Amy Winehouse dies at age 27

Agree with Tacitus, she could sing and she did have talent but drink and drugs blew all that away. The pressures of being in the media spotlight must be absolutely relentless, besides all the hangers on. Some people can cope I suppose, but some people just aren't strong enough. Seems like her mum and dad tried their best but she just got overwhelmed, poor kid.
Any loss of young life is terribly sad, but the events in Norway are on a scale that's hard to take. Seeing the news reports and reading the papers this morning is really upsetting.

Some people in this thread wouldn't know a true artist even if she snorted a line of coke from their own personal pedestal.

R.I.P. Amy... Great voice - great artistry. Really sad to not have you around anymore.

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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".

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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.

She didn't really "do it to herself" though. If it hadn't been drink and drugs it could just as easily have been any other vice you can think of. Addiction is not something that can be turned on and off at will, some people can break free, others can't. There's a reason so many ex-alcoholics never drink again, because they know that the second that liquid hits the back of their throat they'd instantly fall off the wagon and may never get back on again.

Her death wasn't the result of a personal lifestyle choice, it was the result of a mental illness that stopped her from leading a normal life, that stopped her from being able to cope with the world around her once she'd dabbled. Sure, she should never have tried the stuff in the first place, but hers wasn't exactly a normal life. Most of us would never develop a cocaine addiction for example, not necessarily because we have less addictive personalities, but also because finding the stuff would prove next to impossible. We hear enough stories on TV, in magazines and in autobiographies about how easily obtained these things are in the Celeb World, I don't find it hard to imagine how easy it would be for her.

I'm curious, do those who think Amy brought this on herself also think sufferers of chronic depression need to cheer up? That people with tourettes need to behave themselves? That people with dyslexia are simply less intelligent than their peers?

Addicts aren't weak, and they're not selfish, they just need help. It's a mental illness, it's not shameful. These people don't just need support groups and medical advice, they need to be understood by a wider audience, something I dearly hope happens as a result of yet another young celebrity losing their life to illness in the public eye.

Amy Winehouse has my fullest and sincerest sympathy, as do her family and friends.

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"When I was younger, I always wanted to be somebody. Now that I'm older, I realise I should've been more specific."

I don't think the two are analogous. You are born with depression, but not born addicted to drugs or alcohol.

I am certainly sympathetic to the idea that some people are very heavily predisposed to addiction, and that you can't just browbeat every addict out of being an addict, but I don't think we can say there is no component of choice, either, particularly at first. Certainly not to the degree that I would put it directly alongside conditions one's born with.

it seems pretty obvious that Winehouse had very little if any self-esteem, something routed in depression. the addictive personality is just a symptom of the cause.

You can't be born with depression, it's an emotion not a disease

Oh boy

here we go

Genetics do have an effect on your susceptibility to depression.

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No, not clinical depression. It's a mental illness.

Not specifically to drugs or alcohol no, but that's not really the point. Studies have been done which show that some people can be genetically predisposed to addictive behaviour, so it actually can be something you're born with.

If someone with addictive tendencies never came into contact with hard drugs or only drank occasionally that doesn't necessarily mean they'll never be an addict. You can't become a heroin addict if you never take heroin.

As for the choice at the start, yes drug addicts do make that initial choice of whether to take it or not, but for some that's where the choice ends. Can it really be said that it's a person's choice when they're injecting needles into their bodies in places they rarely notice, because they've run out of other places to do so?

It's also suddenly occurred to me that I'm discussing addiction, and my avatar is Doctor House

All I Know is some people as screwed up as her have overcome their addictions. Some addicts turn their life around like Robert Downey Junior and some die from it. Mental illness or addiction or whatever she had is not incurable. But first you have to want to get better, to admit you have a problem. Winehouse never did that from all accounts so that makes her less sympathetic to me.

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It reminds me of a toilet paper on the trees
- Paula

I wonder if her death hadn't coincided with the senseless slaughter of complete innocents in Norway?

The whole thing takes me back to Richie Edwards' disappearance. He was another who just seemed too fragile to cope with, well, life.

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"Critics are like eunuchs in a harem; they know how the Tatty 100 is done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves." - Brendan Behan

That's kinda harsh. Winehouse was only 27. Robert Downey Jr. was having problems all the way up to his late 30's/early 40's. Amy Winehouse just happened to have died at a young age. I don't know hardly anything about Amy Winehouse, but I think she still had time to turn her life around. Robert Downey Jr. gets a free pass because he was successful (for now) but yet he took longer to do it?

Plus, I would say Robert Downey Jr.'s example is even worse because he did manage to beat his problems and now he's become this uber-cool actor and role model. He sends a message to people, whether he wants to or not, that yes, you can experiment with drugs. Do it. If you get addicted or your life turns to crap because of it, don't worry, you can beat it all and come out on top someday like Robert Downey Jr.! Don't worry -- Robert went through it all and look where he is now. Try drugs -- Robert's an example that they don't have to wreck your life totally.

At least with Amy Winehouse dying, there's a deeper message: Do this and die like her. She is a warning.

People who read into things like that deserve what they get. Naivety is a hell of a vice these days.

VH1 and a few other stations are playing a lot of her videos today, they just seem to play Rehab more then the others, seems kinda mean to be doing that to her.

I was thinking this too.

If people want to want to think Whinehouse deserved what she got, be my guest. I don't agree with you, but I can at least understand that. However, vilifying one addict for dying, but finding another sympathetic because they survived doesn't set well with me. Downey could have died, but because of circumstances or whatever he didn't. I certainly commend Downey for being able to recover. It's a so very hard thing to do. But he and Whinehouse were swimming in the same pool; if she deserves contempt, so does he.


This part of your post, I disagree with. I can't imagine anyone examining Downey's life and coming up with that message. I still think all he went through would be a deterrent from doing drugs in the first place. I would hope.

Yeah, but how many videos does she even have? I think I read that she's only had two released albums -- a third was finished, but hasn't been released yet. It's not like she's Michael Jackson with a bunch of hit videos he's starred in over the years.

My favourite Amy Winehouse song, "You Know I'm No Good"

&ob=av3n

"I cheated myself, like I knew I would
I told you, I was trouble
You know, that I'm no good"

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TOP 100 | "Don't let the bastards grind you down!"

It all depends on the person. I don't know of any people who do drugs because Robert Downey Jr. did them, but I can imagine that he'd be like a drug role model to people in a bad way instead of a good way. Especially with men.

I mean, as I see it, drugs are alluring. Drugs are going to be something that people will always seek out, no matter if there's tons of horror stories about them out in the world. All it takes is someone to know that Robert Downey Jr. survived drugs for them to make the decision to try it. Maybe they know his story or maybe they find him cool and like a role model or something, but it's a fact that Robert Downey Jr. didn't die from drugs.

I don't know who might reason with themselves to do drugs just because Robert Downey Jr. did them -- to be honest, it sounds like something I might say to myself if I was ever in the situation. But, hey, now I have Amy Winehouse being dead to scare me into the other direction.