It is true; yes it is true. She was long dead and gone with her ghostly skeleton still staggering around until now. The dead-woman walking has finally walked off the face of this earth and for good. It was no surprise at all as the end was practically anticipated as her only way out of the misery which her druggy-habit pigeonholed her into.Crack is whack and no one survives it barring an all out near ruthless and zero tolerance intervention. If in doubt, ask American Brittany Spears, who herself was rescued by similar intervention and today she is a better woman. British pop singer Amy Winehouse, who had for a long time now and for all intents and practical purposes, since crossed-over to the land beyond, courtesy of hard drugs, has now finally assumed room temperature. Just another celebrity-victim of a society with very sycophantic hangers-on who only said yes to her wishes, whatever that may be?
Remember Micheal Jackson; Ann Nicole Smith, DJ AM, Keith Ledger and a whole lot of other celebrities who literally speaking, killed themselves as they overdosed on some substances. Now the British version of our own dear Lady Gaga or was it the late crack-head who was being copied by Lady Gaga, has joined the litany of drug-killed celebrities of this world who unfortunately surrounded themselves with "Yes men and Yes women" who bowed at their every command. All they asked was how high their golden-egg laying goose wanted them to jump; so long as their paychecks kept on coming.
Icheoku says all that was needed was for Miss Winehouse to be "Brittany Speared" into a straight and narrow path that leads to redemption; but a weakling coterie which she surrounded herself with did not have what it takes to approach a judge for an order of forcible rehabilitation and/or confinement as a danger to both herself and the society. It is also quite ironical that the singer who sang about "REHAB" in her 2006 "Back to Black" album could not find it worthy herself to dutifully check into a rehab and for a good course. She was of a Pharisee order of do what I say but not what I do? She was lonely and alone, cried loudly for attention by acting out in such outlandish manner but sadly enough, her cry for help ricocheted back from a sound-proof wall she was trapped inside as no one listened to her desperation leading to the tragic consequences of today.
Drugs did not provide her the exit from her misery which she desperately sought, but instead has now sent her to her untimely grave. Amy Winehouse died of possibly drug-overdose and crack induced lung disease emphysema; admitted some sources said it appears she even had the virus? Like Micheal Jackson, Amy Winehouse died in her home before ambulances sent following a distress call could reach her Camden Square North London home. She was found culled up in a fetal position on her bed - may be she actually overdosed, who knows; but this remains Icheoku's position until an autopsy result declares otherwise? Amy Winehouse gone too soon.
Celebrity, fame and fortune together claims yet another victim who allowed them get into her head and she lost it. Quite unfortunate! If only she had listened to Whitney Huston's "Crack is Whack" words of wisdom and kicked the habit, may be - just may be, as there are still legion of other substances that if abused could still have proved lethal? But hey a crack-head does not know any better as their sense of reasoning had since gone out the window. Jewish Amy Winehouse was 27 years old - born in 1983 to a taxi-driver father Mitch Winehouse and pharmacist-mother Janis Whinehouse. Icheoku says what an advertorial for the bad effects of drugs! So long cracker!
Could Amy Winehouse Have Been Saved?
ReplyDeletePosted Sun Jul 24, 2011 4:08pm PDT by Chris Willman in Stop The Presses!
Who, if anyone, could have saved Amy Winehouse?
The question always arises after any drug-related celebrity death about whether the star was surrounded by sycophants and enablers who ignored health risks to keep their meal ticket in motion. But we may never have seen a celebrity case as extreme as Winehouse's: The last four to five years of her life represented as extended and public a trainwreck as pop culture has ever witnessed. This was not a Heath Ledger, whose problems were kept largely under wraps, tipped only by suspiciously heavy-lidded interviews, but a superstar who seemed to openly court disaster for a shambolic half-decade, regardless of whether she was being enabled or shamed.
Looking back at relatives' statements over the years, you don't see much denial going on.
"I realize my daughter could be dead within the year," said her mother, Janis. "We're watching her kill herself, slowly. I've already come to terms with her dead. I've steeled myself to ask her what ground she wants to be buried in, which cemetery. Because the drugs will get her if she stays on this road. I look at Heath Ledger... She's on (his) path. It's like watching a car crash -- this person throwing all these gifts away." The year Winehouse's mom went public with this prophecy of imminent doom? 2008.
"Perhaps it is time to stop buying records," said her former father-in-law, Giles Fielder-Civil, suggesting a boycott as a last resort. "It's a possibility, to send that message... It's about time that their friends and their professional colleagues say to them ‘enough is enough'." The year he went on live radio to sound this warning? Not recently, when Winehouse had little public cache to lose, but all the way back in the summer of 2007, when her star was really just beginning to rise in America.
Her father-in-law thought a boycott could force Winehouse's label to reign her in. But Winehouse's equally concerned father, Mitch, called in to the same program to say the record company was doing everything it could.
"There's only one person to blame and that's Amy," her father declared four years ago. "That's what Blake's parents have got to understand... There's no question of the record company or her family trying to work her to the bone. These are some of the accusations that have been levelled at us." In contrast to the popular conception of corporate enablers, Mitch Winehouse described "caring, loving people from the record company, people who have been in the business for 20 or 30 years who are used to seeing matters like this, crying their eyes out because of their genuine love and affection for Amy. The record company isn't as callous as some people think it is."
ReplyDeleteMitch Winehouse continued to sound like he was in anything but denial as he discussed his daughter's problems over the years. In 2008, he told the press Amy had developed early-stage emphysema. "If drugs mean more to her than breathing properly, then so be it. But the doctors have told her if she goes back to smoking drugs, it won't just ruin her voice, it will kill her."
Given the widespread awareness and acceptance of her problems, surely she could have been saved if she entered rehab, right?
Except that this was the woman who famously said "no, no, no" to rehab. Except when she was saying yes - entering a treatment facility at least four times over the years, according to reports. But those brief stints couldn't instill a sense of real personal determination.
The first time she went into rehab, by her own glib account, was before she recorded the 2007 smash "Rehab" and helped inspire the nay-saying song. "I did [go to rehab], for just 15 minutes,'" she told the Sun. "I went in and said ‘Hello' and explained that I drink because I'm in love and have [messed] up the relationship. Then I walked out."
Winehouse's parents and representatives of her management set up an intervention meeting after things started deteriorating so publicly in 2007, but Winehouse and her husband skipped it to meet his in-laws at the pub. But her troubles soon caught the attention of the law. In Norway, the young marrieds were arrested for drug possession and let off with a fine. In December, she was busted in London for interfering with a case against Blake, who was soon to spend two years in jail on an assault charge. In January 2008, Scotland Yard looked into - but ultimately didn't act on - a widely disseminated video that showed Winehouse appearing to smoke crack.
When the infamous crack video emerged, Mitch Winehouse said he wanted to get her sectioned under England's Mental Health Act to force her to clean up, but couldn't. "You might consider taking drugs is a danger to herself, but unfortunately the authorities don't," he said. As for her attitude, "Part of the problem is she doesn't think she's got a problem. She thinks she can do what she does recreationally and get on with the rest of her life."
But, following the bad spate of PR, she did check herself into rehab on January 24, 2008-a decision that must have involved eating some humble pie for a women whose star had risen on the cocky claim that she would never do just that. In any case, she didn't stay long, and emerged in time to perform via satellite on the Grammy Awards, where she swept the top prizes. It was the kind of massive validation that some observers thought might shore up her ego and render intoxication unnecessary. But that assumption hardly took into account the scope of her addiction.
The years 2009-10 brought a bevy of further incidents: an alleged assault against a theater manager who'd asked her to change seats at a performance of "Cinderella"; punching out an innocent fan at a gig, whom she mistook for someone who'd thrown an object at her; messing up the lyrics to "Valerie" at a rare, brief public performance with producer Mark Ronson; and an official end to her literally combative relationship with her husband, though, not surprisingly, she got back together with him for a time after the divorce.
ReplyDeleteIn early 2011, Mitch Winehouse said that his daughter had been clean for about "two and a half years," while cautioning that "I'm not saying her problems have gone away." This provided great reason for optimism, as the father had not been one to sugar-coat her problems in the past. A European tour was booked during this supposedly healthy time.
But things took another turn for the worse, leading her to make her final entry into rehab on May 27. As she checked into the Priory Clinic again, an official statement cited her desire to "seek an assessment" and "be ready for performances in Europe this summer." According to the English press, on her way to check into rehab, she was seen downing a small bottle of vodka. Some sources said she was devastated at a breakup with her boyfriend of one year, film director Reg Traviss, whom gossip reports suggested had had enough of her propensity for partying. In any case, this stint in treatment lasted less than a week. Winehouse checked out June 2, saying in a statement that she would be receiving "outpatient treatment," two words that sounded the loudest possible alarm bells.
The rest is well-trodden, tragic history: A disastrous and widely YouTube-d tour opening in Belgrade, followed by a quick cancellation of her remaining dates. The Daily Mail reported the claim that shortly before her death Winehouse purchased "a cocktail of narcotics" that included cocaine and ecstasy, though the authorities in London have cautioned against a leap to judgment about any overdose before autopsy reports come in.
Dr. Drew Pinsky used the occasion of her death to belittle the idea that short stays in rehab do any good for a true addict.
"I don't care what the specific cause of death was — she (had) a fatal condition," Pinsky said on CNN. "Opiate addiction takes months to years to treat... Just as with the diabetic, if they don't take their insulin, if the addict doesn't do the (full, daily) program, they inevitably in all cases will relapse, and when it's an opiate addiction, it's a progression to fatality. The prognosis for an opiate addict is worse than the vast majority of cancers."
Surely there were enablers on the lower, non-public rungs of Winehouse's entourage: the dealers and ever-present hangers-on in and around her North London flat. But when it comes to her family and professional reps, there's little reason to imagine there was anything in Winehouse's five-year-long incapacitation for them. Her father likely had it right in 2007 when he said there was one person to blame. And it was the tragic figure who, even in the face of ongoing humiliation — and in the end, possibly, because of it — couldn't stop saying "yes, yes, yes.