Personally, I don’t but I can see why this could be a possible theory (but who truly knows?). We know that she was apparently watching videos of herself in her last moments, and the Belgrade concert was captured and posted everywhere which must’ve been very embarrassing for her to see (if she had watched that specific concert).
What are your opinions?
I don’t think she committed “suicide”, rather that she drank herself to death, like many times before. The only difference is that this time she didn’t wake up. This drinking binge came after a short period of abstinence (5 weeks), which is very dangerous.
There were many other times she could have died. When you suffer from addiction, you never truly know which overdose or reckless binge is going to be fatal. She probably expected to wake up the next day…
I do think she was a little upset about her performance in Belgrade, and it’s sad to think she may have watched herself online before her death.
But I think more than anything, what caused her the biggest pain that last year of her life was Blake having a baby. His son was born in May, only a few weeks before her death. That’s what broke her heart and killed her. The alcohol was just the weapon.
I do think Amy committed suicide, but solely due to Belgrade? No, I don’t think so. It was a combination of many things; hating fame/her life, losing her voice/creativity, and of course the biggest reason, Blake moving on from her and starting a family. Also, many people with ED’s and mental illness in general get to the point of not being able to go on any longer.
A couple years back, I consumed every source I could about Amy, I was such a big fan. When I sat down to think about it all, I realized her actions leading up to July 23rd, point in the direction of suicide. I even compiled a list, which I’ll quote below.
There was an interview with Blake that I can not longer find for some reason where he talked about Amy attempting suicide by cutting herself some months before her death. There’s also another interview he gave where he was in the hospital room with his baby mother who was going into labor with their child and he abruptly hangs up on Amy. He says he thinks that hurt her deeply. I also can’t find that interview, does anyone have either of those?
I always see people saying this but I respectfully don’t agree with it. If you look at the pattern of addicts and relapse after sobriety, they die immediately after resuming their previous dose because they think their body can still handle it. In Amy’s case, she had been drinking all day and all night for like, 3 days before her death. I think Mitch and other people harp on this weeks of abstinence thing to paint a better picture of Amy, but I don’t think it has anything to do with her death. If she was going to OD because of a relapse, why didn’t she OD the night she resumed her binges?
From my personal experience and being an addict and an alcoholic in recovery myself I still agree with the official cause, being accidental alcohol poisoning. Amy is a very typical ‘by-the-book’ addict/alcoholic. If you know… you know.. what I mean ‘by-the-book’. She is 1 case out of thousands that happen everyday. And I’ve seen it happen many times. Amy was in the same boat of struggle. The difference is that she was a famous musician and extremely talented and everything happened publicly.
I also understand that her death might feel like an open interpretation for some people and anybody can hold their own opinions or chime in a way. And with Amy, it’s like there is this macabre thing that always follows around her. Before her death it was that she was always a junkie, after her death is that she went out and killed herself. It’s weird, it’s like they always want to associate Amy with a caricature. I don’t know how to explain it. But I just feel like people don’t want to simplify things. They want to make a conspiracy, or.. idk make assumptions left and right (And I’m not talking about the Amy fans particular, just in general celebrity culture). It’s like her story never truly ends. People will take the truth and drag it. It’s kinda weird. It’s like your life story is somebody else’s theory now. It’s weird and freaky. And I know people do it with good intentions but it’s still a little bit.. idk, it’s like everybody has something to say about her story and she’s not even here to defend herself. I just find it weird assumptions like these.
Anyway, we can’t really know 100% what was going inside Amy’s head other than Amy herself. We can’t 100% say she died of a suicide, or that she was suicidal in 2011, unless Amy’s psychologist/therapist confirms it. And honestly, speaking for myself I feel uneasy talking about someone being suicidal when I don’t even know them personally like that. It’s weird.
From what I’ve read I don’t even think she was suicidal or that she killed herself deliberately. But she was self harming and she was very self destructive as a person (which herself also agreed on interviews many times):
“I only write about stuff that’s happened to me.. stuff I can’t get past personally. Luckily, I’m quite self-destructive.” - per Amy, in 2007
Also sometimes addiction is some sort of self harm (besides it being a tool to deal with your emotional turmoil). There is also a lot of evidence and witnesses (friends, family, even photos from paparazzis over the years) where cuts can be seen on Amy’s wrists. She was definitely dealing with some sort of depression, self harm, trauma. Even bulimia can be considered self harm at certain times. Her behaviour was very self destructive. And of course her depressive episodes when she was a teenager which her mother also confirmed in the Asif Kapadia documentary.
Also Tyler James said in his book that the last years Amy was dealing with performing anxiety. She couldn’t sing without being a little tipsy. Which is something her mother also confirmed:
“She hated [being famous]. She was very nervous performing and that’s why she drank alcohol, unfortunately. She was just so nervous on stage.”
Taking all that into account, plus the terrible media and the way people treated her it is a plausible theory and I can see where people are coming from. But again, we can’t tell unless Amy’s psychologist/therapist confirms it. On that note, if there was any assumption of such why wouldn’t her personal doctor help the examiner’s office in the first place and give the official verdict as suicide? Why would they keep it a secret? A lot of celebrities have died this way. I don’t understand why would they deliberately hide it? And it’s not like the world didn’t already know that Amy had a substance problem. Also her family is religious but they don’t look the type to be obsessed with religion where they would hide the truth from the public in fear of shame. They have been open about everything all these years. The theory of suicide is plausible but not fully plausible at the same time.
Anyway, I strongly believe Amy didn’t intend to go out of hand with the drinking the last years of her life. She said many times she wanted to be a wife and have a normal life with a husband and I believe her words. I think she simply couldn’t control the addiction, because that’s what happens with addicts. Even with your best intentions you might still lose the fight if you’re not strong enough. Plus all the external factors, the stress of work and the success of Back To Black, the anxiety of not performing, the bullying from the public because of Belgrade and because of her addictions, the mockery for years she endured from the press, the scrutiny of every aspect of her private life with no privacy at all. People demanding their money back after Belgrade… A lot of setbacks in her career after the fact, a lot of expectations from her record company to succeed in something difficult for her. A lot of external pressure for somebody so new in recovery!!! Her road was rocky but she was trying. That’s why I think she definitely relapsed. I don’t think she killed herself. It’s like, everybody was pushing her into drinking. How can anybody not snap in that amount of pressure? It’s impossible. They set Amy to do something impossible, so early into recovery. And she wasn’t even fully there yet. She had relapses all the time. The road was rocky. She was pushed to perform, set herself to fail, it’s hard to watch and to know. And for me that I understand how addiction feels like? I genuinely feel for this girl.
Was Amy sensitive and had depression before? Yes. But I think this was peer pressure she couldn’t surpress.
It’s also a point Mos Def makes in his interview here:
https://youtu.be/ryxVJNu1L8s?si=P_MPVb9-IxhMYJ7X
And I fully agree with him. Amy didn’t know how to be a star sober. She didn’t know what to do.
As mentioned by Tyler James in his book, after St. Lucia she was clean from drugs and did the collaboration with Tony Bennett but it is mentioned that Amy didn’t know how to sing sober anymore. She needed atleast ‘a hair of a dog’ to feel normal. Which is the biggest smoking gun in my opinion. If you don’t know how to live life or be yourself without substances you are already knee deep into destruction. How can somebody that has been singing their entire lives forget how to sing? Yet still, very plausible and this is why I still stick to my theory.
I believe she drank casually on her teens (as mentioned by her friends), switched to ‘frequently drinking’ to relieve anxiety during the Frank performances, and by the Back To Black year she was already hooked on various substances. In 2011 she made multiple attempts to kick it by going to rehab and different treatment centers. There was a pattern of acknowledgement there. She was atleast trying and we should give her credit for that.
However on that night, addiction paired with anxiety, her depressive episodes and life circumstance made her relapse. It is very unfortunate they pushed her that way. Anybody would have reacted the way Amy did. Any celebrity. The amount of THAT much pressure is suffocating. To outperform yourself, to write an album similar to Back To Black, to sell, to be a celebrity when paparazzis and weirdos down the street harass you and you have no privacy to even go to a shopping center without being followed. Amy’s story is like Princess Diana all over again. The press was so horrible chasing her down the street, following her car, giving her no privacy whatsoever. And the pressure from the world to be perfect, the bulimia, it’s too much. Can you believe that people were calling her chubby in 2004 in the Frank release? The press was HORRIBLE to Amy. They destroyed her. And made a mockery of her to sell papers.
I’m closing in by saying that bulimia is the second biggest smoking gun in her death and that it played a big role.
By the time she was 27 she already had health problems which normal 27 year olds don’t have such as heart emphysema, lung infections and other health complications from her excessive addictions.
Drinking alone can cause so many vitamin deficiencies in the body, so many imbalances leading to inflammations, etc. I can’t even begin to imagine throwing up all the time the food that is supposed to fuel your body. Amy cured her hangover by drinking energy drinks. (!!!)
The question we should be asking ourselves isn’t if she killed herself, but how she even survived that long?
If you would like to hear a doctor’s perspective on Amy’s cause of death in detail and why it occurred from a medical standpoint, there is this great video where a doctor breaks down every possible reason and cause of why it happened here:
https://youtu.be/N5vonuGBXuI?si=NUr3apzBsywXrNiU
I disagree with this narrative and unless we have some personal psychologist come outside and confirm that Amy was suicidal we can’t self diagnose someone from the internet. From all we know she could be bipolar or have borderline personality disorder and all those instances could be manic/depressive episodes. Amy seemed like she had good days and bad days. It was like a wave. They seemed more like depressive episodes than a full blown depression in my opinion. But then again, the problem with assumptions is that we can’t confirm them. Because we don’t personally know these people and their deepest thoughts. Only her psychologist/therapist can confirm things. We are just fans. We know only what is deliberately put out there. Medical records are private.
Besides you said it yourself. Amy was on a binge for days. How much can a body take? Her emphysema, her heart palpitations, the bulimia..
Based on Tyler’s James book she was relapsing constantly the last months. It could be the Belgrade videos or it could be a simple argument. From what was mentioned Amy would react and act and binge. This is typical behaviour with people dealing with addictions. The woman was an addict with depression and bulimia and a record label worth billions in her back pushing her to perform and succeed. That’s already A LOT for somebody to deal with and stress about while still in recovery.
But we can’t 100% be sure that she was suicidal and we shouldn’t make assumptions like that.
This has been my theory for years. Thanks for raising this up. Considering she had watched videos of herself on YouTube before dying (nobody has specified which videos so far - I don’t know if the Justice has this information though-), it may be plausible to think that she watched the Belgrade footage or at least came across those clips in the search engine.
It is true that some bodyguard mentioned that she was admiring her voice so maybe she watched other kind of videos as well (sober), but thinking that she NEVER saw herself in pictures or videos from that night sounds improbable.
Let’s not forget that the Belgrade clips had become quite viral back then (the YouTube channel RustlinRagazza is responsible for this!) and the people (as well as the news outlets as always) wrote nastyful and hurtful comments (I remember this vividly!)
So yeah, can be a theory. Poor Amy.
That perfomance must have been enough reason for her to ‘end’ her life. News outlets at the time considered her career as over. The whole European tour was cancelled in a fortnight.
I don’t think she committed suicide,but I’ve always wondered if she went into overdrive as she rushed back from Belgrade the day before Blake went down again. I wonder if she was still holding a candle for him.
According to Tyler who was with her in Belgrade, she didn’t care too much about the concert - so I doubt her relapse had anything to do with it.