How Bobby Brown Finally Got Clean and Sober
The singer had a long struggle with drugs and alcohol until 2013.
— -- It took jail time for Bobby Brown to finally get clean and sober.
"Jail got me to stop taking drugs. I never wanted to go back to jail. I didn’t want to be incarcerated ever, ever again," the New Edition singer, 47, told "The Dr. Oz Show" in a new episode airing Thursday.
In 2013, Brown, who had long struggled with alcohol and drug abuse, was sentenced to 55 days in jail after pleading no contest to a drunk driving arrest. He only served nine hours of his sentence, but it was enough to convince him that he needed to change.
"I didn’t want my kids to grow up and see me in that type of light," he said. "I've always been one to want to grow to want to be better and better on the next day -- if I'm bad yesterday, I want to be better the next day, especially for my children. I mean, my children mean everything to me, everything. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for them. So I try to be as strong as possible for them every day. And it takes every day for me to do that."
Earlier this year, Brown welcomed his seventh child with third wife Alicia Etheredge-Brown. He opened up to Dr. Oz about losing Bobbi Kristina, his daughter with the late Whitney Houston.
"I’m doing great. Of course, on an everyday basis, I still think about her and I still go through it," he said. "But, I think I'm a lot more comfortable with knowing that she's in a better place, knowing that she's not in pain anymore, you know, and I'm just grateful for that."
In June, Brown acknowledged to ABC’s Robin Roberts that he and his ex-wife had failed their daughter.
"We should have been better," Brown said in the interview for a special edition of “20/20.” "We could have been better."