Amy Winehouse and the galloping 'high horse'

I am not attempting to write a piece on 'poor Amy Winehouse' but I am sad for the death of a talented and tormented young 27 year old and find the rise in patronising, moralistic opinion pieces on how we should not feel sorry for someone who brought such a demise on herself quite sickening. An article I was today sent by the Australian Mail journalist Amanda Platell made me feel quite lucky I do not share the views of a Conservative right-wing person who gets a sense of superiority and empowerment by mocking and judging the actions of another in circumstances so unimaginable to most they are hard to even believe. Her reckless and insulting journalist-style that saw her take the feelings of a personal friend of Amy’s who quoted ‘she never did anyone any harm’ to produce an article that lays blame to the rise in female alcohol consumption and public disorder simply highlights the lack of intelligence this woman has in being able to understand the excruciating frustration of drug addiction and fatal consequences. Her complete inability to see the irony of fans leaving behind bottles of vodka with flowers outside Amy’s London flat instead saw snobby comments on the legacy of alcoholics and future drug-addicts Amy had created and was leaving behind. The moral high-ground can be a nice place for some and very comforting.

However, let’s not forget that Amy Winehouse did not choose to become a drug addict and lose her life at 27, even if the addiction helped see her produce one of the best albums of the last two decades which is likely to see sales match those it previously enjoyed when it was first released.

I learnt of the death of Amy Winehouse whilst on a hen do last weekend and was still getting to grips with the horror unfolding in Norway and the monster Anders Breivik shooting dead nearly 70 people in a bid to make a stand against Islamic culture spreading in Europe. However, in a strange way I was more shocked about Amy. When disastrous world events occur you feel a sense of disbelief but, unless directly or inadvertently affected it is inevitable that you feel desensitised by the event. In a way, you can't put yourself in a situation where , for example, a gunman appears out of the blue dressed as a policeman and lures you into a false sense of security before shooting you dead, and therefore cannot comprehend it. It is something you may see in a film or on a television programme as the concept is so sinister and shocking it simply could not happen in real life.

However, in the case of Amy Whitehouse, the surprise was more on how unsurprising it was. She died from what is most probably a drug overdose and we have witnessed her tragic demise and destructive relationship with drugs for years now. For a time, Amy dominated the newspapers and magazines with stories focused on her weight loss, her social life, her drug habits, her friends, her love affairs, etc, and she became a celebrity known for her erratic and anti-social behaviour rather than her music- which to be fair was more interesting to journalists and the public as we were witnessing directly a drug-addict living their life in full view doing things that were always shocking. The photo of her blood-stained ballet pumps where she injected herself with heroin was so visually horrifying it captured the media worldwide. Not many of us will know a real drug-addict like Amy and her lifestyle had a real star-quality about it because most of us could not imagine living such a life. Does that make it desirable? Not at all. We loved to revel in our own superiority led by the newspapers. But once again, we became desensitised to it- you could have had pictures of Amy on the front cover of the Metro weighing 6 stone and stumbling out of a pub and it would not have phased most readers commuting to work as they had seen it so many times before. #

But now the reality has hit- she has died from this drug addiction and alcohol abuse and no-one could do anything about it.  No longer can we pity her as she's dead. She had all the money and resources in the world and could not beat an addiction so powerful it robbed her of a life for nearly a decade before taking her away altogether. Russell Brand wrote a widely publicised blog on his friendship with Amy and his sympathies after suffering with a public addiction to drink and drugs. However, as someone who can write with authority, unlike Amanda Platell, he is able to put into context the truth about what we have seen. "Whether this tragedy was preventable or not is now irrelevant. It is not preventable today," Brand writes. "We have lost a beautiful and talented woman to this disease. Not all addicts have Amy's incredible talent ... All we can do is adapt the way we view [addiction], not as a crime or a romantic affectation but as a disease that will kill."

Amanda Platell concludes her article with the statement “When her friend said Amy never hurt anyone, it was far from true. She not only hurt herself, but every young woman who believes you can have a life of reckless indulgence without consequences.” I wonder if she knows the consequences of such an article.