RIP Amy Winehouse

[redarmi]

Maybe you CHOSE to take drugs to blot out the pain of your father abusing you or the death of a close relative so the family picking you up afterwards isn't really an option.  Maybe you CHOSE to take drugs as a way of self medicating mental health problems.  It is very easy to condemn peoples actions without any real understanding of the underlying social, economic and political issues that cause them.  Very few people set out to become heroin and crack addicts and the idea that it is a lifestyle choice is, frankly, laughable.

[Woodsey]

Maybe you CHOSE to take drugs to blot out the pain of your father abusing you or the death of a close relative so the family picking you up afterwards isn't really an option.  Maybe you CHOSE to take drugs as a way of self medicating mental health problems.  It is very easy to condemn peoples actions without any real understanding of the underlying social, economic and political issues that cause them.  Very few people set out to become heroin and crack addicts and the idea that it is a lifestyle choice is, frankly, laughable.

Your right, its just called being a fucking idiot.........

[smashedagain]

  and this aint normally like me

[mondatoo]

Completely pointless debate thats been had before, but a massive +1 to redarmi's posts, sometimes the "no matter what's happened to you, it's down to you and what you make of life" is sometimes just wrong and ignorant.

Oh and RIP.

[outragous76]

I think it's fairly widely accepted she didn't believe she was an addict.

[Longy]

I think it's fairly widely accepted she didn't believe she was an addict.

Don't most addicts think that, pre going cold turkey?

[RED-DOG]

I'm curious to know if there's any sympathy for smokers who die from lung cancer or drinkers who die from cirrhosis of the liver?

[GreekStein]

It was inevitable but that doesn't not make it sad etc.

Such a waste of talent.

Also, her parents I don't really feel that sorry for because they could/should have done more to change her.

[Supernova]

5 days ago a true British hero was killed in action fighting for our country. Did you know this? Do you know his name? Do you care?
A smackhead loser dies and its all over the news and all over facebook within minutes. RIP Corporal Mark Anthony Palin from 1st Battalion The Rifles , '...We will remember them'.

[nirvana]

5 days ago a true British hero was killed in action fighting for our country. Did you know this? Do you know his name? Do you care?
A smackhead loser dies and its all over the news and all over facebook within minutes. RIP Corporal Mark Anthony Palin from 1st Battalion The Rifles , '...We will remember them'.

It's been like this in our culture since Lady Diana died - don't know why.

Perhaps since society became, in general, so greedy we need the catharsis of large amounts of public hand wringing to show how much we 'care' - celeb deaths seem to provide the opportunity in a unique way.

[Matt.NFFC.]

Celebrity dies of an alleged drug overdose........no sympathy from me I'm afraid.  In fact, I'm quite glad this happened.....no wait a minute, glad is the wrong word, the word I'm looking for is something like hope.

I'm hopeful that maybe some young kids out there will be shocked and may see that taking drugs is bad shit.  It takes something like this to act as a wake up call to many.

The ones addicted to drugs I feel real sympathy for are the newborns who are born addicted due to scummy addict parents! 

As for the rest..........

[relaedgc]

I suspect this will forever remain a subject that the two opposing sides will forever disagree upon, yet none the less, the matter is something that lies very close to my heart and I'll interject with my two cents. Disregard it, by all means.

I was my father's youngest child and the only child of my mother. In total, from previous marriages of my father, I have two brothers and four sisters.

Three of them were living with my father and staying with his ex-wife on weekends. My mother was 26 when I was born, and the age gap between myself and the second youngest is 8 years. During that time, their mother stopped coming for them on weekends and disappeared from their life for the better part of their youth. They all dealt with this in their own way, though it was in my brother that the harm was most evident as he started misbehaving at school, smoking etc. The usual story of falling in with a bad crowd. Anyhow, many years later we also discovered he was being molested in his teenage years by the father of his best friend. I'll spare you the grisly details, but by this point I was a man grown and I felt physically sickened and I'm a hard person to shock.

So. A youth, rejected by his mother at a young age turns to the wrong people and at that age knows no better. The downward spiral begins, and worsens with molestation. By the time he had begun training to become a chef at college, he was using class A drugs. Not that it's particularly uncommon, drug use is rife in high school/college education. However, with the underlying psychological issues that he had in the back of his mind, he began to turn to harder drugs.

Ten years down the line, and he has been in and out of prison all his life. An institution that he swears makes it easier to obtain drugs than it is without. Our father died while he was incarcerated, and he was refused leave to attend the funeral. That added a further layer of guilt on top of an already troubled mind. Weak willed, perhaps. I'll concede you that much. But you're deluded if you think these people do it because it's all fun and games. Most of these individuals have troubled pasts and try to drown it out. I don't condone it, but we're all different and deal with our problems in differing ways.

What argument do you apply? Darwinism? That these people aren't fit to live, they're scum and should all die? Sure, that's great. But that's not a far step from saying if you're not blonde/blue-eyed you're diluting the gene pool, either. No broken thing is beyond repair; perhaps it'll never be the same as a whole, unbroken thing, but it is better than to leave it in broken shards.

It is something to be pitied, not scorned.

[Tractor]

RIP Amy Winehouse, a musical genius.

[Matt.NFFC.]

I suspect this will forever remain a subject that the two opposing sides will forever disagree upon, yet none the less, the matter is something that lies very close to my heart and I'll interject with my two cents. Disregard it, by all means.

I was my father's youngest child and the only child of my mother. In total, from previous marriages of my father, I have two brothers and four sisters.

Three of them were living with my father and staying with his ex-wife on weekends. My mother was 26 when I was born, and the age gap between myself and the second youngest is 8 years. During that time, their mother stopped coming for them on weekends and disappeared from their life for the better part of their youth. They all dealt with this in their own way, though it was in my brother that the harm was most evident as he started misbehaving at school, smoking etc. The usual story of falling in with a bad crowd. Anyhow, many years later we also discovered he was being molested in his teenage years by the father of his best friend. I'll spare you the grisly details, but by this point I was a man grown and I felt physically sickened and I'm a hard person to shock.

So. A youth, rejected by his mother at a young age turns to the wrong people and at that age knows no better. The downward spiral begins, and worsens with molestation. By the time he had begun training to become a chef at college, he was using class A drugs. Not that it's particularly uncommon, drug use is rife in high school/college education. However, with the underlying psychological issues that he had in the back of his mind, he began to turn to harder drugs.

Ten years down the line, and he has been in and out of prison all his life. An institution that he swears makes it easier to obtain drugs than it is without. Our father died while he was incarcerated, and he was refused leave to attend the funeral. That added a further layer of guilt on top of an already troubled mind. Weak willed, perhaps. I'll concede you that much. But you're deluded if you think these people do it because it's all fun and games. Most of these individuals have troubled pasts and try to drown it out. I don't condone it, but we're all different and deal with our problems in differing ways.

What argument do you apply? Darwinism? That these people aren't fit to live, they're scum and should all die? Sure, that's great. But that's not a far step from saying if you're not blonde/blue-eyed you're diluting the gene pool, either. No broken thing is beyond repair; perhaps it'll never be the same as a whole, unbroken thing, but it is better than to leave it in broken shards.

It is something to be pitied, not scorned.

Good post there, and is a shocking example, but to add to my previous post, why does it have to be drugs!  I just don't get it.  Sure, people have their own ways of drowning out painful memories/issues, but why does it have to be drugs.

Maybe I'm fortunate to have a family and friends who have never touched them, and yeah, I've had my bit of pain in my youth, my mum leaving my dad when I was 8 for example.  I dealt with it by going fishing or kicking a ball about, I just wouldn't touch them.

Guess I just got lucky.

[redarmi]

, but why does it have to be drugs.

It doesn't Matt.  For some people it is alcohol, for others they take it out by beating up their wives and kids.  Some, the mentally strong, use it as motiviation to spur them forward and become better, more successful people.  The point is that we are all different and the fact that someone uses drugs, which ultimately makes their problems a lot worse rather than better, isn't a reason for them to be villified, criminalised and discriminated against.  It is a reason to help them and offer them support to get over their addicition and then deal with the underlying issues they have.