Amy Winehouse Passed Away

[S O F I]

Coonie, your post was deleted. I deleted it. It was reported by a member and I took action. There's no need for that in a relatively serious thread. You were given a pass early in this thread, people (synful) gave you props for being mature, you said it yourself how you don't troll anymore, and now you resort back to your old ways. It's not a good look. Post that pic in the funny pictures thread, not here.

 

[S O F I]

Let's all play nice.

 

[THEV1LL4N]

Amy Winehouse shares the cover of VIBE’s Aug/Sept issue alongside Kelly Rowland; and long time friend/producer Salaam Remi shares his final days with the lost songstress. Check an excerpt below then be sure to pick up the issue on August 16th.

I’m in London now. I’m out here because [Amy and I] were supposed to go to a wedding today. And before I could get to her yesterday she passed. We were going to the wedding of Nick Symansky, who is the person who really found her. He found her when he was a scout at 19. And he was the manager before they got the Universal deal.
They went ahead with the wedding. All I could do was sit there and imagine how many jokes she would have been cracking with me. We were in the middle of working on the album. She finished writing the record. We just hadn’t recorded.
For the last couple of weeks we were video chatting regularly. I was just talking to Nas. Both her and Nas were born on September 14, so we were going to Barbados with all of them for her birthday. She really doesn’t look forward to her birthday, you know what I’m saying?

 

[vg4030]

I remember you deleting me on Facebook because your family would read what I posted. Lmao.

lol yeah, maybe this G+ thing would be better as I can create my own raywaters circle [jerk]

He deleted me because.. eh, I dunno why. I have SH people comment or like my statuses and then friends ask me who the hell I know that lives in such-and-such place and how I know them. I'm just deleting SH people. Well, the ones I don't talk to. For some reason I left them when I deleted real people I didn't talk to a month or so ago.

I got rid of a bunch of people I never spoke to, nothing personal

 

[Shadows]

Yes, my post was mainly addressing the psychological reasons some would start using. Of course, there is a point in which thinking through it won't be enough. But I don't believe there's no way out but by giving in to the addiction and eventually death. With the right treatment one can find the commitment and tools necessary to help in recovery. With help, the addict needs to adopt an alternative lifestyle (goth or Freemasonry) that replaces the destructive patterns of addiction. Yes, it will be with them for life, but effectively maintained. Just like depression. We shouldn't give up hope. Nearly half of addicts who have been in treatment have been able to effectively remain stable.

Addiction is riddled with misconceptions. Since the discussion has turned to compassion or blame, I want to mention the biological aspects. Addiction is not a willpower problem. Addicts don't have weak characters, they're not willfully self-destructive, and they're not selfish. It's not a moral shortcoming. Blaming the person has no place in this. Addiction is a chronic relapsing brain disorder. Using drugs and alcohol repeatedly over time alters brain chemistry and function. This undermines voluntary control. Drugs affect neuronal circuits. Brain imaging studies of addicted people reveal disruption to regions that are important for normal decision-making and judgment. So the very mental resources such a person needs to overcome addiction is impaired by addiction.

Also, we need to keep in mind that a good percent of addicts have co-occurring mental or emotional disorders, such as depression, and they use drugs to self-medicate. Unless the treatment for their addiction also includes treatment of their psychological problem, it will usually fail.

And when do most people start using drugs and alcohol? When they are teens. Most teens are a mess. They hate themselves, their looks, their social skills and place, school, having to listen to parents, etc. And if they have family conflict or parental alcohol or drug abuse, they're really at risk for drug use. Then there's peer pressure. Experimentation begins in the teen years. So they are very susceptible to trying and continuing to use something that makes them feel good or better than they do most of the time. Risk-taking is what teens do. And because teens are still developing physically, biologically, and psychologically, they are at a higher risk of becoming addicted when they use during this time. They are more vulnerable, biologically and psychologically. The brain of a teen is very much still forming, and when you throw a brain-altering drug into the mix, you're messing all kinds of things up. Different neuro-adaptations result than in the adult brain. Now that shit is a part of the development of their brain and their psychology. This includes prescription drugs that so many adolescents are being giving for behavioral problems or depression. Same with smoking. It's easier for adolescents to become addicted to nicotine from less exposure than adults. Nicotine receptors in the brain are changed easier.

These teens then become adults who know better and want to stop, but their ability to make clear decisions has been impaired. In many ways, an addicted person becomes a bystander as their affliction takes over their rational thinking. Of course we should have compassion for them. Something like 20-30 million ppl in the US have drug or alcohol addictions. Should we write them off as losers? Let them pay the price for their addictions? Of course not. Some are our loved ones. Being rich has nothing to do with it. Yeah, rich and famous teens become spoiled. Who knows what emotional issues they have with fame in addition to being teens. But they make the wrong choices to deal with them. Now their brains have been altered and the most their willpower can do is eventually try treatment. Addicts don't need self-control, and they don't require discipline. They need treatment.

Jokerman, what would you say about the quote "Intention is the fundamental impulse that activates all action" ???

 

[Jokerman]

Jokerman, what would you say about the quote "Intention is the fundamental impulse that activates all action" ???

I would say that Deepak Chopra is a first-class idiot. Are you asking me what I think of that in relation to addicts? That they have to intend to use before they use , therefore...what? It's their fault?

Here, I'll make up a quote for the occasion: Addiction is the mental disorder that overcomes all intention.



 

[vg4030]

I would say that Deepak Chopra is a first-class idiot. Are you asking me what I think of that in relation to addicts? That they have to intend to use before they use , therefore...what? It's their fault?

Here, I'll make up a quote for the occasion: Addiction is the mental disorder that overcomes all intention.

(You had to quote my whole post to ask me that?)

I would also like to add that "a boner is the fundamental response to stroking ones penis"

 

[Ristol]

I would also like to add that "a boner is the fundamental response to stroking ones penis"

Undeniable.

 

[Shadows]

I would say that Deepak Chopra is a first-class idiot. Are you asking me what I think of that in relation to addicts? That they have to intend to use before they use , therefore...what? It's their fault?

Here, I'll make up a quote for the occasion: Addiction is the mental disorder that overcomes all intention.



thats exactly what i wanted you to say. thanks. i just couldn't come up with your quote.

 

[S O F I]

^lol, that has to be a joke.

 

[Shadows]

no it's not. i never agreed with the addiction to drugs it self. i agreed to the addiction of oneself feelings. If you need that much attention and cant entertain yourself, you propably have a disorder. I just didn't get all technical like Jokerman, bc frankly this isn't a college paper. it's a msg board.

I just wanted to see what Joker had to say about that specific quote that everyone tends to like. i found it in J.Coles favorites on twitter.

 

[S O F I]

If that's what you wanted to say, you'd have said it.

 

[_carmi]

RIP Amy Winehouse.

I read the whole thread and some people have no class.. She was an addict, yes. But she was also an incredible artist who deserves to be remembered for all the positive things she did. Some reports claimed she was doing better but her nervous system was so fucked up due to all of her substance abuse that she regularly suffered from seizures. I have no doubt that her health was permanently impacted by all the abuse her body has suffered from. I feel bad for her family, her bf, and the friends and relatives who care for her. It sucks to lose someone no matter what that someone did or who that someone was.

Addiction is beyond a lot of people's understanding. A lot of people judge addicts like they are despicable human beings like murderers. Addiction is not a choice. It is a daily struggle. And living through that daily struggle is what makes them admirable people. I hope she didn't OD, but instead suffered from the consequences of years of intense substance abuse. Perhaps her death will shed some light on addiction and its consequence for people who have no idea.

I like how Russell Brand put it:

When you love someone who suffers from the disease of addiction you await the phone call. There will be a phone call. The sincere hope is that the call will be from the addict themselves, telling you they've had enough, that they're ready to stop, ready to try something new. Of course though, you fear the other call, the sad nocturnal chime from a friend or relative telling you it's too late, she's gone.
Frustratingly it's not a call you can ever make it must be received. It is impossible to intervene.
I've known Amy Winehouse for years. When I first met her around Camden she was just some twit in a pink satin jacket shuffling round bars with mutual friends, most of whom were in cool indie bands or peripheral Camden figures Withnail-ing their way through life on impotent charisma.
Carl Barât told me that Winehouse (which I usually called her and got a kick out of cos it's kind of funny to call a girl by her surname) was a jazz singer, which struck me as a bizarrely anomalous in that crowd. To me with my limited musical knowledge this information placed Amy beyond an invisible boundary of relevance: "Jazz singer? She must be some kind of eccentric," I thought. I chatted to her anyway though, she was after all, a girl, and she was sweet and peculiar but most of all vulnerable.
I was myself at that time barely out of rehab and was thirstily seeking less complicated women so I barely reflected on the now glaringly obvious fact that Winehouse and I shared an affliction, the disease of addiction. 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. They have about them the air of elsewhere, that they're looking through you to somewhere else they'd rather be. And of course they are. The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of the day with some purchased relief.
From time to time I'd bump into Amy she had good banter so we could chat a bit and have a laugh, she was a character but that world was riddled with half-cut, doped-up chancers, I was one of them, even in early recovery I was kept afloat only by clinging to the bodies of strangers so Winehouse, but for her gentle quirks didn't especially register.
Then she became massively famous and I was pleased to see her acknowledged but mostly baffled because I'd not experienced her work. This not being the 1950s, I wondered how a jazz singer had achieved such cultural prominence. I wasn't curious enough to do anything so extreme as listen to her music or go to one of her gigs, I was becoming famous myself at the time and that was an all consuming experience. It was only by chance that I attended a Paul Weller gig at the Roundhouse that I ever saw her live.
I arrived late and as I made my way to the audience through the plastic smiles and plastic cups I heard the rolling, wondrous resonance of a female vocal. Entering the space I saw Amy on stage with Weller and his band; and then the awe. The awe that envelops when witnessing a genius. From her oddly dainty presence that voice, a voice that seemed not to come from her but from somewhere beyond even Billie and Ella, from the font of all greatness. A voice that was filled with such power and pain that it was at once entirely human yet laced with the divine. My ears, my mouth, my heart and mind all instantly opened. Winehouse. Winehouse? Winehouse! That twerp, all eyeliner and lager dithering up Chalk Farm Road under a back-combed barnet, the lips that I'd only seen clenching a fishwife fag and dribbling curses now a portal for this holy sound.
So now I knew. She wasn't just some hapless wannabe, yet another pissed-up nit who was never gonna make it, nor was she even a ten-a-penny-chanteuse enjoying her fifteen minutes. She was a fucking genius.
Shallow fool that I am, I now regarded her in a different light, the light that blazed down from heaven when she sang. That lit her up now and a new phase in our friendship began. She came on a few of my TV and radio shows, I still saw her about but now attended to her with a little more interest. Publicly though, Amy increasingly became defined by her addiction. Our media though is more interested in tragedy than talent, so the ink began to defect from praising her gift to chronicling her downfall. The destructive personal relationships, the blood-soaked ballet slippers, the aborted shows, that YouTube madness with the baby mice. In the public perception this ephemeral tittle-tattle replaced her timeless talent. This and her manner in our occasional meetings brought home to me the severity of her condition.
Addiction is a serious disease; it will end with jail, mental institutions or death. I was 27 years old when through the friendship and help of Chip Somers of the treatment centre Focus 12 I found recovery. Through Focus I was introduced to support fellowships for alcoholics and drug addicts that are very easy to find and open to anybody with a desire to stop drinking and without which I would not be alive.
Now Amy Winehouse is dead, like many others whose unnecessary deaths have been retrospectively romanticised, at 27 years old. Whether this tragedy was preventable or not is now irrelevant. It is not preventable today. We have lost a beautiful and talented woman to this disease. Not all addicts have Amy's incredible talent. Or Kurt's or Jimi's or Janis's. Some people just get the affliction. All we can do is adapt the way we view this condition, not as a crime or a romantic affectation but as a disease that will kill.
We need to review the way society treats addicts, not as criminals but as sick people in need of care. We need to look at the way our government funds rehabilitation. It is cheaper to rehabilitate an addict than to send them to prison, so criminalisation doesn't even make economic sense. Not all of us know someone with the incredible talent that Amy had but we all know drunks and junkies and they all need help and the help is out there. All they have to do is pick up the phone and make the call. Or not. Either way, there will be a phone call.