Amy Winehouse’s popular hit “Rehab” perhaps sums up the story of her life pretty well.
I’m gonna, gonna lose my baby,
So I always keep a bottle near.
Winehouse’ continuous struggle with addiction of alcohol and drugs brought her to her untimely end. Even her mother thinks that her death was “only a matter of time” as she was completely given to addiction, and could not recover from it at any time. Though it wont be known till October what was the real cause of her death, it seems to ba a generally accepted belief that it was her unthinking lifestyle coupled with the pressure of showbiz that drowned her in addiction and death.
Amy Winehouse succumbing to drug addiction has raised several important questions. There always remains a thin line between those to stay put and those who give up. But where does that thin line lay? What makes some survivors and others quitters?
Surveys give us some detailed data. While it has been now known that addiction starts mainly in adolescence, it has recently become clear that a 46 percent of Americans have had their tryst with drug. However, only a 8 percent has continued with the use of it. Compared to that, a 51 percent has become addicted to alcohol. These complicated data mean that people get habituated to drugs much less than they get addicted to alcohol.
The ones who become addicted to drug are usually those who have always had some psychiatric illness, like disorders of mood-swings, anxiety problems and personality disorders. National Institute of Mental Health’s Epidemiologic Catchment Area Study reports that those who already have a mental disorder are three times more vulnerable to addiction than those who do not suffer from mental illnesses.
In short, it is a matter of a complex combination of heredity, along with the environment in which a person is growing and the psychology of the person. With all, it is also a simple matter of luck and chance that decides who will be a survivor and who will succumb to the addiction.
