By Neil McCormick
Jokes about Amy Winehouse saying "yes, yes, yes" to rehab just aren't funny anymore. The hugely talented and popular singer is in such a state, you have to fear for her survival.
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destructive romantic |
Amy has previously admitted to cocaine, marijuana and heavy alcohol use, but recent confessions that she has also been using heroin suggest her drug abuse has gone past the point of no return. Once drug experimentation embraces heroin, the descent is swift.
It takes an average of 10 years to pull out and many never make it.
It is a desperately sad state of affairs for a woman of 23 who has emerged as one of the strongest and most individual talents of modern British pop.
When I first met Amy in 2003 she had just released her first album, Frank. She was 19, healthy, beautiful and amusingly outspoken, her knowledge and love of music shining through her conversation.
Resolutely working class, from a cockney Jewish family steeped in music, her parents divorced when she was nine, although she remained close to both.
I watched her perform in a Pizza Express with her father Mitch, a Sinatra-singing taxi driver, and met a loving family clearly proud of Amy's success.
Such was the bond, I was astonished to learn that none of them had been invited to her Las Vegas wedding this year.
Evidently there is no love lost between the respective in-laws, with each blaming the other for their children being led astray.
The two fathers reportedly almost came to blows during a recent crisis meeting.
Her husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, a former record company runner, is a self-confessed drug user and is being portrayed as the villain in this relationship, but it is worth remembering that he too has been in and out of rehab with his wife.
While we may be horrified at Amy's decline, it is hard to be surprised.
For all its feistiness her debut album suggested a self-destructive romantic with poor taste in men, traits emphasised on her second, Mercury Prize-nominated album, Back to Black.
Quite apart from the bravura Rehab, where she tempted fate by claiming music was enough to soothe her demons, the album's stand out tracks include You Know I'm No Good, and the ominously titled Addicted.
Music is an expression of personality, and there is a reason that so many of the most compelling artists have suffered from debilitating habits and dysfunctional relationships. It is not just that drugs are prevalent in the music business.
There is a certain kind of character whose emotions are on the surface and who has little control of their inner life yet is able to express themselves most fully in the immediatecreative gratification of performance.
When you look at the list of self-destructive stars, from Billie Holiday to Pete Doherty, they are the kind of artists who sing as if their lives depended upon it.
Like Doherty, Amy will probably continue in reckless fashion until she hits rock bottom. And she will almost certainly keep making music all the way down.
But if she wants to fully realise her talent and, more importantly, reclaim her health and dignity, she really does need to go to rehab. And stay there.