person for me to go back to and live because I lived it so long. So I realized that it is a daily struggle,” she explains. “The person that I'm living today, I've lived very little time of. I'm learning who I am and what I like. Going on it's scary but I'm taking God with me, and finding a lot of joy in that.”