Amy Winehouse Dead

Not shocking but still very sad news.

I had to look her up because I was not familiar with her work.  She strikes me as a tragic character with the same demons that plagued Billy Holiday.

The Age 27 curse claims another victim.

Jim Morrison

Jimi Hendrix

Janis Joplin

River Phoenix

Kurt Cobain

Why is there so little understanding of addiction?

Quote:

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.

There was another prong to her addictive behaviour, other than incredibly over-the-top misuse of booze and drugs. She was also a poster girl for anorexia, and that is another killer phenomenon that is stranglely glamourised. It also makes the effects of a drug and drink bender all the more lethal.

That said she had a wonderful voice, and a great spirit. A terrible loss.

An autopsy of British singer Amy Winehouse has not established the cause of her death at age 27, a coroner's official said on Monday.

Histology and toxicology tests will be performed to help determine the cause of death, after the singer was found dead at her London home on Saturday. Those test results are expected in two weeks.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/story/2011/07/25/amy-winehouse-post-mortem-m...

Unfortunately in this case the media is just reflecting back what people around alcoholics do. My partner deals with addictions and sometimes it is so hard to sit and watch the people who enable him and give him attention, money or even alcohol plus a myriad of other things which allow his drinking to continue and even encourage it. The media giving her attention when she is drinking is part of a bigger societal picture of people who encourage addiction and, though interesting to note that the media is one of those people, I think there were a lot of people in her life who also encouraged it.