Watching tv the other night, feet up on the sofa, eyes closed, ears listening out for Murdoch updates on the news, enjoying a little opiated nod…Then i heard the newsflash…Amy Winehouse is found dead in her flat. I leapt up and let out a strange noise, a shock that went right through me, like this awful pain. i dont know where it really came from, it caught me so by surprise. I didnt even own one of her records (though i wanted one) and so i just sat there with my mouth just open, speechless, in fact i couldnt speak at all for ages…i looked at my mum who was shocked at my reaction and wanted to know what was wrong, did i know her? I didnt. But so many times i meant to write to her, to try and give her some strength and comradeship from our using/activist community – some belief in herself that might protect her from the complete crap that the tabloids used to dump on her.. all those awful jokes they said about her, all those terrible articles and photos, calling her the ugliest woman in the world (incredible!! Who are these fuckhead journos? GQ mag i think -And not forgetting Murdochs collection of disgusting exposes- good ridence to him aye!), dissing her at any opportunity, calling her names, and all those horrible jokes, the sniggering about her drug use, catching the photos when she skips up the pavement,.proof that she’s a staggering drunk, peering with long lenses into her own HOME to.catch.her smoking crack, splash it across the front pages…destroy another life……and now she is dead.

It just seems to awful, it seems so sad, there was something about her music that plunged into the depths of emotion, humour, love and life -the same kind of places we visit and dive into when we choose drugs; its so easy for us to use our.drugs to both pull you out of despair but also to throw you in the colourful genius of life and its brilliant adventures. We can be so vulnerable when we are young, drugs can be dangerous there is no doubt about it, its so easy to start mixing too many drugs together. I fear it may be the alcohol that pushed her over the edge, it so often is when mixed with CNS depressants…but apparently she had only got out of the Priory (rehab) the week before and saw her doctor the day before she died. Are we going to hear about a prescriptionor cocktail of drugs, taken perhaps with too much alcohol? Whatever the case may be, i along with thousands of others, am feeling a huge pain and loss of a special talent.

I cant help but wondering tho, Is it simply a case of opening old wounds, a reminder of friends and loved ones who we have lost in the same painful way? I dont know. probably. but im depressed, every death gets harder to bear it seems, it gets closer and closer each time to touching the rawest nerve..Or Is it a fear of the thinnest of tightropes we find ourselves walking on, jolted awake with a short sharp shock? a knife in the guts. A scare. A reminder of our fragility? It makes me afraid, a ghostly feeling that leaves me less whole, for a while at least, but the older i get the more i feel these things chip away at my belief in living life until a ripe old age. it cuts off more corners, and tries to leave u vulnerable all over again. RIP Amy and everyone else who is remembered on our very recent international remembrance day, 21st July 2011…