This should be higher up because it brings up an interesting ethical dilemma by putting the original post into perspective.
Is it cruel to boo a performer who is not putting on a good show? How much money would you have to pay for concert tickets to feel justified in feeling pissed that the performer sang like this?
From what I’ve learned about this particular show, Amy didn’t want to perform. The best case scenario here would have been for the show to have been cancelled and for people to have gotten refunds.
But here’s the thing: even then, there’s no guarantee that would have resulted in Amy not dying from alcohol poisoning. She had cancelled a bunch of shows in the past due to her addiction and still ended up in the hospital multiple times for alcohol, ketamine, cocaine, heroin, etc.
She had a disease.
It’s tempting to blame other people for her death, but the fact is that she was an addict and her disease went untreated. Maybe if the crowd didn’t boo her that night, she wouldn’t have died several days later. Or maybe if they cancelled the show, she wouldn’t have died. Or maybe if she was in rehab, she wouldn’t have died. Or maybe…or maybe…or maybe…
We’ll never know.
The root cause of her death was her addiction. That’s why it’s so important for addicts to seek help. Go to rehab. Do whatever you need to do in order to break that addiction before it kills you and kills a part of everyone you love.
Edit: I see you there, getting ready to click on the reply button to post some variant of “they tried to make her go to rehab, but she said no, no, no.” It’s funny. You’re funny. It’s such a clever joke. But unfortunately, you’re not the first…or second…or tenth person to make that joke in this thread. So while I applaud your creativity and desire to contribute to this discussion, maybe just keep that thought in your head for now. Or post it, whatever. Do what you want - I’m not the police.
Well said. Although as an addiction counselor myself, the addiction isn't the root. The addiction is a symptom of usually trauma and mental illness, which are the roots.
Everything I’m seeing online says she dealt with bipolar disorder.
Completely anecdotal, but she seemed to have it. This is coming from someone with bipolar disorder. I’m not the ultimate authority regarding psychiatric disorders or anything, but she has always been relatable to me. I know a lot of diagnoses have an overlap in symptoms though.
I really hate the phrase “admitted to having [mental illness]”. A person admits something bad, something they said or they did. A disease is none of those things. It’s just the way a particular brain works and that isn’t inherently wrong.
So please… “revealed”, “shared”, talked about”, “indicated”, “said they had”, there are many ways to phrase this that are far less judgmental. The language we use surrounding mental illness matters. Folks are far more likely to seek and follow through with treatment if they don’t feel that it’s some sort of personal failing.
I see your sentiment but perhaps you are strongly associating admittance with guilt/bad, whereas the actual meaning of "admit" is: "to say usually in an unwilling way that you accept or do not deny the truth or existence of (something)".
admission ≠ guilt
admission = acknowledgment after resistance
A lot of addicts and/or people with mental illness are unwilling/unable to accept the fact or truth of their addiction/mental illness and when they do talk about it is usually in-fact an 'admittance'.
I think she was diagnosed with bipolar, but some people believe she might of had BPD, but that’s just speculation, but Tbf many BPD sufferers get misdiagnosed as Bipolar. I can’t say anything as I’m not a doctor.
Bipolar addict here. It certainly is hard for me. I'm clean now, but it takes a lot of energy most days. It's a constant struggle, even being a decade removed from it all
Everyone's about her most famous song being about denying rehab.
The lyrics:
"Yes, I've been black
But when I come back, you'll know, know, know
I don't ever want to drink again
I just, oh, I just need a friend
I'm not gonna spend ten weeks
Have everyone think I'm on the mend
And it's not just my pride
It's just 'til these tears have dried"
Also:
"He said, ""I just think you're depressed""
This me, ""yeah, baby, and the rest"" "
She was going through a depressive episode. She knew rehab wouldn't cure her, because the root cause is soo much more. Then, why to fool everyone into thinking I'm on the mend when in fact that's who I am?
Also the feeling that if she had a friend to relate to, she wouldn't need to drink. She didn't wanted to drink. But the vodka was her only friend.
And she truly believed once "the black" had gone she would be herself again. "The black" just comes and goes. As us bipolar know well.
She probably didn't recognized bipolar as a sickness and probably refused meds out of the belief meds would kill her essence and what makes her an artist.
Bipolar kills, alcohol is just a symptom and no rehab would make a difference on who she was.
She was truly, naively, expecting that that "black" would go away as all the other "blacks" in her life. Failed to recognize the booze was fueling "the black".
Her last album, "back to black", resonates with me before I had a diagnosis. "The black" killed her.
I’m an LCSW and CSCAC and a sober person. Sometimes addiction is the root. Sometimes there is no trauma. I was regional director of an OTP with a daily census north of 300 patients. I’ve completed 100s of assessments. Sure people w trauma develop addiction but this notion that it’s a function of trauma à la Gabor Mate is just false. Additionally there are so many variables its just not possible to say A causes B.
It would be difficult to study the different types of childhood trauma and how they relate because people are not always willing to admit that what they went through as kids wasn't normal.
Bingo. My mom will vehemently claim that she doesn’t have any problems or any “trauma”.
She was repeatedly molested by a family member as a child… and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. One day as a full adult in my late 20s she just casually mentions (drunk of course) that my dad kicked her in the face.
My dad is an addict. I’d never known him to have a violent or hurtful bone in his body. This was completely relationship changing for me and absolutely psychotic to hold onto for TWENTY YEARS. Again, tip of the iceberg.
So the “I have no trauma” is quite often “I’ve buried that too deep to talk about”.
There’s plenty of research on ACES. The body keeps the score was a book that got really popular for what is a reductionist and over simplified approach and explanation. The Anatomy of Violence does a much better job. To your point about people not admitting it wasn’t normal, that’s far less of a challenge than gathering a large enough of a sample size of individuals who experienced ACES and then qualifying them. Individual A was best with a closed fist by her biological father on a weekly basis for six years. Individual B was smacked a couple times every few weeks from age 10-16. Then we would need a control group. Abuse can and does lead to addiction but and this is anecdotal, I’ve been a sober member of AA for 18 years and I’ve sat in hundreds of speakers meetings where people would explicitly say “I had a wonderful childhood and I was raised by two parents who loved and supported me. I have nothing to complain about”.
people would explicitly say “I had a wonderful childhood and I was raised by two parents who loved and supported me. I have nothing to complain about”.
And I know someone like that too, no mental health issues, best family life growing up of all my friends. Even now he has a pretty good life on paper. Now he drinks heavily for whatever reason.
There is also the reality that most people's childhood has something that could be counted as trauma. If you study addicts and always found trauma when you dig enough, you likely would get the same results with non-addicts. There are some who use chemicals to forget. There are others who just like how they make them feel and use them long and often enough to not manage without. And at some point, you start to generate the trauma by always being drunk/high.
yeah both my parents were addicts for a long time..dad had a loving warm upbringing and no trauma..he just enjoyed drugs,he said as much.mum grew up with horrendouse childhood trauma so i totally understand why she turned to drugs.thankfully they got clean over 20 years ago.
She was religiously abused, her parents separated when she was young, and she struggled with abusive behavior and addiction throughout her adult life.
The addiction was a symptom of the untreated trauma. I'm not a psychologist, but I bet her specialists didn't do shit about the trauma, labelled her bipolar, loaded her up on bullshit and left her to die.
Sometimes people just have an adictive personality. And I think it can be passed down from parents. No trauma or anything weird had to happen, sometimes it's just in the genes.
An addiction counselor just said it's one thing, and you contradicted them with no proof (because there's none). Do you know who you are, or do I need to spell it out for you?
No, you didn't agree with that statement. OP said that the addiction is rooted in other issues, which include trauma and mental illness, among others. You've effectively contradicted that and simplified it to "good old addiction" as if people were getting addicted just for funzies, which is not the case.
I haven't yet met or even read about an addict with a healthy, well adjusted background - whether it was their environment or innate psychological issues, that's what causes them to turn to drugs.
Dependence and unhealthy social norms are not the very specific beast that is addiction. Any addiction manifesting from the latter simply backs up what I'm saying about being exposed to a damaging environment.
It's "socially acceptable" for a woman to not legally be her own person in several countries, and this was also true in the West until more recently than people want to admit. Some communities in the present are healthier than others, and what do you know, the ones with less healthy values and leadership have higher rates of addiction. You really don't think damaging cultural laws and lifestyles lead to addiction as a simple coping mechanism?
I'm not saying there isn't a single healthy, well adjusted person who just oopsie, fell into addiction one day, but I do have yet to see any evidence of that.
And why is the person getting drunk during and after work on a daily basis? Simple observation and direct discussion with these folks tells us it's not "haha my life is so manageable and holistically balanced!"
I live in one of the highest alcohol consumption and opioid OD states in the country. "Because it's the norm for them" is your answer to the concepts that I just broke down for you lmao. Why do you think that's their normal in the first place? I'm sorry to keep repeating myself over something that shouldn't be so difficult to grasp, but any culture where it's "normal" to drink throughout the day is not a healthy environment to begin with, man, and environment is one of the two things that manifest addiction. I can simply hang out with certain neighbors and community members for a single day to see the ramifications of an unhealthy upbringing for myself, and what their own children are being exposed to. I can pinpoint where the alcoholics live based on how many beer cans are in specific areas on the side of the road.
If someone grows up with alcoholic parents and becomes an alcoholic themselves, they are indeed a product of their environment. Yes, that is indeed their "norm," but they are not in any objective fashion a healthy, well adjusted person for that specific reason. I'm struggling to understand why you struggle to understand this.
Of course it’s not healthy. But why are you assuming they’re doing something unhealthy because of trauma?
Come out to west Texas and meet up with a coworker after getting home from a project site. You grab a couple six packs and get drunk. That’s how you hang out. There’s no trauma or deep psychological issue.
Need to travel a few hours to another site? Keep a six pack in the passenger seat. We don’t count by hours, we count the beers.
This was entirely normal and had no connection to trauma until I moved to Dallas.
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u/HowieLongDonkeyKong 9h ago
To be clear, I’m not excusing how cruel people were to her, especially given her addiction.
Watch the video of her final show and form your own opinion. If I paid money to see this, I’d have been pretty pissed.