Amy Winehouse Addiction Comments Show a Callous Ignorance

Dead and gone. How many people think she was just stupid for being an addict? Far too many. Our society has a long ways to go in terms of learning more about addiction and respecting it as a true disease, not a lifestyle of one's choice. I have never known a single addict who enjoyed being an addict, and I have spoken with thousands of them.

I am not going to rave against all the comments I have seen in the columns and on the major channels announcing her death, but there was a period of time where the details were kept under wraps — perhaps so someone could at least inform the family about the specifics rather than hear the media claw away at the subject.

When the news did come out that it was a drug overdose, the number of people that said things like “No — I thought she was hit by a bus”, “She was an addict, what did you expect”, and some even to the effect that “She deserved it” shocked me upon actually reading them. Thinking about it all, I guess I should have expected it, but being a former addict and having fought the battle of my life, it is crystal clear to me that the majority of our population is totally ignorant as to what addiction really is. People talk about it as though it’s a stupid decision one makes, and their stupidity gives them what they deserve if they die.

In Berlin, Looking Healthy, In 2007

People..addiction is an awful disease. You can not just pick and choose a time to start it and a time to end it. If you are able to end it, as I was at 45 years old (I got lucky and for me the disease came on slowly) then you should consider yourself as blessed as a cancer patient who is in remission. If Amy Winehouse had died of cancer people would not be making all the obnoxious comments. Well get a clue — because addiction is as serious as cancer and it kills as many talented, bright people whose time comes too early. Being an addict has nothing to do with choice. No addict in the world chooses to be an addict — or wants to be an addict. It is living hell being enslaved to a drug and craving something that you know can kill you — yet you crave it so deeply you cannot say no most of the time.

Also, being a former addict, I read prejudice and callous disregard for one’s life between the lines, and could only think had I died, as tens of thousands of other addicts have, would I have been written off by some of my friends who thought “Oh well –that’s what he gets for being an addict”? It hurts to think yes, but that is the truth. I wish people could wake up about this and hope they do in the coming years as all the vets come home, 30% of them with PTSD, and turn into addicts from self-medicating from the pain of that disorder. I hope people come around and realize how difficult a life it is for an addict and that — I must say it again — it is not a life one chooses for oneself.

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• Amy Winehouse (margauxbangs.com)
• Celebrities Tweet Responses to Winehouse’s Death (foxnews.com)
• The Final Surrender of Amy Winehouse (bilerico.com)
• Amy Winehouse: Russell Brand pays tribute to “sweet and peculiar but most of all vulnerable” star (mirror.co.uk)