Whitney Houston's sister-in-law says it was inevitable the singer would die early.

The "I Will Always Love You" hitmaker, 48, was found dead in a bathtub in her Beverly Hilton Hotel suite last month and Patricia Houston admits she always thought Whitney would lose her battle with drink and drugs.

"I would be kidding myself to say otherwise," added Patricia, who is married to Whitney's brother Gary.

Before her tragic death, Whitney - who had a long history of drink and drug addiction - had been trying to turn her life around but Patricia wasn't convinced. "Things were changing, very much so... it wasn't about substance abuse or anything like that relative to the latter days or anything like that. t was just more of a lifestyle. I was afraid for other things. I saw her chasing a dream, you know, looking for love in all the wrong places," she told Oprah Winfrey.

Meanwhile, Whitney's daughter Bobbi Kristina was so shocked by her mother's death, she couldn't process the news when she first heard.

Tiffanie Dixon, Whitney's good friend and hairdresser, says 19-year-old Bobbi - her child with ex-husband Bobby Brown - had no idea what was going on: "Everything kind of happened so fast. We were doing a party that evening. I heard something and was instructed to call someone for help. Bobbi Kristina comforted me - she didn't know what was going on. At that moment, all I could think about was to find someone to help," she told The Today Show.