Whitney tells Oprah that Bobby was jealous, spit on her

In the first segment of a revealing two-part interview that aired on Monday, Whitney Houston told all to Oprah.

The interview, which was taped at the Town Hall Theater in New York earlier this month, featured the two divas bonding over their fame and fortune, including the importance of pre-nuptial agreements and the difficulty of finding a man who is not insecure of a rich and powerful woman.

Houston revealed that her former husband Bobby Brown was psychologically abusive to her, but she denied charges that Brown was physically abusive. When Brown did slap her once, Houston said she fought back, as she was always trained to do as a child. In one instance, Houston hit Brown with a telephone, leaving her husband bloodied and lying on the floor.

Asked if Brown was jealous of her, Houston paused for a moment, and then announced that her ex-husband wouldn't like the answer, but ultimately she said yes. " I tried to play down all the time. I did. I tried to play: 'I'm Mrs. Brown, everybody. Don't call me Ms. Houston,'" Whitney said.

And as for the worst thing that Brown did to her, Houston cited an incident in which Brown returned home drunk one night and spit on her. At that point, she knew that things had gotten out of control in their marriage, she said.

Most of the interview focused on Houston's relationship with Brown and her drug use. At one point, she acknowledged spending a significant amount of money on drugs, mostly marijuana and cocaine, and she told Winfrey that her preference was to mix the two drugs. She even explained to Oprah how the mixing process works.

"We were lacing our marijuana with base," Whitney told Oprah. "We weren't on crack. We weren't on no crack stuff. We weren't buying $20 jumbos. We were paying money. We were buying kilos and ounces and ounces. We would have our stash," Houston said.

The interview was Houston's first big sit-down session with the media since her infamous 2002 interview with Diane Sawyer. Bobby Brown also took part in part of that controversial interview and revealed his bipolar disorder.

A year after the Sawyer interview, Houston called 911 to report that her husband had hit her. The police report said Whitney had a bruised cheek and a cut inside her upper lip, but she refused to press charges and Brown has publicly denied ever hitting her, Oprah said on Monday.

Asked about her decision to participate in the 2005 Bravo's reality show "Being Bobby Brown," Whitney said she did not know what she was getting into but decided to do it to support her husband.

At one point in the interview, Oprah read a newspaper quote describing Houston's voice as a "national treasure," and asked Whitney how she could squander such a treasure with drugs and other unhealthy activities, but Whitney seemed to distance herself from the Whitney Houston performer that she once was. Instead, she said she thought at the time that that part of her life had gone.

The Oprah interview, which continues today, was timed to coincide with the release of Whitney's first studio album in seven years, I Look to You, and with the season premiere of the Oprah Winfrey Show this week.