From Russell Brand's Blog HERE.
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.
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, Focus12 I found recovery, through Focus I was introduced to support fellowships for alcoholics and drug addicts which 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.
5 comments:
I think another answer that needs to be found is 'what moves an addict to make that call?' She had tons of money to afford the best rehab - but that also gave her the ability to fuel the addiction and not suffer the economic consequences. Like Michael Jackson.
I think a lot of the people who made their living off of her, did not want her to take time off to get help.
She was a cash cow, and too masny people stood at the udders,
It really is sad. I loss a friend to a addiction before. It is hard to jump in and do the resue for them as much as you want to. They have to call the shot and see it for themselves, it is the only way to finally clean the addiction out. But sometimes the addiction wins. A person takes to a addiction, the addiction takes more addictions and finally the addiction takes the person. In amy's case she was just to far in and her body counld't take any more. I think even a heavy duty reheb would have killed her. Her body was so use to the drink and drugs she probably couldn't function without. So sad.
True. Touching.
joy, bob and mz. mahogany said it.
there is nothing worse then getting that phone call.
xxalainaxx
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