Cigarettes, alcohol and photos left with flowers and messages near the house where Amy Winehouse was found on 23 July. Photograph: Carl Court/AFP/GettyAmy Winehouse is dead and any useful understanding of the mental illness that killed her seems far away. Already the portrait is painted and ready to become myth.
There is tiny Amy with the frightened eyes, tormented by her talent and the chaos it brought, famous at 21, dead at 27, now a member of the repulsively named "27 Club" of musicians who were also addicts and died at 27 – Joplin, Hendrix, Morrison, Cobain.
It was obvious years ago that Winehouse sick was more interesting than Winehouse sober.
Winehouse w
as simply an alcoholic and drug addict who had no idea of her own worth or how to cure herself. She died at 27 not because she was the magical mystical twin of Janis Joplin, but because 27 is a normal age for the body of a compulsive user of hard drugs and hard alcohol to give out.Thousands like Winehouse die every year, and they are not venerated, or even pitied. We will not educate ourselves about the disease, or reform drug laws that plunge addicts into a world of criminality and dependence on criminals.
No one yet knows what causes addiction, or how to cure it. The disease is impenetrable to outsiders. Addiction is still uniformly called "a self-inflicted disease" and only the most enlightened doctors will recommend Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous, self-help groups that sometimes get results, although no one knows why.
She was in the Priory Rehabilitation Center this summer. She stayed a week, came home and died. She died for nothing, because she thought she was nothing.
Not that we will learn; the beehive was too high, the eyes too photogenically tormented, the voice too beautiful. Her new album will be released and it will sell 10 million copies, maybe more. And there, reader, is your meaning. The addict is dead. Long live the myth.
By Tania Gold
Adapted from The Guardian
