Amy Winehouse Dead at 27

[Omskakas]

A great talent lost to drugs, I totally disagree with the picture posted above, we are well aware of her condition, it is a disease and there is no need to mock it.

As you can see from my picture she did look like a living dead for years. This was just a thing waiting for to happen. When shooting in Norway was a tragedy, this was to me more like tragicomedy. That's why the picture.

If you call drug abuse "a disease" I can only disagree. I hate these politically correct times when nobody can be blamed for what they do to themselves.

[dB69]

...nobody can be blamed for what they do to themselves.

Would you like the society to take away your cigars because they damage your health?

[cigcars]

Would you like the society to take away your cigars because they damage your health?

IMHO cigars don't damage health...anymore than candy, sweets, carbs, you name it. Anything done to excess (alcohol use or even coffee drinking) can be harmful. So unless our govt. entrenched "babysitters" are going to take away or regulate cookies, soda, ad infinitum...

[Omskakas]

Would you like the society to take away your cigars because they damage your health?

No, but I rather choose responsibility and ability to make decisions over victimization and pampering.

[dB69]

IMHO cigars don't damage health...anymore than candy, sweets, carbs, you name it. Anything done to excess (alcohol use or even coffee drinking) can be harmful. So unless our govt. entrenched "babysitters" are going to take away or regulate cookies, soda, ad infinitum...

Officially they do, because cigars are made of tobacco and tobacco is a monster who hides behind the corner and eats everyone alive! (sarcasm)

Candies and sodas etc. are already forbidden here at schools. Sugar has been taxed extra. What else, the wave is coming and I wouldn't like to drown when the wave hits. Every single restriction of whatever is also against tobacco products. Do I have to tell that I dislike nannies?

Hmmm... I've slipped offtopic to politics - Sorry.

[Nocoins]

As you can see from my picture she did look like a living dead for years. This was just a thing waiting for to happen. When shooting in Norway was a tragedy, this was to me more like tragicomedy. That's why the picture.

If you call drug abuse "a disease" I can only disagree. I hate these politically correct times when nobody can be blamed for what they do to themselves.

Why do you continue to push this? First, medical research into the brain and addiction establishes that you are wrong about whether addiction properly can be classified as a disease. Second, it's quite unseemly to continue making fun of this woman's death. There is nothing comic about it.

[Omskakas]

Why do you continue to push this? First, medical research into the brain and addiction establishes that you are wrong about whether addiction properly can be classified as a disease. Second, it's quite unseemly to continue making fun of this woman's death. There is nothing comic about it.

Sure doctors and drug companies call anything a disease if they can make money from it.

Secondly, I did find her dead a bit funny. But that's me. Sorry if it offended you or others.

[Colt45]

And so it goes when we discuss "news stories" here at FOH - I guess we should all expect and be willing to accept various points of view.

We can disagree as long as we keep it from getting personal.

(And yes - I know I haven't always followed that mantra)

[BobKincaid]

I wasn't a fan.

It was, however, a sad thing for us to be a distant witness to a too-quick demise of a person of obvious talent. We cannot now know whither that talent might have matured.

[maximus]

another dead drug addict,so what...what she didnt know heroin can kill you..wake up and have a smell..

seriously,she chose to take drugs,no-one made her.half her concerts she couldnt even remember the

words of her own songs she was that baked out her brain..i rather feel sorry for good innocent people that meet an untimely death not some-one who chooses to take drugs..say no to drugs...

[Wicky]

I don't know. I've known players who have killed themselves with drugs and otherwise. Famous and otherwise.

All it did was piss me off and make me curse them.

Then I moved on. They chose their end.

R.I.P.

[BobKincaid]

another dead drug addict,so what...what she didnt know heroin can kill you..wake up and have a smell..

seriously,she chose to take drugs,no-one made her.half her concerts she couldnt even remember the

words of her own songs she was that baked out her brain..i rather feel sorry for good innocent people that meet an untimely death not some-one who chooses to take drugs..say no to drugs...

Which drugs? There are, after all, LOTS of them.

[Wil]

Probably not the time or place for such a debate.

[BobKincaid]

Probably not the time or place for such a debate.

Agreed, but if you see the thread above, you'll find you may be closing the barn door after a gone horse.

[ZinZan]

I am big fan of hers, she's extremely talented but that's the choice she made so be it.

[bigfunkyg]

There are certain headlines you expect to read in you lifetime ( some sooner than others). This was one of them. Tragic yes. Surprised, no. Classify her as another James belushi, jimmi hendrix, or curt cobain. It's very sad how some successful people have a strong tendency to live hard and die young.

At the same time time it difficult to imagine some talents of the past still alive today.

Elvis?

James Morrison?

Strange to think of the contributions these people would have on society if they were still alive today.

G

[Vortigan]

If you call drug abuse "a disease" I can only disagree. I hate these politically correct times when nobody can be blamed for what they do to themselves.

I have to agree.We live in times now where personal responsibility seems to have taken flight where so many things are concerned.Not so with smoking though,it seems to me.As we all here know very well,smoking and the use of tobacco in general is becoming more and more demonised whilst other vices seem to be increasingly celebrated.I've said before on these forums that I work among people.even in the medical profession,who will come in on a Monday morning and gladly boast about how much alcohol they consumed and how wasted they were over the weekend!! Are we supposed to applaud them?.I wonder what reaction I would get if I said,"Yeah it was a great weekend for me too,smoked 6 cigars"!!! It's often branded "a disease" as soon as someone famous dies from their addictions.I remember all the apologists coming out of the woodwork after George Best died and in particular one saying "Well,he never really stood a chance,his mother had been an alcoholic too"!! Oh really?.So then he didn't make the personal choice to get out of his head a thousand times before it ever became an addiction? It was just bound to happen was it?? Now I'll admit to still being a cigarette smoker and I do it,at least in part,because I'm addicted,no excuses.It's not a disease or an "addictive personality" or any of that other BS and neither would I get away with trying to say it is!!

[BobKincaid]

There are certain headlines you expect to read in you lifetime ( some sooner than others). This was one of them. Tragic yes. Surprised, no. Classify her as another James belushi, jimmi hendrix, or curt cobain. It's very sad how some successful people have a strong tendency to live hard and die young.

At the same time time it difficult to imagine some talents of the past still alive today.

Elvis?

James Morrison?

The biggest surprise, for me at least? Keef Richards. In his autobio, he chalks it up to being meticulous about doing only high quality drugs.

[BobKincaid]

A decent meditation on the topic:

http://www.russellbrand.tv/2011/07/for-amy/

[Vortigan]

A decent meditation on the topic:

http://www.russellbrand.tv/2011/07/for-amy/

Thought provoking stuff! It certainly makes me look at myself and question some of my own views,which I guess is never a bad thing.Thanks for posting.

[BobKincaid]

Thought provoking stuff! It certainly makes me look at myself and question some of my own views,which I guess is never a bad thing.Thanks for posting.

I'm not crazy abou the author as a performer, but it seems he clearly understands the circles in which he moves.

Glad you found it worth the read, Vortigan!

[pedrodepacas]

There are certain headlines you expect to read in you lifetime ( some sooner than others). This was one of them. Tragic yes. Surprised, no. Classify her as another James belushi, jimmi hendrix, or curt cobain. It's very sad how some successful people have a strong tendency to live hard and die young.

X2

[OZCUBAN]

An addict's life: hits and myths

British singer Amy Winehouse, dead at 27.

TANYA GOLD

AMY Winehouse is dead and any useful understanding of the mental illness that killed her seems far away. Already the portrait is painted and flat-packed, smelted and ready to become myth.

There is tiny Amy with the swaying beehive hair and the frightened eyes, tormented by her talent and the chaos it brought, famous at 21, dead at 27, now a member of the repulsively named ''27 Club'' of musicians who were also addicts and died at 27: Joplin, Hendrix, Morrison, Cobain. All dead, all revered - as if it was their illness that made them interesting. The initial, rushed obituaries made much of Winehouse ''making it'' into the 27 Club. Would she make it to 28 and be shut out? No, she got in, with 54 days to spare.

Why do we give so much energy to the thrilling pantomime of an alcoholic dying in the public eye, and so little to understanding the illness that took her there? It was obvious years ago that Winehouse sick was more grotesquely interesting than Winehouse sober. As she temporarily dried out, so did the press coverage. But she relapsed and came home to fame.

When an addict self-annihilates, stalked by paparazzi, it is easy to imagine the story belongs to us all. We all had a stake in Amy Winehouse, you might believe. Her fall, and the redemption that will never come now, had a universal meaning. But it didn't. Winehouse didn't belong to us; she belonged to no one, not even herself. But you can forget that. Creative addicts - particularly female creative addicts - are always clutched to the cold global breast, even as the corpse is carried out.

Take Judy Garland, little Dorothy on Benzedrine, who kicked off her ruby slippers. She was a legend even before she was pulled off the toilet she died on in Chelsea in 1969; even this year there was a play in the West End about her collapse. I saw it and could only smell yet more exploitation of a woman who always exploited herself. Sing us a song, Judy - even though you're dead!

There is no wider parable about the relationship between addiction and talent, and I think that is junk too - a straw man that burns easily. Winehouse was simply an alcoholic and drug addict who had no idea of her own worth or how to cure herself. She died at 27 - not because she was the magical mystical twin of Janis Joplin - but because 27 is a normal age for the body of a compulsive user of hard drugs and hard alcohol to give out.

Thousands like Winehouse die every year and they are not venerated or even pitied. We will not educate ourselves about the disease, or reform drug laws that plunge addicts into a shadow-world of criminality and dependence on criminals. Winehouse got away with too much, said one copper, after a tape of her using was released. Did she? Did she really? Winehouse walked barefoot through the streets because that is where the drugs were and, even as her bewildered face splatters across the front pages, drug support charities are closing, expendable in this era of thrift.

Recovery rests on the edge of the self-harming knife, because no one yet knows what causes addiction, or how to cure it. The disease is impenetrable to outsiders because it is anathema to our all-conquering species that a person can be genetically predisposed to poison themselves. Addiction is still uniformly called ''a self-inflicted disease'' and only the most enlightened doctors will recommend Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous - self-help groups that sometimes get results, although no one knows why. A psychiatrist once told me that I should try to ''limit'' my drug use; he obviously knew nothing, even as he charged £275 ($A413) for 15 minutes.

Winehouse was in the Priory two months ago. I was in the Priory

11 years ago, where I was ''treated'' for addiction, and, in my experience, the Priory is not the sort of place where many people get better. (I await the letter of complaint from their ever-vigilant marketing department.) When I was there, they offered en suite bedrooms and in-room TVs, not the absolute knowledge that a tiny flicker of the reality of the predicament is essential to stay alive. She stayed a week, came home and died. She died for nothing, because she thought she was nothing.

Not that we will learn. The beehive was too high, the eyes too photogenically tormented, the voice too beautiful. Her new album will be released and it will sell 10 million copies, maybe more. And there, reader, is your meaning. The addict is dead. Long live the myth.

GUARDIAN

Tanya Gold is a London-based freelance journalist.

[Ken Gargett]

another dead drug addict,so what...what she didnt know heroin can kill you..wake up and have a smell..

seriously,she chose to take drugs,no-one made her.half her concerts she couldnt even remember the

words of her own songs she was that baked out her brain..i rather feel sorry for good innocent people that meet an untimely death not some-one who chooses to take drugs..say no to drugs...

i said exactly the same thing and got deleted????

actually, mine was more moderate??????

[maximus]

i said exactly the same thing and got deleted????

actually, mine was more moderate??????

maybe you accidently moderated yourself Ken..LOL