Amy Winehouse, a singer who is internationally infamous for both her music and her battles with addiction, is dead at age 27, probably by her own hand as surely as if she had put a gun to her head and pulled the trigger. [On October 26, 2011, the coroner released a report that Amy Winehouse died as a result of alcohol poisoning from excessive drinking that night.] In this case, the smoking gun will likely turn out to be a drug of choice for the young and famous who have no limits placed upon them, and the trigger will have been her inability to deny herself what she surely had to know would ultimately end her life. The consequences of her decision making failures will haunt her family and her true friends for the remainder of their lives, as they struggle with the guilt from their inability to force her to get clean and sober.
I don't think anyone can deny the valiant battle fought by those close to her, especially her family, as she continued to make the decisions that would ultimately lead them down this deadly path. They loved her and supported her efforts as she made rehab a revolving door. She made a fortune off an insufficiently critical public while belting out her true intention to resist the efforts made on her behalf by those who knew better than she where this journey would end if she didn't make a change. Although she walked through the door, vowing aloud that this time it would be for real, she was still singing, "No, no, no," in her heart and mind, and the end result was a waste of time and effort for everyone involved, especially her.
And waste it is, because a young woman's life is over much too soon, and whatever she may have accomplished is going to go undone. Whether you loved her or hated her or didn't know anything about her, I hope we can all agree that a 27 year old woman should not be in a morgue, and it's a tragedy that she is, whoever is to blame.
As the parent of a child about the same age, I am saddened and sickened at the thought of what her parents have been through, and what is still to come. Their lovely daughter, the little girl they sang to, and read to, and watched grow from a baby to a teen to an international celebrity, is gone like the puff of smoke that probably started her down the path to her own destruction.
I am not much of a celebrity watcher, but at the same time, I feel dismay when I watch anyone flame out so publicly and spectacularly. They are, underneath the goofy make-up and the expensive clothing and the outrageous lifestyle and the crazy behavior, still a human being. I hurt with them as they flutter against the caged confines of their own situation, self inflicted though it may be. It is not comfortable to watch a human being fall apart so publicly, and I don't want to see anyone die at 27 from a preventable condition.
There are no easy answers, as Amy's parents could no doubt testify. We have seen too many young and vulnerable celebrities making the same bad decisions and ending up the same tragic way, all fully documented in the fan magazines and the news headlines around the world.
It can be done - Britney Spears seems to have turned her life around. But I don't think anyone can have any illusions that it took nothing less than her parents taking control of her entire life to achieve it. And in the end, even that may not be enough - we won't really know until she is once again in control of her own life whether or not someone else can take enough control to save someone from themselves if that isn't what they really want.
But it is not only the rich and famous that face the fallout from deadly addiction. We have our jails full of people who could not just say no. We have graves dotting cemetery plots of people who died too soon because of the easy availability of something that was not good for them, but which they found irresistible. We have poor families rent asunder by the aftermath of lives gone wrong. We have middle class families struggling to go on after dealing with deadly addiction in a child or parent. Wealthy parents, with all their resources, have no more power to stop the addictions of their children than anyone else.
When someone makes a mockery of rehab, there is little that can be done to force them to do better for themselves. We have observed Martin Sheen suffer for the sins of son Charlie, and felt his pain as he helplessly watched the self-destruction along with the rest of us. We gaze in wonder as someone like Amy, who "Has It All," throws it away for the lure of a silent master that ultimately takes no prisoners. We wonder if the genius is part of the addictive personality, and tacitly encourage the behavior by supporting the insanity with our time and money, attending concerts and buying records and merchandise with little regard for the outcome.
Ultimately, the loss of one 27 year old woman doesn't matter much in the larger scope of the world, however much it hurts her family and friends. But the needless death of yet another young celebrity should, at the very least, cause us to examine what we can do to save the lives of the other 27 year olds who are battling the same problems. If the very public failure of a celebrity can help someone else to do better, perhaps it will not be entirely in vain.
It's not the outcome she planned for, I'm sure. But perhaps, if through her death she encourages someone else to choose a different path, Amy Winehouse can make her life and death less of a waste. At this point, it is the only thing her celebrity will have gained her. It is surely not enough, but it's all she has left.
Rest in peace, Amy.
