The Gap Band star Charlie Wilson has wife to thank for sobriety success

Former THE GAP BAND star CHARLIE WILSON owes his post-rehab success to his wife Mahin, insisting she helped him get back on his feet after two years spent on the streets as a homeless junkie.
Fighting back tears while promoting his new memoir I Am Charlie Wilson during a recent TV interview with comedian and talk show host Steve Harvey, the singer opened up about his rough years after tasting fame and fortune with hits like Oops Up Side Your Head, revealing he didn’t recognise himself when a long-lost cousin found him sleeping in a parking lot.
He said, “I was sleeping on trucks, in cars, parking lots and I’d have a shopping cart with some plastic around it, a brick for my pillow and a piece of carpet…”
The turning point came when a relative he used to get high with found him sleeping rough and insisted on getting him into the rehab facility she turned to when she had hit rock bottom months before.
Wilson recalled, “I saw a cousin of mine who came to Hollywood and she was looking for me and she saw me and she immediately started crying, and she looked so good.
“She just hugged me for at least 30 seconds and she wouldn’t let go, and then she said, ‘Cuz (sic), you dyin’ out here’. I was like, ‘I ain’t (sic) dying’, and she took out a mirror and showed me myself… and I looked so bad; my skin was all patchy and dry and I’m a grown man and I was weighing 115 pounds, so she had a friend come and get me (and take me to rehab).”
Struggling to get sober during his first few days in the centre, Wilson met a counsellor who became his guardian angel – and his wife.
He said, “She got me a house, filled it up with furniture – this woman I didn’t know from Adam, and when I got ready to graduate that woman took me to that house and I said, ‘Ma’am, I cannot live in this house by myself… I can’t do this by myself’, so I asked her to marry me. It’s been 20 years and I’ve never looked back.”