Amy Winehouse is Dead

[Rhetts_mama]

Originally Posted by AllDogBoots

I'm very skeptical. Detoxing from alcohol and certain drugs is excruciating and extremely difficult to do on one's own. I believe her addictive personality would have sent her back to the drugs, not to health. So many people fail the battle because of detox alone. She just left rehab a month before because she wasn't ready to quit. I can't imagine suddenly she had that much willpower to stop cold turkey.

I agree. I also doubt her death was caused by withdrawal based on published reports of her behavior the evening before. She supposedly was in good spirits and playing her drums loudly enough that neighbors complained. Someone in the throes of withdrawal would feel like heck and wouldn't have the energy to do that. I could be wrong, but I think the article is based on some wishful thinking.

[AllDogBoots]

Have the toxicology reports come back?

[Rhetts_mama]

I haven't heard that they have yet. It can take a couple of weeks or even longer to get them all back. I can't remember if this link was posted here or I saw it on another site, but it's a good explanation on why post-mortem toxicology tests take so long.

Toxicology Tests: What They Are and Why They Take So Long

[lovespandp]

Keep in mind that "druggy" was someones Daughter, Sister, Aunt, and Friend. How dare you make that statement. You should be ashamed of yourself. IF you looked at the subject of this thread, WE ARE staying focused!

[Nancy1999]

Originally Posted by lovespandp

Keep in mind that "druggy" was someones Daughter, Sister, Aunt, and Friend. How dare you make that statement. You should be ashamed of yourself. IF you looked at the subject of this thread, WE ARE staying focused!

Exactly! I think we should all remember, "There but for the grace of God, go I."

[capt_noonie]

Wow, looks like our friend Lance had been banned already. That was fast. Good riddance.

[Rhetts_mama]

Admin is on top of things today!

[Rachael x]

Addiction is a cruel, cruel thing to happen to anyone. We can be addicted to so many things, drugs, alcohol, prescription drugs, food. All adictions are hard to understand and hard to over come.
I have an uncle who is an alcoholic, no way did he choose to be an alcoholic and he has tried to get help many times but so far has failed. He used to drink like any normal person, a few pints of beer on a night out and that is that. Then his son was run over and killed at the age of 11, and his girlfriend's house was set on fire.. he tried to save her but he couldn't get her out and she died. He started to drink more often to block out the pain and before he even knew it he was addicted.
I agree that drug addiction is hard to understand, I have never touched drugs in my life and don't understand what would go through a person's mind when they first try the drug, but I bet not one of those drug addicts WANTED to become an addict. We all make mistakes, just some are harder to fix.

I love the peice Russel Brand wrote for Amy, I think it hits the nail on the head.
I will copy and paste it for anyone who hasn't read it:

When you love someone who suffers from the disease of addiction you await the phone call. There will be a phone call. The sincere hope is that the call will be from the addict themselves, telling you they’ve had enough, that they’re ready to stop, ready to try something new. Of course though, you fear the other call, the sad nocturnal chime from a friend or relative telling you it’s too late, she’s gone.

Frustratingly it’s not a call you can ever make it must be received. It is impossible to intervene.

I’ve known Amy Winehouse for years. When I first met her around Camden she was just some twit in a pink satin jacket shuffling round bars with mutual friends, most of whom were in cool Indie bands or peripheral Camden figures Withnail-ing their way through life on impotent charisma. Carl Barrat told me that “Winehouse” (which I usually called her and got a kick out of cos it’s kind of funny to call a girl by her surname) was a jazz singer, which struck me as bizarrely anomalous in that crowd. To me with my limited musical knowledge this information placed Amy beyond an invisible boundary of relevance; “Jazz singer? She must be some kind of eccentric” I thought. I chatted to her anyway though, she was after all, a girl, and she was sweet and peculiar but most of all vulnerable.

I was myself at that time barely out of rehab and was thirstily seeking less complicated women so I barely reflected on the now glaringly obvious fact that Winehouse and I shared an affliction, the disease of addiction. All addicts, regardless of the substance or their social status share a consistent and obvious symptom; they’re not quite present when you talk to them. They communicate to you through a barely discernible but un-ignorable veil. Whether a homeless smack head troubling you for 50p for a cup of tea or a coked-up, pinstriped exec foaming off about his “speedboat” there is a toxic aura that prevents connection. They have about them the air of elsewhere, that they’re looking through you to somewhere else they’d rather be. And of course they are. The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of the day with some purchased relief.

From time to time I’d bump into Amy she had good banter so we could chat a bit and have a laugh, she was “a character” but that world was riddled with half cut, doped up chancers, I was one of them, even in early recovery I was kept afloat only by clinging to the bodies of strangers so Winehouse, but for her gentle quirks didn’t especially register.

Then she became massively famous and I was pleased to see her acknowledged but mostly baffled because I’d not experienced her work and this not being the 1950’s I wondered how a “jazz singer” had achieved such cultural prominence. I wasn’t curious enough to do anything so extreme as listen to her music or go to one of her gigs, I was becoming famous myself at the time and that was an all consuming experience. It was only by chance that I attended a Paul Weller gig at the Roundhouse that I ever saw her live.

I arrived late and as I made my way to the audience through the plastic smiles and plastic cups I heard the rolling, wondrous resonance of a female vocal. Entering the space I saw Amy on stage with Weller and his band; and then the awe. The awe that envelops when witnessing a genius. From her oddly dainty presence that voice, a voice that seemed not to come from her but from somewhere beyond even Billie and Ella, from the font of all greatness. A voice that was filled with such power and pain that it was at once entirely human yet laced with the divine. My ears, my mouth, my heart and mind all instantly opened. Winehouse. Winehouse? Winehouse! That twerp, all eyeliner and lager dithering up Chalk Farm Road under a back-combed barnet, the lips that I’d only seen clenching a fishwife fag and dribbling curses now a portal for this holy sound. So now I knew. She wasn’t just some hapless wannabe, yet another pissed up nit who was never gonna make it, nor was she even a ten-a-penny-chanteuse enjoying her fifteen minutes. She was a ****ing genius.

Shallow fool that I am I now regarded her in a different light, the light that blazed down from heaven when she sang. That lit her up now and a new phase in our friendship began. She came on a few of my TV and radio shows, I still saw her about but now attended to her with a little more interest. Publicly though, Amy increasingly became defined by her addiction. Our media though is more interested in tragedy than talent, so the ink began to defect from praising her gift to chronicling her downfall. The destructive personal relationships, the blood soaked ballet slippers, the aborted shows, that youtube madness with the baby mice. In the public perception this ephemeral tittle-tattle replaced her timeless talent. This and her manner in our occasional meetings brought home to me the severity of her condition. Addiction is a serious disease; it will end with jail, mental institutions or death. I was 27 years old when through the friendship and help of Chip Somers of the treatment centre, Focus12 I found recovery, through Focus I was introduced to support fellowships for alcoholics and drug addicts which are very easy to find and open to anybody with a desire to stop drinking and without which I would not be alive.

Now Amy Winehouse is dead, like many others whose unnecessary deaths have been retrospectively romanticised, at 27 years old. Whether this tragedy was preventable or not is now irrelevant. It is not preventable today. We have lost a beautiful and talented woman to this disease. Not all addicts have Amy’s incredible talent. Or Kurt’s or Jimi’s or Janis’s, some people just get the affliction. All we can do is adapt the way we view this condition, not as a crime or a romantic affectation but as a disease that will kill. We need to review the way society treats addicts, not as criminals but as sick people in need of care. We need to look at the way our government funds rehabilitation. It is cheaper to rehabilitate an addict than to send them to prison, so criminalisation doesn’t even make economic sense. Not all of us know someone with the incredible talent that Amy had but we all know drunks and junkies and they all need help and the help is out there. All they have to do is pick up the phone and make the call. Or not. Either way, there will be a phone call.

[Nancy1999]

Originally Posted by Rachael x

Addiction is a cruel, cruel thing to happen to anyone. We can be addicted to so many things, drugs, alcohol, prescription drugs, food. All adictions are hard to understand and hard to over come.
I have an uncle who is an alcoholic, no way did he choose to be an alcoholic and he has tried to get help many times but so far has failed. He used to drink like any normal person, a few pints of beer on a night out and that is that. Then his son was run over and killed at the age of 11, and his girlfriend's house was set on fire.. he tried to save her but he couldn't get her out and she died. He started to drink more often to block out the pain and before he even knew it he was addicted.
I agree that drug addiction is hard to understand, I have never touched drugs in my life and don't understand what would go through a person's mind when they first try the drug, but I bet not one of those drug addicts WANTED to become an addict. We all make mistakes, just some are harder to fix.

I love the peice Russel Brand wrote for Amy, I think it hits the nail on the head.
I will copy and paste it for anyone who hasn't read it: . . .

Wow, what a powerful story, thanks for posting it. One thing I so agree with is "We need to look at the way our government funds rehabilitation. It is cheaper to rehabilitate an addict than to send them to prison, so criminalisation doesn’t even make economic sense".

[roseylovestosho]

Originally Posted by Nancy1999

Wow, what a powerful story, thanks for posting it. One thing I so agree with is "We need to look at the way our government funds rehabilitation. It is cheaper to rehabilitate an addict than to send them to prison, so criminalisation doesn’t even make economic sense".

That's my favorite quote too. What a beautiful post. Thank you for sharing.

[capt_noonie]

I've only read that story in part. I've never read the whole thing. That was really nice.

[chachi]

Originally Posted by Nancy1999

Wow, what a powerful story, thanks for posting it. One thing I so agree with is "We need to look at the way our government funds rehabilitation. It is cheaper to rehabilitate an addict than to send them to prison, so criminalisation doesn’t even make economic sense".

My brother in law and I were just talking about this this weekend. How much better society we would maybe be if we sent people who got caught drinkinking and driving to rehab instead of prison. Same with people caught on drugs. We could maybe break some of these bad addictions people have. My son drinks and he got caught drinking and driving and he learned from all he went through he doesnt drink and drive but he still drinks. I wish so much he would go to rehab

[Nancy1999]

Originally Posted by chachi

My brother in law and I were just talking about this this weekend. How much better society we would maybe be if we sent people who got caught drinkinking and driving to rehab instead of prison. Same with people caught on drugs. We could maybe break some of these bad addictions people have. My son drinks and he got caught drinking and driving and he learned from all he went through he doesnt drink and drive but he still drinks. I wish so much he would go to rehab

Have you ever watched the tv program Intervention? We use to think that alcoholics had to reach rock bottom before they could be helped, but now we know families can make them seek help faster. It really gives lots of tips on what you can do, but the whole family has to stick together. I'm glad your son has stopped drinking and driving that will help save his life, and keep him out of prison. I think there needs to be affordable treatment plans for people without insurance. Some experts say that many alcoholics need at least 3 rehab treatments, and it's more of a process than an end all treatment. I'm so sorry you have to go through this, it is such a burden, and I pray you're son will seek treatment.

[sugarmamma]

Originally Posted by lovespandp

Keep in mind that "druggy" was someones Daughter, Sister, Aunt, and Friend. How dare you make that statement. You should be ashamed of yourself. IF you looked at the subject of this thread, WE ARE staying focused!

Originally Posted by Nancy1999

Exactly! I think we should all remember, "There but for the grace of God, go I."

I will say again.....there is a very fine line between dependence and addiction. How many people among us walk the line?

[sugarmamma]

Originally Posted by chachi

My brother in law and I were just talking about this this weekend. How much better society we would maybe be if we sent people who got caught drinkinking and driving to rehab instead of prison. Same with people caught on drugs. We could maybe break some of these bad addictions people have. My son drinks and he got caught drinking and driving and he learned from all he went through he doesnt drink and drive but he still drinks. I wish so much he would go to rehab

Drinking and driving is one of those things that doesn't "always" turn out bad. It's like playing $100 bills in a slot machine. You PULL and PRAY