i dated a girl with a crack habit once and it's seriously tough...even if they hit rock bottom a few times they get comfortable being there...you seriously just can't help these people...the more you help them the worse it seems to make it...

she sucked as a person, never did anything with her life...her family sucked cause they all do it too and just about every person that she knows that i've met sucked for various reasons but at the heart of how she knew them revolved around drugs...

her conversations were about nothing but drugs, the movies we'd rent together she'd get some fucked up drug thing like Requiem For A Dream (why in the fuck does every girl seem to love that movie?) or Brick or Blow or some other movie that had drugs at the heart of it...

everything about this girl was drugs...her dad got her hooked on drugs and according to her died from various Hep strains and cirrhosis of the liver...all of which was from drugs...not sure how all of that works...

but after being around that for a couple of months i had to get rid of her...it got to be too goddamn much...

and she knew she could get help but didn't want it...she enjoyed riding that fucked up dragon and rode it willingly...

she made my life hell...zero sympathy...

Listen, if someone is in the throes of addiction, whether they have all the money to get themselves out of it, or whatever, I need to feel sorry for them. i've seen the worst addicts in the world and no one deserves to have their life fucked up by that, be they famous or talented or whatever.
From what I've seen there's an incredible amount of pressure that goes into drug use, and it isn't really fair to blame the victims. Hard drugs are weapons - Opium Wars, anyone? It's like getting shot or something - and even like when you shoot yourself, you can be pathetic, but i pity you, and I hope you get better.

I've been handed hard drugs before and I've turned them down. I'm not an anti-drug person, I just don't make stupid decisions.

So, the first thing she -- and anyone -- can do when presented something like crack cocaine is not smoke it. Really, it's that simple. She obviously wanted to do crack cocaine the first time she tried it. It's not like some unknown substance. Amy Winehouse I presume isn't an ignorant dolt that can't understand what it is or know what it can do to people.

Maybe she'll learn from it. Maybe she'll straiten up and perhaps advocate against hard drug abuse. Maybe. If she does straiten out, I can tell you now I'd have newfound respect for her.

Or, maybe she'll continue down to the blackest depths until she's a suffocating skeleton. That's her choice. I can't really feel remorse for bad decisions.

caix wrote:
Nothing like hitting rock-bottom before your mid-twenties.

Hey, don't knock it.

You just have to make a sharp turn before the last bit.

I did it. It's doable.

Of course, being famous in this situation can only grease the rails.

Starving children and cancer patients I have sympathy for. Rich, self-destructive semi-talented attention whores, maybe not so much.

caix wrote:I've been handed hard drugs before and I've turned them down. I'm not an anti-drug person, I just don't make stupid decisions.

So, the first thing she -- and anyone -- can do when presented something like crack cocaine is not smoke it. Really, it's that simple. She obviously wanted to do crack cocaine the first time she tried it. It's not like some unknown substance. Amy Winehouse I presume isn't an ignorant dolt that can't understand what it is or know what it can do to people.

Maybe she'll learn from it. Maybe she'll straiten up and perhaps advocate against hard drug abuse. Maybe. If she does straiten out, I can tell you now I'd have newfound respect for her.

Or, maybe she'll continue down to the blackest depths until she's a suffocating skeleton. That's her choice. I can't really feel remorse for bad decisions.

Here, Matt, have some heroin.



Maybe she started out at a young age just sniffing coke occasionally (at those "music industry parties", you know the ones) and really liked it, which led her to eventually fall in with a hardcore cokehead crowd and graduate to crack. It happens. I've seen it before. Most people don't start out smoking crack. There's usually a progressive nature to these things. Just like most people don't just one day decide they want to try shooting up some heroin. They might mess with pills first, Tylenols or Vicodin and then maybe somebody turns them on to china white and suddenly they feel like they've "found their thing". It usually takes years for somebody to go from their first taste of a drug to doing it every day until they hit "rock-bottom".

tbone wrote:

Colonel Panic wrote:

You do make a compelling argument, Col.

This image is always going to evoke this period in Amy Winehouse's life for me.

caix wrote:So, the first thing she -- and anyone -- can do when presented something like crack cocaine is not smoke it. Really, it's that simple. She obviously wanted to do crack cocaine the first time she tried it. It's not like some unknown substance. Amy Winehouse I presume isn't an ignorant dolt that can't understand what it is or know what it can do to people.

That's sorta the nature of addiction, though, isn't it? It's not a rational thing, it's a disease. Nobody would say, "Crack? Sounds like fun, and I'm sure that all of those things I hear about it being bad are just prissy nimrods who can't take it." I don't care how stupid you are, it's obvious and rational that crack is bad for you.

Doesn't matter. Addiction is a disease, not a decision. It skews your perception.

Addicts cannot be trusted or expected to have willpower in a situation where their compulsive activity is concerned. For example, a "recovering alcoholic" might be fine to drink occasionally after a period of sustained abstinence, but there's always the possibility that he will go back to drinking excessively or uncontrollably, and that activity could become life-threatening.

As far as what draws some individuals to participate in activities which they know to be extremely harmful, nobody has a definite answer for that. I don't think any particular gene has yet been identified, but there is strong evidence for a genetic component. It is obvious that intelligence has nothing whatsoever to do with it. There are many very intelligent and well-educated people who become addicts. It doesn't discriminate against race, age, geography, intelligence, social class, or religion.

Ladies and Gentlemen I think you're all missing the bottom line here....Amy Winehouse started out in a Salt n Pepa tribute act called Sweet n Sour.

THAT is fucking tragic.

This is no more and no less sad than anyone else fucking up their life.

Saying that I don't like her music. If I'm in the mood for that type of music I have tapes from the Temptations/Flirtations/Foundations that I'll reach for every time.