We have to get better at understanding the social triggers of addiction. Amy Winehouse created some of them with her song “Rehab.” It was funny back then, but today no one is laughing. Amy Winehouse is dead at the age of 27. Clearly she did not have the will to want to save herself. But this is how addiction ends. It ends exactly where the addict wants it to end; six feet under.
Addiction targets all people; rich or poor. In recovery it is often said that one of the main qualifications to enter a successful recovery is the admittance that we are losing in life, because we are. There is a lot of shortsightedness going on in the mind of the addict, but also in those who are watching and contributing. We are often called “losers” and are not willing to give those power who try to pull us down by admitting they are right, by admitting we are losers, by acknowledging we have a problem. We can’t see that this is our only hope. Our hypocritical accusers are often addicts who think they can “handle their high.” But it is also those people who keep us in the vicious cycle of addiction, as addiction among many other things, is a social problem.
Amy, like so many other talented music icons thought her talent was not enough. She empowered herself with substance abuse and it dismantled her piece by piece. It doesn’t matter in the end what people think of an addict. Shaming and blaming does not fix the problem nor does it change the devastating and deteriorating physical condition of an addict. Asking someone with a serious addiction like that of Amy Weinhouse to shape up in a few months is like asking someone with broken legs to get up and walk. Before we can help any addict we must understand what this condition does to a human being.
RIP Amy
