Amy Winehouse

[prisma]

Did Amy ever admit that she was an addict and/or alcoholic? It's pretty typical for someone with a raging problem that's obvious to everyone else to be unable to admit it to themselves for a long time. Lots of people go through rehab with the attitude that they can learn to control it or manage it and refuse to admit they have a problem that requires them to eliminate it completely. That's really common.

I read Mary Karr's memoir Lit, which is a really, really good description of someone hitting bottom, reluctantly seeking help, but successfully pulling her life back on track through sobriety. She talks about her first encounter with the writer David Foster Wallace in a recovery meeting (presumably AA) and overhearing him say this to another person in the meeting:

It's a logical fallacy that you're telling me I have a disease whose defining symptom is believing you don't have a disease, since this a priori implies that any citizen who denies they have this ailment is no doubt infected...

He, like her, was new to the program and she says "Like me, he's obviously here to educate them to their cult's fallacious thinking." Which is a long explanation to say lots of addicts refuse to admit they have a problem.

In any case, I'm really sad she died this way. Not surprised, but sad nevertheless.

[angelaudie]

One of the issues I have with the, "Well, I don't feel bad for her because she had resources many don't!" argument is the argument implies that Amy's brain somehow changed when she made money and therefore would be easier to fix. Of course, that's not the case. Amy's brain is messed up no matter how much money she has. The only thing her money could get is a fancier rehab. That's about the only advantage she truly had.

Here's something else to consider. Often times addicts are not given the time they need to truly build up the strength they need to face the real world again. Regular joes have to worry about their income and are often back at work before they really should be. Now, celebs generally don't have to worry about that but they do have to worry about being forgotten and having to repair their damaged reputations. Look how long it look for Robert Downey, Jr. to repair his reputation and he has the advantages of being male, white, attractive, and talented! Plus, it seems the very people who often pressure celebs to go to rehab are often the very ones that pressure the celeb to get back to work and throw them back to their trigger situations. This happened to Amy. She was barely out of rehab when she started doing shows again. What do you often find at concerts? DRUGS!

Also, drug addicts rarely start out doing the hardcore stuff. They generally start out with soft stuff (well compared to things like meth and heroin) and work their way up. Amy didn't start out doing crack and heroin. She started drinking and smoking pot. Now, I bet if most people on this board were honest we would find the majority have at least tried pot and I bet everyone here has drank at some point of their lives. Trying pot and alcohol is practically a teenage rite of passage. Many grow up to be contributing members of society. Amy truly had no way of knowing her low core experiments would gradually work their way up to hardcore stuff.

Finally, I think it's very dangerous to assume you are immune from addiction. I bet many people who attend Narcotics Anonymous never thought they would end up addicted to narcotics. I bet a good many that attend NA started using narcotics for perfectly valid reasons. Addiction can sneak up on you. It probably doesn't help there are certain things that nobody judges others for being addicted to. Many people, including me, are addicted to caffeine. But hey nobody gives people the side eye for needing a coffee fix even though caffeine can be deadly and can certainly screw up your body if you consume enough of it.

[Mutagen]

Jul 25, 2011 22:16:36 GMT -4 angelaudie said:

One of the issues I have with the, "Well, I don't feel bad for her because she had resources many don't!" argument is the argument implies that Amy's brain somehow changed when she made money and therefore would be easier to fix. Of course, that's not the case. Amy's brain is messed up no matter how much money she has. The only thing her money could get is a fancier rehab. That's about the only advantage she truly had.

And I also have to say, it's not like Amy Winehouse going or not going to rehab would have changed the fortunes of sick people who can't afford to get help.

If thousands/millions of sick people don't have adequate support and resources to get better, that's a statement about society and what our government/healthcare chooses to fund. You would be better off getting angry at your politicians than a celebrity who's not here anymore.

[gitsie007]

magazinewhore wrote

According to most addiction specialists, addicts medicate to feel normal, not to get high. Maybe I'm feeling a bit defensive because we just put my brother in rehab. I just don't understand the rush to judgment. No one has ever held her up as paragon of wise behavior. She's already paid the ultimate price for her mistakes. I guess I just don't understand the moral pile-on.

I agree with that. I am a recovering alcoholic and self-medicated with alcohol to deal with my depression and anxiety. The thing is, it was a short term fix since it ended up making my depression and anxiety worse and I needed more and more just to function.

I think Amy was self-medicating and her tolerance just grew and grew. She could have gotten treatment for her bi-polar disorder but she chose the alcohol and drugs to soothe herself. I think she loved the manic highs of bipolar and I hear that many of them don't take medication since they do not want to get rid of the mania.

Back to addiction, I hear in many meetings how so many people grew up feeling not right, not fitting, feeling this huge void and wanting to numb out. It was a way out but then it stopped working since you needed more and more. Many of them came from alcoholic/addict families. It definitely is hereditary.

[jinglejangle]

Like Ninja Bunny, my family is also made up of alcoholics and addicts. I too grew up knowing that I would never drink or smoke or do drugs because I wanted to avoid this trap for myself. Like someone mentioned I have a raging sweet tooth and I know I have an addictive personality. Better to avoid it all together. But...

I also decided that I would drink once. On my 21st birthday. I would get drunk, find out what everyone was so excited about, and then I'd stop. I made the choice beforehand. Drink freely that one night, then never again.

So that night I get drunk. It tasted disgusting. So disgusting that I nursed one beer for an hour and had to be told to chug a few drinks quickly to actually get drunk. Something interesting happened. My normal shyness was gone, replaced by a happy, confident, talkative person. We went to a party and I was no longer a wallflower. To say I liked the way it made me feel is an understatement. But I made stupid decisions. I was always the designated driver. I was and still am completely against drunk driving (really, who isn't?), and yet that night I got in the car with someone drunker than I was. And I got soooo sick. Spent the night throwing up.

The next night, I wanted to go do it again. I didn't. It was EXTREMELY difficult to resist. My friends put some heavy pressure on me (wasn't it fun? C'mon, lets go party! You were so much fun last night...) I pretty much wanted to get drunk again every night for like three months before the desire faded. It scared me to death. I'm in my forties and I tell people I have over twenty years of sobriety. I am only half-joking.

I know I have the addiction gene and it was a really stupid decision to play around with alcohol. I am lucky that I was able to resist--I don't know how I did it as nowadays I have a much harder time resisting my obsessions. I worry about my kids because I grew up watching my dad drink and knew to avoid it but my husband and I don't drink or do drugs-- my kids have no reference for how bad they can be. I try to tell them to avoid it because they might have the gene, but I don't think they totally understand the consequences.

Amy Winehouse was a talented woman and it's a shame that she died so young. It's a shame that she never got to fulfill her potential. It's all such a shame...

[discoprincess]

I'm watching Anderson Cooper 360 right now. Supposedly the preliminary autopsy results are inconclusive(!)

Dr. Drew is also on giving his 2 cents as an addiction specialist. He concluded that when you have a sick person like [Amy], not everyone is going to get well, even with access to the best treatment.

[LurkerNan]

Jul 25, 2011 20:40:40 GMT -4 magazinewhore said:

A good friend of mine was a total good girl in high school: Overachiever, never tempted by drugs, never acted out, etc. She came from a family of addicts. I asked her once what she thought really helped her avoid making those kinds of mistakes as a teenager and she said the type of friends she had: They didn't do drugs or drink, they were all goal oriented, etc. I've always remembered that and I thought when I have kids I'm going to really watch the kind of kids my teenager is friendly with.

Actually there was some research done a couple years ago that indicated that for teenagers, their peer groups were more influential than their families or upbringing for a few years. So basically, it may be who you hang out with.

This makes sense. I was lucky enough to hang around with people who didn't drink, smoke or do drugs, we were a bunch of academic geeks. Throughout high school and college our goals were very clear.

My brother was never academic, so he decided to become a musician, and when that didn't work the way he wanted he bought and ran a recording studio. I thought he was happy, and had built the life he wanted, until he died from an enlarged heart due to drugs. The next day I found several huge pillow-sized bags of pot in his safe, along with a bunch of guns. I guess that's how he was funding the recording studio.

So maybe the music industry isn't any sort of place for anyone who needs to get clean and stay clean.

[Margo]

Jul 25, 2011 18:25:59 GMT -4 LurkerNan said:

I don't think people who start taking drugs do it because Life is torturing them, if that were the case they could just kill themselves and be done with it. They start taking drugs or smoking or drinking or fucking around (whatever their addiction is) because they say to themselves "Ok - that person couldn't handle it, but I'm stronger than they are". It's Hubris, plain and simple.

I don't want to sound melodramatic, but killing yourself might not be an option if you focus on what it would do to your parents, perhaps more so for some children and parents than for others. Sometimes you feel awful and need to numb the pain. It can't be that uncommon of a feeling.

Topic: I don't have much. I've been listening to Back to Black for the past few days.

[GinFizz]

Didn't Amy attempt rehab at some point- around the time she was living on that island (St Bart's?)

[Yossarian]

I think she went to The Priory a number of times as well as doing a stint on some island treatment centre.

I wonder if she left a will?