24 replies to this topic

[LuckyHorse]

I came across an interview with Amy's old manager where it implies she was already using heroin around that time, is that really accurate? Didn't she only drink(and maybe dabbled in cocaine) around that time, and started abusing cocaine late 2006 and later on heroin/crack early 2007?

Some parts of the interview:


Amy Winehouse's friend and first manager opens up

Channel 4 tonight screen the box-office smash Amy, which includes Nick Shymansky among its key contributors. He talks about her meteoric rise, the reasons for her decline and his wanting Amy to go to rehab but her dad, Mitch, saying “no”.

Asked whether it was a case of jumping or being pushed from his managerial post, Nick sighs and then says, “I’d had a nightmare fucking year with her. I tried on numerous occasions to get her into rehab. My older brother was a heroin addict. He was a year in front of her in terms of his addiction; my other brother and my mum were able to get him sorted out, so I knew what had to be done. I was taking advice and talking the whole time to her father, Mitch, who was by far and away the biggest influence on Amy. After numerous failed attempts, I took her to a rehab place where she met with the guy and admitted she needed help. She said, ‘I’ll go but only after I’ve looked my dad in the eye and told him that I’m a heroin addict.’ I rang Mitch up and he said, ‘Yes, absolutely, bring her over.’ I should have thought at the time, ‘Hang on, ‘bring her over?’ Why aren’t you coming here?’ Anyway, we drive the whole way across London to get to Mitch’s place. She walks in, sits on his lap and starts sobbing and he says, ‘You haven’t got an addiction. You haven’t got a problem. You’re just a bit heartbroken.’ He starts having a go at me: ‘Haven’t you tried drugs? Haven’t you ever had a bit too much to drink?’ So, basically, everything I was trying to do went out the fucking window. Mitch is the only person that could have stopped it. Why he chose not to is unfortunately an irrelevant question now. I believe she had all the classic hallmarks of a young person testing her father and testing men. Whether it was getting loads of piercings and tattoos, drinking too much or going out with an idiot, it was, ‘Why are you having a go at me?’”


(Here I think the writer meant 2006, not 2005):

It was clear from my two meetings with Amy either side of Christmas 2005 that she was struggling with not only her addictions, but also the insane amount of work she was having to do. It also struck me in the couple of hours we were together that she had underlying mental health issues.

http://www.hotpress....p/16571241.html

[Love is a losing game]

I think the journalist messed it up, she was not doing heroin back in 2005. Nick could tell something was really wrong as he was familiar with what addiction cos he had dealt with it with his brother but with Amy it wasn't heroin. All the rest is very well known, including the fact she should have gone and stayed in reahab to deal with her alcohol addiction and mental illness (the latter long way before 2005 eg. bulimia, self-harming etc), as well as how this was constantly neglected by herself, her entourage and close circle of family and friends. Nick could only do so much. (No comment on Mitch, enough it's been said and don't want to go off topic). The substance she was addicted to does not matter much, mental illness and addiction both killed her soul and her body. Alcohol and eating disorders can kill more than heroin☹️

Found this, just scanned through it, seems quite short and accurate http://www.lifetimet...y-amy-winehouse

[LuckyHorse]

I thought maybe the writer got it wrong about the heroin, but her other manager, also named Nick have said similar thing:


"Then one Friday morning, I got a call from Nick. Come straight to Amy’s. I get there and she is in pieces. It was shocking. I’d never seen her like that before.

She was broken. She was crying, upset, saying she loves Blake. We were consoling her but also said that maybe now is the time to talk to somebody.

I never used the word rehab because it had such big connotations. We just wanted her to talk to someone. We knew then the drink and drugs were bad, that it was hard drugs, but I don’t think anyone quite knew then how bad that was."

"This behaviour accelerated very quickly. It wasn’t over a year; it was over two or three months. The disintegration was really, really quick. I don’t know why Amy got into drugs. She never had been.

She liked a spliff and a lot of drink, but she’d always said she thought people who took drugs were @#$%&. It wasn’t her bag, she didn’t need them. Did Blake change that? Did Camden change that? I don’t know."
http://amywinehousef...-amy-winehouse/

[Ava_Grace]

The heroin use was from Nick's brother. Nick was using his brother as an example to help Amy.

[LuckyHorse]

The heroin use was from Nick's brother. Nick was using his brother as an example to help Amy.

Yeah I know, but later he said:
"After numerous failed attempts, I took her to a rehab place where she met with the guy and admitted she needed help. She said, ‘I’ll go but only after I’ve looked my dad in the eye and told him that I’m a heroin addict.’ I rang Mitch up and he said, ‘Yes, absolutely, bring her over.’

[HelloSailor]

It's possible that the journalist made a mistake. Maybe Nick was saying that he had seen addiction in his brother, who was a year ahead of Amy, and that Amy admitted she had a problem with drinking and wanted to tell her dad that she was an alcoholic.... and the journalist just interpreted that as her also being a heroin addict.

 

There's a lot of confusion about Amy's drug taking. She says herself she was not into cocaine when she was first seeing Blake ("you love blow and I love puff"), and Blake said in an interview she started doing it after the break-up. She met up with him in a pub to make him listen to B2B she was still working on (so 2006), and offered him and his friend some coke, which he found weird. 

But Nick mentions that when she started going out with Blake, she would call him and be completely incoherent, like she had taken drugs (but maybe those were ecstasy and cocaine for example). 

 

 

 

I never used the word rehab because it had such big connotations. We just wanted her to talk to someone. We knew then the drink and drugs were bad, that it was hard drugs, but I don’t think anyone quite knew then how bad that was."

 

People always jump to the conclusion that hard drugs means she had started on crack and heroin, but cocaine is still considered a hard drug legally. It's possible that at this stage in her life she was addicted to drink and coke.

 

Then again, it's all very confusing, as Janis mentions in her book she once asked Amy (when she 18 or something) what drugs she had tried and she said she tried heroin. Janis still doesn't know whether that was true or just Amy trying to provoke her... 

[LuckyHorse]

It's possible that the journalist made a mistake. Maybe Nick was saying that he had seen addiction in his brother, who was a year ahead of Amy, and that Amy admitted she had a problem with drinking and wanted to tell her dad that she was an alcoholic.... and the journalist just interpreted that as her also being a heroin addict.
 
There's a lot of confusion about Amy's drug taking. She says herself she was not into cocaine when she was first seeing Blake ("you love blow and I love puff"), and Blake said in an interview she started doing it after the break-up. She met up with him in a pub to make him listen to B2B she was still working on (so 2006), and offered him and his friend some coke, which he found weird. 
But Nick mentions that when she started going out with Blake, she would call him and be completely incoherent, like she had taken drugs (but maybe those were ecstasy and cocaine for example). 
 

 
People always jump to the conclusion that hard drugs means she had started on crack and heroin, but cocaine is still considered a hard drug legally. It's possible that at this stage in her life she was addicted to drink and coke.
 
Then again, it's all very confusing, as Janis mentions in her book she once asked Amy (when she 18 or something) what drugs she had tried and she said she tried heroin. Janis still doesn't know whether that was true or just Amy trying to provoke her...

I think you definitely got it right, that makes sense to me now. I also thought maybe she was on ecstacy or cocaine and not heroin that time on the phone with Nick.

[Lyricsbyamy]

In the documentary blake says that amy first tried hard drugs when they came back married from America, that would be around may 2007. However, I read some interviews where Nick (shymansky) says he thinks it started earlier because according to him, she had been talking gibberish and in 2005 she got a stammer.

[HelloSailor]

re-posting my previous message. Here's the link to that Shymansky interview where he reckons Amy was already taking some drugs before her marriage to Blake : http://s.telegraph.c...ouse/index.html

 

extract : 

 

 

But, in the space of a week, everything changed. ‘It was around February 2005. I know that because I was on a skiing trip with my family and I called her five days into the holiday, and she sounded different. I remember saying to my brother, “Something weird is going on. Amy doesn’t sound like Amy.”

‘That was the week she met Blake Fielder-Civil. Amy changed overnight. For six years she was completely consistent and then all of a sudden it was like dealing with a different person. There were glimpses of the Amy I knew right up until the end, but something really changed. My view at the time, and my view now, is that she was intoxicated with heavy drugs as soon as she met Blake.’

[Ava_Grace]

I think she was experimenting, the Camden lifestyle allowed for that, but she got severely hooked on them after they married.
I recall seeing a Chaka Khan interview with Jonathan Ross about her drug use and she said where she used to get it and I believe she said Camden. Chaka has been living in England for years now. Jonathan Ross also asks her about what advice she has for Amy, this was during 2008, and Chaka tells him how much she loves Amy and how much she reminds her so much of herself, not necessarily the drug use but the talent. She then says that Amy has to want to stop. No one can force her to stop.

[HelloSailor]

I wish Nick Shymansky would write a book about Amy, I bet he has loads of funny anecdotes and he is intrinsically linked to her life and career!

[LuckyHorse]

Yeah, now after doing some research, more points to the fact that it started way earlier. Mitch even made comments about it (before he spent all this time trying to trash Blake): "Though Mitch reports that Blake is “clean now” and doesn’t think “he’s gonna be one of those people who come out of prison as a career criminal”, he discounts Blake’s apology. “He didn’t coerce her to take drugs in any way. I wish he had. Because if he had she would most likely have said, ‘I don’t wanna do it.’” That said, Mitch does concede that his daughter’s recent compulsion to self-harm “is more to do with Blake. He explained to me that when they’re going into withdrawal, if they cut themselves, it takes away the pain."

Then there's this article:

http://www.mungolian...e-fielder-civil

I think she was experimenting, the Camden lifestyle allowed for that, but she got severely hooked on them after they married.
I recall seeing a Chaka Khan interview with Jonathan Ross about her drug use and she said where she used to get it and I believe she said Camden. Chaka has been living in England for years now. Jonathan Ross also asks her about what advice she has for Amy, this was during 2008, and Chaka tells him how much she loves Amy and how much she reminds her so much of herself, not necessarily the drug use but the talent. She then says that Amy has to want to stop. No one can force her to stop.

Yeah, now after doing some research, more points to the fact that it started way earlier. Mitch even made comments about it (before he spent all this time trying to trash Blake): "Though Mitch reports that Blake is “clean now” and doesn’t think “he’s gonna be one of those people who come out of prison as a career criminal”, he discounts Blake’s apology. “He didn’t coerce her to take drugs in any way. I wish he had. Because if he had she would most likely have said, ‘I don’t wanna do it.’” That said, Mitch does concede that his daughter’s recent compulsion to self-harm “is more to do with Blake. He explained to me that when they’re going into withdrawal, if they cut themselves, it takes away the pain."

Then there's this article:


25 July, 2011


Another event that occurred at the weekend, and one that was in no way overshadowed by the events in Norway, was the death of Amy Winehouse.

Obviously, this is a sad loss. That goes without saying. It is always sad to see someone young and talented die.

But the media coverage?

Again, we had "experts" in the form of journalists speculating as to the reasons for her demise. And the majority of speculators seemed intent on blaming someone for it. Specifically, Blake Fielder-Civil.

According to almost all the "pundits" I have seen or read, Amy Winehouse did not do "serious" or "hard" or "Class A" drugs prior to her entanglement with Fielder-Civil. Hogwash.

I recall having a conversation about Ms Winehouse back in 2005 with a German promoter, particularly referencing her emergence alongside that of Jamie Cullum as an indication that jazz elements were becoming a more prominent part of British music. He shook his head, and said "She is quite good, but she won't last. Too many drugs." This was in reference to when he had met her in 2004, and he was only referring to her career, not her life.

Blake Fielder-Civil, while no angel, was not the reason for Amy Winehouse's demise. Amy Winehouse was the reason for her demise. The finger of blame should point nowhere else, if "blame" is the correct stance. Which it isn't. Many people have lives that fall into similar grooves, and have similar ends. It happens. Some people cannot cope with what their life contains. And some cannot cope with what they enjoy doing to themselves. It's often easy to overlook, especially in the light of tragedy, but people do drugs because they're fun. They enjoy them. No-one takes their first snort of polvo blanco thinking "this will ease all my troubles". They take it because it's there to be taken and they choose to try it out. I would guess that Amy Winehouse enjoyed a large part of her life, regardless of how we want to paint it. And I would further guess that a large part of that enjoyment was aided by or solely because of drugs. Blake Fielder-Civil also enjoyed his recreational highs. And the fact that they enjoyed them together doesn't make either of them responsible for what happened to the other because of them. The knowledgeable ones of the media will not take this view though. Fielder-Civil will be forever demonized. Trial by media, guilty without any possible defense.

I never saw Amy Winehouse in concert (Sir Dhahii did, though, and he reported at that time "She won't be around for long. She looked like death warmed-up." That was 2007, and Sir Dhahii, in the face of much accusation of overstatement at that time, was predicting her death, not the end of her career), and it's a shame that so many of her fans will not have either, or now ever will.

I await the media's well-drawn conclusions with low expectation: offensive, insensitive, judgemental and ill-informed.


http://www.mungolian...e-fielder-civil

[Ava_Grace]

When you come from a broken home, when you self harm at age 9, when you develop bulimia at 15, all of these are symptoms of someome who lacked proper discipline. Sure, her nan tried some form of discipline, but she needed her parents to do it, in fact I would say she acted out in order to get sone reaction from her parents.
Then you have Camden where the lifestyle, the pubs, the clubs, the availability of all kinds of drugs is only going to further allow her to indulge in such a lifestyle. When she moved to Camden, as Juliette says in the doc, is when things changed for the worst.

[amywinehousequeen]

In Mitch's book he mentions a time in 2005, it might have been earlier, where he went round Amy's flat and found lines of cocaine. She said "Leave it Dad" or something like that... Can anyone remember the chapter in the book? She obviously experimented with Class A's before 2007 - I think Blake means that it was the first time she took heroin with him. I think Amy was intelligent enough to not succumb to peer pressure... She say's in an interview "I have a lot of friends who don't know how to look after themselves so I go around and cook for them" - I always take this as she has friends who were drug users but she always stayed away from that lifestyle - therefore I doubt Camden had as big of an impact as journalists like to claim. I think her issues can be pinned on self-discipline and the pressures of fame. Her weight issues as a child were a mere behaviour pattern that Amy would go on to repeat - going in for extreme fad diets ("I didn't eat bread/startch for 9 months" or something) instead of more realistic and healthy approaches. Obviously her naturally shy personality made fame overwhelming so she turned to drugs - for example in the filmed New Pop 2004 concert is she high or just nervous? However despite these weaknesses she also had more self-control than I am making it sound - she got clean mainly without rehab and with the whole global press ridiculing her every move and calling her ugly and crazy every 2 seconds. 

 

If her career was less mainstream she would of had to get clean in order to work - but her stored up fortune from 2007 catered for such indulgences. Again, I'm not trying to blame Amy because hundreds of people chose to be bystanders and to feed her patent self-destructive anatomy. I've said before that I think Amy would of had a long life if not for that one binge but now I'm not so sure - do any of you think she would have died later in 2011 anyway? Sorry for being so bleak!! xxxx

[Ava_Grace]

When trying to understand how someone like Amy led such a destructive life, one must look at the psycho-social factors surrounding her. The social factors are a broken family with a father who leaves the family for another woman and an environment she moves into, Camden, has access to pubs and drugs that not any typical city would have, and then there's the pop star level fame she received as a result of her success.
Psychologically, she was not well and the self harming and bulimia that started in her youth are major symptoms of a mentally unstable person. Drugs and alcohol only did more damage to her mental health, not to mention the seizures she had. Suffice to say she had everything going against her: an unstable family home, an environment that facilitated her substance abuse, mega fame, mental illness and low self esteeem so she didn't stand a chance.

If she wouldn't have died that day, how long of a life would she have lived? Imo not that long of a life. Bulimia alone can lead to a shorter lifespan because it affects every organ of your body, especially the heart. Add in the alcohol and a history of drug abuse, it's a miracle she made to 27.