The Amy Winehouse Thing

I wouldn't exactly call this a "current events" 'blog, but there are odd occasions where something in the news affects me in a bizarre way and I don't really know what else to do with it. 

It's distasteful to me, to say the least, when regular-folk weigh in on the comings and goings of famous people, as though they have some sort of intimate knowledge or special access to this complete stranger that the rest of us don't. 

In light of that, I want to be clear that I wasn't any sort of Amy Winehouse fan, but her death has made me think a lot about my own struggles with addiction and I wanted to jot down a few ideas about it for what we might call a "Very Special Post."

1. Addiction Really Is a Disease - It's hard for people who don't struggle with addiction to see it this way, but it's true.  It's not just a lack-of-moral-fiber issue and it's not a disease like lupus or cancer, either.  It's more like (or maybe exactly like) having a mental disorder, such as manic-depression or schizophrenia: you have good and bad days, there are certain things that are prone to trigger an episode, people who make it better or worse, and it's completely impossible to navigate without getting help, usually from a professional.

2. Addiction is Risky - Given that the problem, at its core, is a loss of control, being an addict always carries with it a sense in which you never really know where you're going to end up when you use. You could be just fine, you could have a lot of fun, you could have some crazy adventures that all your friends want to hear about the next day, but you could also just as easily end up in trouble with your family or the law or, sadly, dead.  Whatever your poison(s) is or are, there's always this feeling that you're betting your whole life on a slot machine every time you use.

3. Addiction Ruins What's Great About You - At one time or another, Amy Winehouse was an attractive young woman with a lot of talent, but the publicity around her career was almost a real-time documentary of her descent into madness.  She frequently cancelled shows, the ones she didn't were often dismal performances, and the internet was rife with hard-to-look-at pictures and videos of her being a strung-out mess.  It's hard to see all that and remember that somewhere beneath it is a real person who's being systematically destroyed by a truly sad and devastating problem.  And so it is with many other addicts, too.

4. Addiction Robs You of Healthy Relationships - Do you remember when she was married to some dude (I can't even remember the guy's name) and they were always popping up in the tabloids looking all strung-out and bloodied like they'd just done a bunch of drugs together and then gotten in a fist fight?  Instability breeds further instability and the only thing more chaotic than being in a relationship as or with an addict is for two addicts to end up in a relationship with each other.  Also, how often do you hear about someone dying of an overdose in a room full of people?  I realize there are exceptions, but most people die from overdoses in isolation, part of which makes sense because, obviously, if there was someone else around, they'd have called 911 or tried to help somehow.  But it's worth noting the inverse nature of increased substance use/abuse versus decreased contact with other people and/or the outside world at all.

5. Addiction Runs On Momentum - A very significant part of my recovery was realizing that, contrary to how I felt, I did have the ability to ask for help and to choose to be sober.  Even more significant than that, to me, was the realization that every time I chose to continue in my addiction, it made me more likely to continue to do so in the future.  Every time I took another drink or smoked another bowl, it entrenched me that much further into the problem, which made the control it had over my life (and, too, the damage it did) that much greater.  Inversely, I also realized that the more I continued to get help and to say "no" to my addictions, the easier it was to continue to ask for help and say "no" again later.  There's a point, though, that some people reach where the train is moving too fast to jump off of anymore.  I guess, if I can point to any one thought that made me really want to get sober, it's that I wanted to be able to get help and deal with it while I still could.

I remember hearing Dave Attell on the radio after Mitch Hedberg died, saying something to the effect of "Mitch's problem was, essentially, Mitch."  And I think that's really sad because I really liked Mitch Hedberg and I wish that he had loved himself as much as it was obvious that the people around him did. 

But I also think that something about that idea of "my problem is, essentially, me," rings true to the addict inside of me.  I used booze and drugs (and food and sex and video games and anything else that worked) because I liked who I was when I did those things more than who I was when I didn't.

The stupid thing, though, is that I didn't really even like who I was when I was using, either.  I don't honestly believe that any addict does. 

But, at the time, I didn't believe that anything better was possible.  In fact, I didn't even have the capacity to believe that.  After a while, the brain simply adjusts to accept its circumstances as base-level reality, like a scale that has recalibrated itself to include the weight that's already on it.

I guess the point I'm making is that the tragedy, to me, is less who this happened to and more that it happened at all.  Please don't misunderstand me, I don't mean to trivialize Amy Winehouse as a person or her career in any way at all, but it feels to me like a terrorist group just blew up a building, or that a serial killer has struck again and is still on the loose.  The fact that she was famous and talented just makes it that much more of a win for the other side.

For a struggle so tied to despair and hopelessness in the first place, it sends a chilling message to those of us prone to fail: "If she, with all her fame and fortune could not overcome it, what possible hope have you?"