Whitaker married Symbria Wright of Reseda, California, in 1984. She divorced him four years later to marry the friend who threw his bachelor party, which Whitaker says led him to abuse drugs and alcohol for nine years. He said, "that was what I called the precipitous event which caused me to lose faith in God and faith in myself and whatever else and kind of went to the dark side, Luke Skywalker. I started hanging out in bars and smoking marijuana and then going from marijuana to cocaine and methamphetamine and smoking heroin and losing three cars, four apartments, five jobs and a company that I'd started and ran into the ground."