I've written about the late Amy Winehouse before. This week, I saw the new documentary about her life entitled "Amy". As a supremely talented jazz singer, songwriter, and musician, Amy Winehouse was someone you couldn't ignore once you heard her voice...and listened to what she was telling us all. It's still hard to believe that she was taken at just 27 years old (back in July of 2011) because she couldn't stay sober and decided to go back to drinking one weekend.
As someone who has been trained on a chemical dependency unit, alcoholics and/or drug users often have no idea why suddenly stopping their drinking/drug use or starting back up again (once clean and sober) can kill them. I've often told the story of one woman in her 40s who drank a fifth of vodka every day. When she became sick (with the flu), she stopped drinking that particular day. After going to bed that evening, her partner found her in the morning rigid and cold to the touch. She had died during the night. Just like Amy Winehouse. (Who drank, went to bed, and died sometime during the night.)
A brain seizure can happen anytime when an alcoholic or drug addict flips their own script and "just stops" or "just starts back up " using their drug(s) of choice. To complicate matters, a sudden onset of "flu like" symptoms often signals withdrawal---NOT the legit flu. As such, the 40-something woman just mentioned here was most likely experiencing withdrawal symptoms. That's the insidiousness of alcohol and drug use and the addiction cycle; you don't know at what point you need "more" in order to feel as good as you first did back in the day (when you started drinking and/or smoking weed, popping pills, and whatever else you do). But every active addict eventually takes and ingests "more" in order to avoid being and feeling extremely sick. Over time, avoiding the "sick" feelings is more of a priority than getting high or buzzed. Yikes! Talk about a script flip that sucks big time! Ask any former heroin addict; eventually the high is lame no matter how much one takes...but the "sick" is wicked and relentless when it comes...
Amy Winehouse was the product of a stay-at-home mom and a taxi-cab driver who started cheating on his wife when Amy was eighteen months old. According to Amy in the documentary, her dad was "never home" at night and her mother was left to raise Amy and her older brother as basically a single parent. In the documentary, it is mentioned how Amy was a difficult child and once told her mother that she shouldn't be so "soft" on Amy. At the time, Amy was nine years old. Amy focused on music as a way away from her difficult childhood and the ultimate divorce between her parents. Since the documentary has been released, Amy's father has been very verbal in his disapproval of how he was portrayed in it. Oh well. Like I've said before, feelings come and go like traffic...but the facts stick around forever....
The documentary was actually very depressing once one realizes that no matter how talented and gifted Amy Winehouse was....there were forces working against her ability to succeed as a human being from the get go. She was labeled "difficult" early on in her life...there was very little structure surrounding her....the lack of a sound and stable support network....too much freedom too soon after her parents' divorce...and on and on it went. By the time she met her future husband who introduced her to heroin, it would just be a matter of time for Amy literally and figuratively.
Amy's story is worth seeing. For me, it demonstrated how people don't merely "drink" or "do drugs" because it just tastes so good or feels so right. There is always and I do mean ALWAYS a back story that we would rather ignore and deny. I found it extremely disturbing when it was mentioned how Amy, in the presence of her father one famous, would sit on his lap and "turn into a seven year old". What the...?? Just so sad and tragic.
Amy Winehouse was truly a little girl lost. And now she is dead because...??? Because we typically don't know what we got til it's gone...
Untl next time...
As someone who has been trained on a chemical dependency unit, alcoholics and/or drug users often have no idea why suddenly stopping their drinking/drug use or starting back up again (once clean and sober) can kill them. I've often told the story of one woman in her 40s who drank a fifth of vodka every day. When she became sick (with the flu), she stopped drinking that particular day. After going to bed that evening, her partner found her in the morning rigid and cold to the touch. She had died during the night. Just like Amy Winehouse. (Who drank, went to bed, and died sometime during the night.)
A brain seizure can happen anytime when an alcoholic or drug addict flips their own script and "just stops" or "just starts back up " using their drug(s) of choice. To complicate matters, a sudden onset of "flu like" symptoms often signals withdrawal---NOT the legit flu. As such, the 40-something woman just mentioned here was most likely experiencing withdrawal symptoms. That's the insidiousness of alcohol and drug use and the addiction cycle; you don't know at what point you need "more" in order to feel as good as you first did back in the day (when you started drinking and/or smoking weed, popping pills, and whatever else you do). But every active addict eventually takes and ingests "more" in order to avoid being and feeling extremely sick. Over time, avoiding the "sick" feelings is more of a priority than getting high or buzzed. Yikes! Talk about a script flip that sucks big time! Ask any former heroin addict; eventually the high is lame no matter how much one takes...but the "sick" is wicked and relentless when it comes...
Amy Winehouse was the product of a stay-at-home mom and a taxi-cab driver who started cheating on his wife when Amy was eighteen months old. According to Amy in the documentary, her dad was "never home" at night and her mother was left to raise Amy and her older brother as basically a single parent. In the documentary, it is mentioned how Amy was a difficult child and once told her mother that she shouldn't be so "soft" on Amy. At the time, Amy was nine years old. Amy focused on music as a way away from her difficult childhood and the ultimate divorce between her parents. Since the documentary has been released, Amy's father has been very verbal in his disapproval of how he was portrayed in it. Oh well. Like I've said before, feelings come and go like traffic...but the facts stick around forever....
The documentary was actually very depressing once one realizes that no matter how talented and gifted Amy Winehouse was....there were forces working against her ability to succeed as a human being from the get go. She was labeled "difficult" early on in her life...there was very little structure surrounding her....the lack of a sound and stable support network....too much freedom too soon after her parents' divorce...and on and on it went. By the time she met her future husband who introduced her to heroin, it would just be a matter of time for Amy literally and figuratively.
Amy's story is worth seeing. For me, it demonstrated how people don't merely "drink" or "do drugs" because it just tastes so good or feels so right. There is always and I do mean ALWAYS a back story that we would rather ignore and deny. I found it extremely disturbing when it was mentioned how Amy, in the presence of her father one famous, would sit on his lap and "turn into a seven year old". What the...?? Just so sad and tragic.
Amy Winehouse was truly a little girl lost. And now she is dead because...??? Because we typically don't know what we got til it's gone...
Untl next time...