They Tried to Make Her Go To Rehab But She Said ‘Only if it’s Private, darling.’

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Be afraid, people, be very afraid. That skinny, bird-nest-haired soul singer half obscured by a microphone stand is drug-free and apparently responsible enough to thrust her god-daughter Dionne Bromfield into the spotlight. Yes, Amy Winehouse has been off the drugs for a year, according to her father, Mitch, and he acknowledges the part played by expensive clinics in her rehabilitation.

Mitch Winehouse is nothing if not a master of self-publicity. I am sure I’m not the only one who felt that the constant media pleas from both Winehouse parents during the darkest days of Amy’s substance abuses were undignified and unhelpful. Many drug addicts have a catalogue of formulative experience which may have played a role in nudging them towards prolific drug taking in the first place. In which case they need the kind of professional support and even psychotherapy that Amy has recently benefitted from, rather than being bitched about in the national press by their mum and dad. And some addicts see drugs as a rebellion against their parents in the first place, so newspaper stories originating from the family home are more likely to encourage further drug use, aren’t they?

This time around, however, Mitch is hopefully using the media and his own vicarious celebrity to more positive effect. He has been making a documentary for a television company about the rehabilitation services which are available to those drug addicts in this country who are not lucky enough to have made a fortune out of pop music and therefore have to rely on government funded schemes. According to Mr Winehouse only those who have been convicted of criminal offences are likely to receive free residential rehab. Which he believes means that a lot of users who would like support to come off the drugs are intentionally committing crimes . This might be a little disingenuous – many drug addicts steal in order to fund their addiction, not to ensure they can get into rehab – but it is still probably true to say that there are an awful lot of people in this country who desire and would benefit from better addiction support than they are currently getting.

I am well aware that a large proportion of people in Britain who have never come into contact with drugs, much less ingested any themselves, will be up in arms about tax-payer’s money being used to address problems which may seem, to the casual observer, to be self-inflicted. But does a descent into drug abuse really prove that a person has no will power or is simply too stupid too stay clean and healthy? I am sure that it’s possible to find enough individual cases to back this sort of theory up. But drug addiction is a widespread, if sometimes hushed-up social problem which, in my opinion, reflects on the gaping holes at the centre of successive governments’ domestic policies over the past thirty or forty years.

As worn by Mrs Thatcher?

Margaret Thatcher tried to convince us there is no such thing as society, the better to point the finger at individuals rather than acknowledge the role of the state in terms of providing realistic and attainable goals or ambitions for people. Tony Blair did little to overturn the worst excesses of Thatcherite monetarist detachment. Gordon Brown is unlikely to change anything as he is currently trying ride an economic and political shit-storm the like of which has not been seen since the last days of John Major’s government.

There is a familiar message, therefore, for all those whose addictions embody the side effects of political figures who hector but never attempt to understand; who speak in soundbites instead of actually engaging with the issues. The message for all these years has been pretty much the same – it’s your fault, you’re on your own, deal with it. Had Amy Winehouse been left dependent on current government support for addiction she might well have died – fantastic news for her record company, of course as they’d be able to milk her back catalogue and any unreleased material for years to come. But not such great news for the family and not really the best end to the life of a young woman who, whatever else you think of her, possesses an extraordinary talent. The column inches her problems have received over the last few years do not help in some ways, though. As far as tabloid readers are concerned, it is only a tragedy if someone famous dies of a drug overdose. The real tragedy is that countless addicts die unremarked every year, mourned only by families who loved them just as much as Mitch loves Amy.

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Tags: Amy winehouse, Mitch Winehouse, Soul music, Heroin, Drugs, Drug Addiction, Dionne Bromfield, Rehab, Drug Clinics, Substance Abuse, Psychotherapy, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, John Major