Amy Winehouse’s family and close friends said their last goodbyes at the private ceremony at Edgwarebury Cemetery. Her father, Mitchell Winehouse said goodbye to his daughter at the private ceremony in North London.

“Goodnight, my angel, sleep tight. Mummy and Daddy love you ever so much,” he said.

Her issues with drugs and alcohol have been well documented. Winehouse died alone in her bed as many addicts are, alone in the dark fighting off demons. It is still unclear whether she took an overdose of drugs or a lethal combination or bad drugs, (or none of the above) but according to rumors, those disastrous habits are probably the cause of her death.

Winehouse never got on top of her disease. It controlled her for the majority of her short life, right up until the very end.

She joined the “27 Club” — also known as the Forever 27 Club or the Curse of 27 — alongside Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Dave Alexander of the Stooges and Kurt Cobain. The 27 Club is the title for a group of influential musicians who all died at the age of 27 and they all are generally considered to have led a “rock and roll” lifestyle.

Unfortunately, she never received the help she so badly needed. Media is full of clips showing her stumbling across the stage during a show and it is well known, Winehouse wasn’t a fan of rehab and wrote a hit song about it.

“They tried to make me go to rehab but I said no, no, no,” she sang.

An article in the Daily Mail said, “Generous Amy Winehouse spent £130,000 sending her friend Alex Foden to rehab, when perhaps she should have spent it curing herself.”

It’s easy for those who are not addicts to judge and make comments about drug addicts or alcoholics because most people are lucky enough to have a mind that knows when to stop.

Things are very different in the minds of addicts. Most people may believe that if she had just checked herself in, she could have walked away from all those poisons. Sadly, things are not as easy as many people think. Rehab can give the tools, but each person has to walk the road alone. Only Amy Winehouse could have helped Amy Winehouse, but she didn’t ask to be an addict in the first place.

Broadcaster Piers Morgan struck out at Winehouse’s record company and promoters in the wake of the singer’s death. He claimed that Winehouse did not receive enough support from “the people making money out of her” as she battled her personal problems.

Morgan said to Access Hollywood,“I do blame people. Where were all the people making money out of her when it mattered? Really, where were they? You know, it’s just not good enough that they’re all going to make millions out of it now she’s dead. You know, the album ’Back To Black’ is number one… but people let her down.”

In her short life, Winehouse won five Grammys and three Ivor Novello awards, among many others. She had sold thousands of records and was popular at the time of her death.

She received her first guitar when she was 13, and began writing music a year later. She began working soon after as a journalist in addition to singing with local group the Bolsha Band. Her special talent couldn’t go unnoticed for long. She became commercially known singing jazz. She seamlessly blended old R&B with the music of jazz crooners and came up with something that sounded simultaneously fresh and classic.

An anonymous source close to Winehouse’s record label has said that the late singer had recorded around 12 new songs which may now see the light of day. She had been in and out of the studio for the last three years, according to the spokesperson. If any new material is released, it would have to be decided on by her parents, as well as her label and management company, reports The Guardian.

Winehouse achieved what she did without compromise. Many singers will come and go having small moments of popularity but there will be one Amy Winehouse.

The fact is that the majority of musicians who made a huge career, from rock bands to individually artists, their careers had something to do with drugs and some sort of addicted habits. Many popular songs were written during drug use and it is difficult to know whether or not the songs would be the same if written under sober conditions.

In one or another way music and drugs are correlated. The true inspiration may only exist when they move from the reality to another place and there you find the great conception. It is not just luck that some of the greatest songs were written during drug use. Probably only in their personal moment of use they had those great inspirations. Fortunately or unfortunately, music would not have been the same without drugs.

dutourdumonde / Shutterstock.com

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About the author

Maria Kalligianni
I studied Communication and Mass Media at the National University of Athens . Since i was a kid I wanted to be a journalist. I live in Athens the last five years but I grew up in a very beautiful island, Crete. I love writing about everything and travelling to many countries in order to learn about many different cultures. I also love movies, books and sports.

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