Tuesday, July 26, 2011

She Was Not Good

I read a recent post by a clergywoman, another in a long line of stories that continue to romanticize the sordid life and banal death of Amy Winehouse.  It was titled, You Were Good, Amy Winehouse and I think a little clarification might be in order here. While there are a lot of words that accurately describe an active substance abuser, good is not one of them. Banal, deceitful, selfish in the extreme, abusive, useless, pretty much a plague on society, now those are words that apply.

What drives those of us who care deeply about helping dope fiends and drunks get sober is that we know the good that comes when a man or woman breaks the chains of addiction. But while they're IN their addictions they are loathsome creatures, and the way they die is ugly. Vomit covered convulsions, livers swollen with cirrhosis and the attendant stink that disease produces, children left parentless and permanently scarred by alcoholic behavior, brothers and sisters glad they're dead, it's tragic all right, romantic? Not so much.

I have a great deal of compassion for the Amy Winehouse that could have been, but she's just one of millions who wasted what might have been a rewarding life, and her very public self-demolition and all the ridiculous comments by pundits and even clergy who know nothing about the reality of addiction and it's often sordid end will not aid the cause of sobriety. She needs to be more of a "There but for the grace of God go I" story and less of a romantic-tragedy fairy tale.

In the meantime I think I'll just not drink and go to meetings.

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