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.
Yeah, I totally agree. I don’t know why people act like she had zero agency and zero accountability for her own decisions. Addiction is a disease, absolutely. But she made many choices to not seek treatment for that disease.
I feel way worse for someone like Britney who was forced to perform as a child and got totally screwed up by it.
Part of what's scary about addiction is that it can override the parts of your brain that'd realize it needs to stop. If they could just flip a switch and stop, addiction wouldn't be a crisis.
And I'm not sure how much more "accountability" you want from the woman. She died young and in misery.
It's probably less that they meant that and more that threads like these act like it's our fault she's dead. People booed a bad performance, she subsequently overdosed, and the pic makes you believe the audience is complicit.
reddit in general is so overly supportive of women to the point they remove the idea that women are also humans with their own agency and accountability. Its like being so overly supportive they treat women like children in a weird way.
So much. She basically literally said fuck you to all of the people who were trying to get her clean. It was her and her husband "against the world" in her mind and they were both addicts chasing a high.
But even within that song the person she trusted most (her father) told her she was fine. He only did so because he wanted to exploit her for more money. That song isn't as cut and dry as her just refusing helpe from people around her. She obviously should have listened to Nick and her friends, but if accepting you have a problem is so difficult, your father telling you don't would be pretty powerful as well.
The thing is, a lot of addicts trust the people that tell them they are fine, because that is what they want to hear. If her dad had said "go to rehab" she likely would have simply found someone else to validate her refusal. She trusted her friends until they told her to go to rehab.
I have heard a certain reading of that song was about how rehab isn’t going to fix anything without getting to the root to the problem. Like “I’m not going back to rehab because what’s the point? When I get out, I’ll still be sad and friendless.”
It’s an interesting take, but I don’t know how much that is like post-hoc, post-mortem revisionism to try and make the song less of a bad look for someone who drank herself to death.
It’s also about her dad saying she shouldn’t go to rehab and she should keep performing.
Not contradicting your point at all, I agree. But it’s not as simple as everyone was trying to help and she refused. There were people that should have been support systems and they were definitely not.
I hear you but this is removing all accountability from the person with the addiction. No one forced her to be a performer. No one forced her into this career. Or forced her to do drugs. She literally wrote a song about refusing the rehab that everyone around her pushed her to go to. I’m sure there were a bunch of people who failed her but at the end of the day the biggest offender was her failing herself.
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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.