Brand’s eulogy in The Guardian is being hailed as a beautiful tribute to his comrade, and indeed is a learned contribution to a much-needed addiction debate which Guardian columnist Tanya Gold - along with a spectrum of vacant to insightful opinion columns - introduced yesterday.
In this meta world we live in, Russell Brand’s article has spawned written e-kudos, such as this which you are reading I guess, where writers of varying levels of informedness laud his note-perfect response to what we’re told is a sudden, but not unsurprising end.
But the rhetoric used by secondary commentators, and what I’m starting to find increasingly frustrating, is starting to read like the great discourse of the ill-informed.
Talking of ‘the singer who has previously struggled with alcohol and drugs’ misses a true understanding of addiction. This became clear after Brand’s eulogy which, itself, is held in regard because he is a 'former drug addict' himself. There is a basinload of ignorance over what addiction really is.
Brand told how Winehouse was ill at ease when conversing, as he articulately described:
“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 unignorable 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.”
Addiction is a disease that overwhelms the body, all senses and sense of self. One becomes a slave to it. This is a disease which, after a glorious fix, tells you – nay convinces you – that nothing is wrong; everything is fine; it’s business as usual. It’s a disease that tells you you haven’t got it.
As Brand points out, the disease defines you but the suffering one is generally the last one to see that. Even subconsciously, when involved in active addiction, the substance becomes one’s raison d’etre; the fix is ahead of all other priorities. In recovery you are told that anything you prioritise ahead of getting well; you will lose.
So people who saw it fit to remark, ‘who cares, it’s just another addict’, have correctly defined Amy Winehouse as an addict but assumed ownership of that term like they know what it means. It’s such a chalkboard understanding of it when the term when the interspersing repercussions of being one are present in every facet of the addicts’ life. There is no area of their existence which is not dominated by the wreckage; the thoughts; the pain; the cost of their addiction. An addict is so bubblegum simple a term.
This runs parallel to the understanding of anyone as a ‘former’ or ‘recovered’ addict. I wouldn’t imagine that someone who lost half their life, most of their money, and all their friends to a devastating crack problem would indulge in the odd pipe now they’ve recovered? No, there is addiction at work that one is unlikely to be cured from, they’ve bitterly fought to get to a place where it doesn’t dominate their thoughts or actions 24/7.
Professionally clean and sober people don't aspire to revisit the lifestyle that nearly wrung them out; it’s not a chapter, it’s the whole fucking text. It came before everything when the disease was active, and similarly, battling it comes ahead of life through the other side.
When I first heard the news – this was on Twitter when the traits were on Sky, nothing had been confirmed and the BBC was nowhere to be found – Tweets were coming thick and fast in the ‘she had no one to blame but herself’, ‘should have said yes to rehab’ mould.
But someone involved in active addiction – be that alcohol, drugs, whatever – will routinely pay inhuman amounts to keep themselves down, and feed the disease. It’s also too easy to stop counting at cash; as the social, familial, professional costs, coupled with the toll it takes on one’s sense of self all show on an extortionate bill.
Another moan in relation to the notion of addiction is a disease, is to compare it to other terminal (this disease is of course terminal – the events of the last few days prove that) disease such as cancer, stroke, brain tumours. But we don’t compare heart disease to Parkinson’s, we wouldn’t liken Alzeheimer’s to depression.
Their merits, their causes, their symptoms are singularly distinctive and, basically, futile when they are manifest in someone who then needs help.
The disease – usually with some contributing factors such as genetics, lifestyle, diet etc – will pick a host. People may offer that heart disease, cancer, disability et al have less an element of ‘choice’ about them; proclaiming that an addict chooses to put alienating, crushing substances in their body.
But when you’ve watched someone drink away a wife he loves, kids he bore, a house he worked for, and a job he needed – there is no room for logic. Did he choose to drink it away? No, his disease told him to.
Then his disease thrashed him for a few more years. Then she thrashed him when he split up with her. As he fought (perhaps with the aid of the life-saving help fellowships out there) through bitter days of early recovery to ignore that sweet female voice that begged him to come back: she’d changed; they could make a go of it this time.
This may read like splitting hairs, or a more qualified – and weighted – version of what it means to be an addict. But it is unbearably relevant to the context and likely circumstances behind Amy Winehouse’s untimely death – and where we must shine a light in her aftermath.
Categorising Winehouse, Brand, and moving onto Doherty, Carl Barat, (would Noel Fielding be fair?) et al as Camden scenesters, will conjure up images of a decadent, creative subculture where people experiment on their way to writing the next Jack Kerouac novel: they imbibe like Burroughs and fuck like Hunter S.
The romance surrounding the nihilistic is palpable, and Winehouse was just a more experienced and experiencing surfer on that wave. But the prevailing message I find when chatting to fellow ex-users is that for every Hunter S. Thompson, Keith Richards or Shane McGowan figure, there’s half a million who tried and failed.
Failure this sense could be the tramp begging for a cup of tea which Brand alludes to. It could be the mild mannered recoveree who sits next to you in an office nine to five quietly appreciating the simple things, or it could be the Amy Winehouses of this word who, despite the money, fame, and popcorn glitz of it all, dies at 27, seemingly alone and having never experienced life without either chemical enhancement or its pursuit.
Amy Winehouse the talent doesn’t need to be expanded on. Her lyrics do the talking, the music acts as soundtrack, her pain is now hauntingly obvious. Describing her death as anything other than tragic – even to qualify – misses the point, pollutes the discourse on addiction, and in short we don’t learn. We judge, we tut and we move on, little the wiser.
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