Amy Winehouse: The Real Story
Her struggle with depression, and all the hardships that came with the fame she never wanted.
I know I’m talented, but I wasn’t put here to sing. I was put here to be a wife and a mom and look after my family. I love what I do, but it’s not where it begins and ends.
Alcoholism, drug abuse, depression, and eating disorders. All things Amy Winehouse struggled with behind closed doors, and sometimes even in front of the camera. She had been coping for years before her fame. Amy had been facing bulimia since she was a young girl; she told her mother she had found a great new “diet”, and both her mother and father admitted they never thought anything of it. The lack of attention and structure from her family caused her to be depressed, and in the years leading to her fame, her emotional incontinence set her up for failure early in life.
When she experienced her first overdose, a close friend summarized the overview of her doctor, saying a “petite” young girl cannot maintain the level of drug and alcohol abuse that led to the overdose. However, early videos of her performing show her with thicker legs and a fuller chest — an “average-sized” woman. Amy’s “petiteness” was not natural.
Winehouse had been taking antidepressant medication since she was young. She spoke about it with a deep understanding, saying “I don’t think I knew what depression was. I knew I felt funny sometimes and I was different. I think that’s a musician thing. That’s why I write music. You know, I’m not like some messed up person. There’s a lot of people who suffer depression that don’t have an outlet, you know what I mean? That can’t pick up a guitar for an hour and feel better.” Eventually, her depression led to her alcoholism.
According to the National Eating Disorder Association, “research suggests that nearly 50% of individuals with an eating disorder (ED) are also abusing drugs and/or alcohol, a rate 5 times greater than what is seen in the general population.” Commonly, people with eating disorders abuse drugs and alcohol in order to suppress their appetite, and they can also be abused for avoidance-based coping. It was apparent that Amy was using these coping mechanisms to face her newfound fame.
Constantly being scrutinized by the public eye, Amy didn’t realize what had become of her. In her 2018 documentary ‘Amy’, when asked her opinion of fame, Winehouse said, “I don’t think I could handle it, I think I would go mad. It’s a scary thing. Very scary.” And she was only foreshadowing her own future.
A lot of her drug abuse was associated with her boyfriend-turned-husband, Blake Fielder-Civil. It has been said that Winehouse only started taking crack cocaine and heroin because he introduced them to her, and he made them easily accessible for her. Amy, being the naive girl in love, agreed with eagerness to do the things he did, because she said she wanted to “feel what he felt”, though they ended up divorcing in 2009.
But, despite all of these hardships and struggles, Amy Winehouse still was nominated for 6 Grammy Awards. This is when her life came to a boiling point. Her friends and family staged an intervention for her, making her sign a contract stating that she would be sober for the month leading up the the Grammys. She signed, and then did as promised; she got clean. She went on to win 5 of 6 Grammy nominations, and celebrated with a triumphant performance. Afterwards, she went on vacation to St. Lucia Islands, where she stopped using drugs for a two month period; yet her drinking was as prominent as ever. Her mental health was also rapidly deteriorating, as she had been arrested and charged for assault twice during her stay on the islands.
The year following her vacation, Winehouse attempted a European tour. The short-lived tour was canceled after a show in Serbia, where Winehouse was too drunk to perform. This landed her back in rehab, where the doctors come to conclusion that she had been drinking in place of heroin and cocaine. Her body was so frail from her bulimia, hard-drug use, and alcoholism, that if she continued to drink in the manner that she was, her organs would shut down very quickly.
The same year, about a week after she left rehab, she was found dead of alcohol poisoning.
Amy Jade Winehouse was the truly the voice of a generation. Her music touched millions of hearts throughout her years of stardom, and despite the persona that the public eye created of her, despite the lack of security and love that she wanted from her parents, despite her addictions, she sold millions of records and created two legendary, award winning albums that would better the lives of millions of people all over the world.
