Amy Winehouse Dead at 27

[TheBEast]

Yes sad to see it end like that for anyone, but what I want to know is why is a pop artist dying being covered so much in the Wall Street Journal? Is her dying somehow business news??

 

[kingdom-tele]

I have a deep respect for people who face their respective demons and make heroic efforts to conquer them much was discussed by one of this threads posters . That is no small task and i'm certain the effort made to get straight is life altering and the stuff of courage .

How do you know she didn't?

Pretty high pedestal you've built for yourself to be able to look down at anyone not living to your standard. Then again, it is a lot easier to go through life making judgements on others than address your own compulsions

 

[Glenn]

That's a shame. 27 is too young for anyone.

 

[SkiDork]

its impossible for a non-addict/alcoholic to understand what is going on in the mind of one. To judge one as being weak of character simply points out the fact that you are not one, nothing more.

 

[Warp Daddy]

How do you know she didn't?

Pretty high pedestal you've built for yourself to be able to look down at anyone not living to your standard. Then again, it is a lot easier to go through life making judgements on others than address your own compulsions

You assume that this feedback was personalized it isn't -, but it is honest and straighforward and does not mince words or cloud meanings.

I believe in Keeping the bar high in terms of expectations . The alternative often sub - optimizes potential.

The key is to provide honest feedback regularly that helps to create an environment for motivation to occur .Feedback is the breakfast of champions. Love the person BUT do not encourage or reward OR ignore the behavior . Behavior HAS consequences both directly and what is oft overlooked INDIRECTLY -- This is all i'm saying .


I have seen lots of difficulty with both orgs and folks who over stimulate the "self - esteem " building movement whereby mediocrity in the extreme or WORSE is the end result . My goal as an educator was to maximize human potential

OH And to be sure in my life i've had ample time for reflection and analysis both personal and organizational.and have been both the subject of and teacher of a myriad of profiling Psych, Communications and Personality profiles Did this with grad students , and several Fortune 100 clients as a consultant

Self reflexive analysis is healthy ! And BTW thanks for YOUR feedback

 

[bvibert]

Sadly, I do not know who she even was.

Same here.

 

[JimG.]

Can't say I didn't see that one coming.

So so true, sadly.

She seemed like someone who battled these problems from the start.

 

[kingdom-tele]

You assume that this feedback was personalized it isn't -, but it is honest and straighforward and does not mince words or cloud meanings.

I believe in Keeping the bar high in terms of expectations . The alternative often sub - optimizes potential.

The key is to provide honest feedback regularly that helps to create an environment for motivation to occur .Feedback is the breakfast of champions. Love the person BUT do not encourage or reward OR ignore the behavior . Behavior HAS consequences both directly and what is oft overlooked INDIRECTLY -- This is all i'm saying .

I get where your coming from WD, but whats the difference between the person with self destructive behavior that leads to premature death vs. the person who lives compulsively to attain the ideals of others, lives in misery and takes it out on their family for decades

painting everyone who turns to drugs to manage internal conflict as having weak character seems immensely narrow minded. Are the millions of people on anxiety meds in society also weak in character, simply need better "feedback", or are they not included in the paradigm because their drug use is more socially acceptable

 

[Warp Daddy]

Your example is rather close ended , Life is not an either /or proposition, but a myriad of choices that lie in the excluded middle .

E.G. If u mean working in a job u can't stand by all means change it to suit your KSA's ( Knowledge, Skill and Attitude).Compulsion is usually not a good long term situation . $$ alone will not be a long term satisfier , You need a complimentary non toxic environment .

Not painting "everyone" ,simply saying by CHOOSING illegal drugs not under medical sanction as a coping mechanism is IMHO /FWIW both a poor outcome / weakness.

I get that others feel differently( it may be generational ) ---thus we may at best agree to disagree .

I'm done

 

[wa-loaf]

Russel Brand actually writing a very good post about Amy and addiction:

When you love someone who suffers from the disease of addiction you await the phone call. There will be a phone call. The sincere hope is that the call will be from the addict themselves, telling you they’ve had enough, that they’re ready to stop, ready to try something new. Of course though, you fear the other call, the sad nocturnal chime from a friend or relative telling you it’s too late, she’s gone.

Frustratingly it’s not a call you can ever make it must be received. It is impossible to intervene.

I’ve known Amy Winehouse for years. When I first met her around Camden she was just some twit in a pink satin jacket shuffling round bars with mutual friends, most of whom were in cool Indie bands or peripheral Camden figures Withnail-ing their way through life on impotent charisma. Carl Barrat told me that “Winehouse” (which I usually called her and got a kick out of cos it’s kind of funny to call a girl by her surname) was a jazz singer, which struck me as a bizarrely anomalous in that crowd. To me with my limited musical knowledge this information placed Amy beyond an invisible boundary of relevance; “Jazz singer? She must be some kind of eccentric” I thought. I chatted to her anyway though, she was after all, a girl, and she was sweet and peculiar but most of all vulnerable.

I was myself at that time barely out of rehab and was thirstily seeking less complicated women so I barely reflected on the now glaringly obvious fact that Winehouse and I shared an affliction, the disease of addiction. All addicts, regardless of the substance or their social status share a consistent and obvious symptom; they’re not quite present when you talk to them. They communicate to you through a barely discernible but un-ignorable veil. Whether a homeless smack head troubling you for 50p for a cup of tea or a coked-up, pinstriped exec foaming off about his “speedboat” there is a toxic aura that prevents connection. They have about them the air of elsewhere, that they’re looking through you to somewhere else they’d rather be. And of course they are. The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of the day with some purchased relief.

From time to time I’d bump into Amy she had good banter so we could chat a bit and have a laugh, she was “a character” but that world was riddled with half cut, doped up chancers, I was one of them, even in early recovery I was kept afloat only by clinging to the bodies of strangers so Winehouse, but for her gentle quirks didn’t especially register.

Then she became massively famous and I was pleased to see her acknowledged but mostly baffled because I’d not experienced her work and this not being the 1950’s I wondered how a “jazz singer” had achieved such cultural prominence. I wasn’t curious enough to do anything so extreme as listen to her music or go to one of her gigs, I was becoming famous myself at the time and that was an all consuming experience. It was only by chance that I attended a Paul Weller gig at the Roundhouse that I ever saw her live.

I arrived late and as I made my way to the audience through the plastic smiles and plastic cups I heard the rolling, wondrous resonance of a female vocal. Entering the space I saw Amy on stage with Weller and his band; and then the awe. The awe that envelops when witnessing a genius. From her oddly dainty presence that voice, a voice that seemed not to come from her but from somewhere beyond even Billie and Ella, from the font of all greatness. A voice that was filled with such power and pain that it was at once entirely human yet laced with the divine. My ears, my mouth, my heart and mind all instantly opened. Winehouse. Winehouse? Winehouse! That twerp, all eyeliner and lager dithering up Chalk Farm Road under a back-combed barnet, the lips that I’d only seen clenching a fishwife fag and dribbling curses now a portal for this holy sound. So now I knew. She wasn’t just some hapless wannabe, yet another pissed up nit who was never gonna make it, nor was she even a ten-a-penny-chanteuse enjoying her fifteen minutes. She was a fucking genius.

Shallow fool that I am I now regarded her in a different light, the light that blazed down from heaven when she sang. That lit her up now and a new phase in our friendship began. She came on a few of my TV and radio shows, I still saw her about but now attended to her with a little more interest. Publicly though, Amy increasingly became defined by her addiction. Our media though is more interested in tragedy than talent, so the ink began to defect from praising her gift to chronicling her downfall. The destructive personal relationships, the blood soaked ballet slippers, the aborted shows, that youtube madness with the baby mice. In the public perception this ephemeral tittle-tattle replaced her timeless talent. This and her manner in our occasional meetings brought home to me the severity of her condition. Addiction is a serious disease; it will end with jail, mental institutions or death. I was 27 years old when through the friendship and help of Chip Somers of the treatment centre, Focus12 I found recovery, through Focus I was introduced to support fellowships for alcoholics and drug addicts which are very easy to find and open to anybody with a desire to stop drinking and without which I would not be alive.

Now Amy Winehouse is dead, like many others whose unnecessary deaths have been retrospectively romanticised, at 27 years old. Whether this tragedy was preventable or not is now irrelevant. It is not preventable today. We have lost a beautiful and talented woman to this disease. Not all addicts have Amy’s incredible talent. Or Kurt’s or Jimi’s or Janis’s, some people just get the affliction. All we can do is adapt the way we view this condition, not as a crime or a romantic affectation but as a disease that will kill. We need to review the way society treats addicts, not as criminals but as sick people in need of care. We need to look at the way our government funds rehabilitation. It is cheaper to rehabilitate an addict than to send them to prison, so criminalisation doesn’t even make economic sense. Not all of us know someone with the incredible talent that Amy had but we all know drunks and junkies and they all need help and the help is out there. All they have to do is pick up the phone and make the call. Or not. Either way, there will be a phone call.

 

[Nick]

I find it amazing that people who are that hopped up on various narcotics can succeed so greatly in life at all..... I probably wouldn't even want to leave the house.

 

[kingdom-tele]

Life is not an either /or proposition, but a myriad of choices..

I agree.

 

[Edd]

Yes sad to see it end like that for anyone, but what I want to know is why is a pop artist dying being covered so much in the Wall Street Journal? Is her dying somehow business news??

I'd guess it's because Rupert Murdoch owns the WSJ. His priorities are less about journalism and more about what sells a paper.

 

[gmcunni]

her death (any death of someone so young) is a tragedy but i can't help be skeptical with this -

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/44241470/ns/today-entertainment

article says alcohol was present but no ILLEGAL drugs found in her system. I can't help but think LEGAL drugs (prescription) had to be a factor.

 

[o3jeff]

From the stories I heard she had quit using drugs but I think the problem was she didn't go thru detox but instead quit cold turkey without using prescriptions drugs to gradually bring the "high" down or to clean the body of the drugs slowly and that could of possibly been what killed her.

 

[gmcunni]

From the stories I heard she had quit using drugs but I think the problem was she didn't go thru detox but instead quit cold turkey without using prescriptions drugs to gradually bring the "high" down or to clean the body of the drugs slowly and that could of possibly been what killed her.

i don't know her story (not a fan of her music) but if she was clean i'd have expected the report be NO DRUGS in her system. Qualifying it with "illegal" just screams out to me.

 

[Glenn]

I thought they reported that she was on some prescription pills at the time of her death?

 

[Geoff]

Amy Winehouse.... sober for 30 days

 

[hammer]

Alcohol poisoning...

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/26/world/europe/uk-winehouse-inquest/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

 

[Dylan]

Alcohol poisoning...

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/26/world/europe/uk-winehouse-inquest/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Those around her have a lot of responsibility for this too. Just sayin'.