The parents of Amy Winehouse, Mitch and Janis, have spoken out about their late daughter and her drug and alcohol addiction, saying that if she had died four years ago they wouldn’t have been surprised.
But her July 23 death shocked the Winehouse family, because the 27-year-old was not taking any hard drugs.
Mitch, who says he is not in denial over his daughter’s drug use, said that she had stopped taking hard drugs in 2008 and that her problem for the last three years had been alcohol.
“In August 2008 she said to me I have finished taking drugs and she stopped taking drugs in December and that was it,” he said on US talk show Anderson.
He said he had been “impressed” with his daughter’s recovery because she hadn’t taken any hard drugs for three years.
“If she had died four years we would have all held out hands up at that point and said ‘okay fair enough’ because she was very ill and she was taking an inordinate amount of drugs and it was a struggle to keep her going,” he said.
During the months before her death, it was clear Amy was still battling with alcohol with numerous reports of her unsteady behaviour.
In one instance she was so drunk that she couldn’t perform and even had trouble clapping her hands.
There were also reports that two weeks prior to her death, while on her way to rehab she drank an entire bottle of vodka and had to stop to be sick in a salon bathroom.
Mitch believes it was the drug Librium, which Amy was taking to treat withdrawal symptoms during her detox from alcoholism, that caused the seizure that killed her.
“Everything Amy did, she did to excess,” he said. “She drank to excess and did detox to excess.”
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