“You Need to go to Rehab, Amy”
Amy Winehouse’s mom reveals how her daughter’s rock bottom was like nobody else’s
By Janis Winehouse
On the morning of August 7th, 2007, hope was dashed like never before. I don’t know whether it was Amy’s father Mitchell or my cousin Martin who rang me. I don’t even remember what was said, but Amy had been taken into University College Hospital the previous night after suffering a seizure. Her new husband Blake had been with her at Jeffrey’s Place when she had gone as white as a sheet and started trembling. He had apparently placed her on her side and phoned her best friend Juliette for help, but I still don’t know if I believe that story. Up to that point, I couldn’t see that Blake had much kindness about him.
I spent most of that morning fighting back waves of nausea. My mobile phone kept ringing, and picking it up became a practical diversion from my own emotional torment. Between my son, Alex, and Martin I was being kept updated. ‘Don’t come in, they’re releasing her soon’ was the message.
Amy had been admitted to the emergency ward at around one a.m. She’d had her stomach pumped, and we later discovered that her collapse wasn’t just alcohol-induced. She’d taken a cocktail of drugs that included heroin, cocaine, ketamine and marijuana, all of which had brought on the fit. The minute she was discharged, Mitchell took her to the Four Seasons Hotel in Hook, Hampshire, which was set in its own grounds and could provide her with some respite, even though within hours it was crawling with journalists.
It wasn’t until the morning of Wednesday the 8th that I drove there with Alex. As we turned into the gravel driveway I experienced a familiar feeling of panic. What was I going to find there? What state would Amy be in? Over the past few months I’d been in complete denial that Amy was a serious drugs user, even though with hindsight the evidence was staring me in the face. It’s peculiar the way the mind can shut out painful realities. Thinking back on it, I didn’t even use the word ‘overdose’ it was so distressing. I called it Amy’s ‘accident’. From now on, though, there’d be no hiding.
We passed the reception desk and I was directed towards Amy’s room. The door was open, and as I approached it the world seemed to shift into slow motion. When I did eventually focus on Amy, it was with confused feelings of worry, fear and anger. She was skeletal, like something out of Belsen concentration camp. Hunched over the bed, she was sitting with a white towel wrapped around her. I could see the scars on her arms where she’d cut herself. She was like an apparition. How could it have come to this?
Amy went to hug me. She was grabbing on to me.
‘What’s happening to you?’ I said to her.
‘Mummy, Mummy, I’m so sorry, Mummy,’ she kept repeating.
I sensed that she was very scared. In her head, perhaps this was her first wake-up call. However, I was to discover that Amy’s rock bottom was like nobody else’s rock bottom. It was impossible to know where she would draw the line because her behaviour was so wildly inconsistent.
I could barely utter a word to my daughter. My body had gone into some sort of overload. I sat beside her in silence. We both knew that in one form or another this was history repeating itself. For a moment my mind flashed back to when Amy was a toddler and I’d yanked the cellophane out of her throat while she’d convulsed in her buggy. Here I was, twenty years later, still wondering how to save her from disaster. ‘I can’t keep rescuing you, Amy,’ I kept thinking.
‘You have to save yourself.’
Several commentaries from that time describe me as cold or without emotion. I’ve learned to bat such judgements aside. I don’t know why people feel they have to comment on a situation they know nothing about. It’s human nature, I guess, but nothing could have been further from the truth. I was terrified, but I was trying to be pragmatic. Me crying or pleading with Amy or even me becoming wrapped up in the highs and lows of her dramas was not going to solve anything.
I felt so badly for Alex. I know how incredibly tough he found it seeing his sister like that, and I sensed his frustration. He was the one to give Amy the warning. ‘You’re going to kill yourself,’ he was shouting. ‘You’re not going to live to twenty-five, you know that, don’t you? Are you happy with your life like this?’
Amy didn’t answer. She didn’t say a word.
‘You need to go to rehab, Amy,’ Alex carried on.
‘No,’ she snapped. Rehab might mean she’d have to stop what she was doing and that was not an option that appealed to her. Something powerful was willing her to carry on.
Amy was not choosing to die, that I know, but neither was she choosing to live. Her battle with addiction was not simply a battle that raged in her body, it raged continuously in her mind too, which is why it was so difficult for her to end it. It’s a mistake to think that people suffering with addiction can be suddenly cured of the condition. Even under treatment they remain prone to relapses all of their life, to a greater or lesser extent.
The other obstacle to Amy seeking help was Amy herself. If fame resembled a juggernaut, Amy was like a supertanker: it was almost impossible to turn her around. She’d been like that since she was a child, but now she was worse than ever. She dug her heels in hard before she ever decided to move forward. God knows, I can be strong-willed, but Amy really was her own worst enemy.
Excerpted from LOVING AMY: A Mother’s Story by Janis Winehouse. Copyright © 2014 by the author and reprinted by permission of Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press, LLC. Available now from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other fine retailers.
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