Pubdate: Thu, 30 Aug 2007
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2007 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Patrick Barkham

CRASH & BURN

This week the parents of the singer Amy Winehouse and her husband 
Blake Fielder-Civil went on the radio to expose the extent of the 
celebrity couple's addiction.

But will this very public intervention make any difference? Patrick 
Barkham reports on the painful and messy business of coping with an 
addict in the family

For most of this year, the parents of the singer Amy Winehouse and 
her husband Blake Fielder-Civil have helplessly watched their 
children become the latest, lurid celebrity car crash.

After the slow-motion wreckage of Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and 
Pete Doherty, this one at first looked a bit of a laugh: Winehouse 
was nicknamed "The Camden Caner" and "Amy Declinehouse", appearing 
amusingly out-of-it on television quiz shows while her anthem, Rehab, 
became the soundtrack to the summer.

Winehouse was smart, sassy and hugely talented, earning a Mercury 
prize nomination for her second album, Back to Black. But then gigs 
were cancelled, and finally Winehouse was rushed to hospital after a 
reported overdose of heroin, ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine and alcohol.

She entered rehab alongside her husband, but neither managed to stay 
for more than a few days.

It looked like the Winehouse story was going to follow the same 
well-trodden path as that of all the other celebrity addicts who have 
dominated the tabloids and glossy weekly magazines in recent months - 
but then this week something extraordinary happened.

The mother and step-father of Fielder-Civil staged a public 
intervention, going on Radio Five Live and urging the public to stop 
buying Winehouse's records, and for the music industry to stop giving 
her awards, in an attempt to shake her out of her drug addiction.

Giles Civil, a headmaster from Nottinghamshire (Fielder-Civil has 
added the name of his biological father to his surname), said he and 
his wife, Georgette, "believe that they are drug addicts, and they 
don't believe they are. I think they believe they are recreational 
users of drugs, and they are in control, but it seems to Georgette 
and I that this isn't the case." "I think they both need to get 
medical help, before one of them, if not both of them, eventually 
will die," added Georgette.

Shortly afterwards, Winehouse's father, Mitch, phoned the same radio 
programme. He also saw the couple as addicts and was desperately 
worried about them, but he accused the Civils of failing to attend an 
important meeting with doctors and record company executives the day 
after the couple left rehab. "This is the problem we find ourselves 
up against," he said. "We have two families pulling in different 
directions. Basically, we just want the same things - we want our 
children to be safe. But we've got different definitions of how we 
can do that."

Will this public intervention do anything to help Winehouse and her 
husband? Are they really in as much danger as their parents think?

And is the trouble they are in substantially different from the 
trouble faced by "ordinary", non-famous addicts?

Does being rich and a celebrity cushion you from drug addiction?

Sarah Graham, a former addict who is now an addiction therapist for 
the charity In-volve, says the parents' fears, in this case, are 
fully justified. In their radio interview, the Civils revealed that 
on one occasion Winehouse and her husband had been given the 
responsibility of looking after Fielder-Civil's younger brothers, but 
that the pair had allegedly taken drugs while doing so. "This shows 
their using is chaotic and they are powerless over their using," says 
Graham, who also points out that the risks of an overdose are 
particularly acute for women, such as Winehouse, who have a history 
of eating disorders and little body fat to absorb the toxins.

And while this case is unusual in that it is being played out in the 
public spotlight, much of the detail will be familiar to the families 
of drug addicts - the fact that the two sets of parents are divided, 
for example. Parents are faced with terrible dilemmas in these 
circumstances, says Moya Pinson, who has set up a support group for 
parents and carers of drug addicts in Swindon. Does a mother buy 
drugs for her daughter to stop her selling her body? Does a father 
pay his son's debts to stop him being beaten up by his dealer?

Should parents turn a blind eye to their children robbing them? 
People will disagree about what is right.

Families are ripped apart.

Pete Doherty, probably the best-known drug addict in Britain right 
now, is perhaps typical of many drug users and their families: his 
mother, Jackie, has been fiercely protective while his father has 
hoped that "tough love" will sort him out. "His mother kept in 
contact with him. I dealt with it as only I could," Doherty's father, 
Peter, once wrote.

After numerous false dawns, Doherty's army major father cut off 
contact from his son, concluding: "Peter's greatest misfortune was to 
become famous. I watched as he was voted one of the most influential 
rock heroes of all time in NME. People seem hell-bent on perpetuating 
his wretchedness - a pathetic, limp figure." Doherty has talked about 
his father's ostracism of him: "I say to my dad, 'I respect you and I 
love you enough not to talk about you any more. Do you hear me? But 
fuck you. Because there's a fellow here who's your son and he wants 
to be your mate and he doesn't want to upset his mum. Why are you 
being so stubborn? Why are you being so hard?'"

An addict can become the pivotal figure in a family, according to 
Anna (not her real name), whose son was in his 20s, with a blossoming 
career and from a respectable home, when he became hooked on heroin. 
"It makes the addict quite powerful," she says. "They think, 'Mum and 
dad were quite happy before this but I've been able to come between 
them.' And if an addict comes out of rehab clean and comes home the 
parents are still in this terrible mess."

So is it better or worse if your kid is a celebrity? "We all have our 
public," says Anna. "We all have our friends and workmates." Many 
parents strive to keep their child's addiction hidden from 
colleagues, friends and relatives for years.

Then, just as publicly as if the child were famous, people hear about 
their addiction in a local newspaper when the addict child is put in prison.

There are differences, of course.

Winehouse will not struggle to find treatment if she does ever agree 
to it. Those less well-off must go on a waiting list. According to 
Pinson, there is a three-week wait for rehab - but, in reality, it 
can be up to two years.

She is, however, sympathetic towards the parents of Winehouse and 
Fielder-Civil. "In this case the parents can probably go and buy 
treatment, but until Amy and Blake are ready to go into rehab all the 
money in the world won't buy it."

Do interventions work? Opinion is divided among professionals - but 
all agree that being as open and honest as possible with your 
children is a good step. This certainly counts as open and honest.

The truth is that drug addiction and its treatment is full of 
cliches, none more so than the "tough love" view that they will only 
start to get better once they hit "rock bottom". But what is rock 
bottom? "My view on tough love is that things can always get worse," 
says Gary Sutton, head of drugs advice at Release. "You can be 
homeless, you can have a heroin habit and then get hit by a bus and 
lose your foot. Then you pick up a blood-borne virus from sharing 
needles. What about sex work and shoplifting? People's rock bottoms 
are very different." And other events can trigger an addict to seek 
help: often it is social services threatening to take away their 
child, says Sutton, or more positive changes - a job offer or a 
change of scene.

A change of scene to the island of St Lucia, where Winehouse and 
Fielder-Civil were pictured on a beach yesterday, is probably not the 
professionals' rehab of choice.

As Graham points out, "St Lucia is awash with crack cocaine."

Graham became addicted to cocaine during an ostensibly successful 
career in television and is acutely aware of how the creative 
industries are awash with drugs, users and addicts. "People look at 
celebrities and say they've got it easy, they've got loads of money, 
they can go and get the best treatment. However, because there are so 
many liggers and arselickers in the industry, these people get very 
'enabled'. How many artists have we lost to addiction? Far too many."

Graham says families of addicts must strive to remain united. "They 
must try to work together and present a united front. The addict in 
the family will play people off against each other, try to divide and 
conquer. You need to work together, set very clear boundaries and 
encourage the person to seek treatment." Pinson believes that the 
"unconditional love" approach advocated by some experts actually 
encourages addicts to seek help, but parents must always ask 
themselves if they are enabling their child's drug use. "Enabling is 
the worse thing you can do for them. An addict will never go 
completely forward but each time they lapse, the parents must ask, 
have they made a little bit of progress?"

Anna says she lost four stone during her son's addiction but, helped 
by their attendance of a family programme of drug rehab, he has been 
clean for five years.

She is now a support worker for families and addicts, and wants more 
rehab facilities with programmes that involve parents or carers. "You 
need to understand the relationship you have with your addict," she 
says. "Addiction is an illness that takes over the whole family". 
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