14 DAY TRIAL // “When you love someone who suffers from the disease of addiction you await the phone call,” Russell Crowe begins his touching tribute to Amy Winehouse, whom he’d known for years. On Saturday, the call for Amy came – she’d been found dead in her London apartment.
When word broke that multi-Grammy winning singer Winehouse had died, many rushed to say, oh, that’s hardly surprising given the life she led for years.
Instead of rushing to judge an addict by their addictions, Russell says, the world should learn from Amy’s death that addiction is a disease that kills and that requires a lot of help to overcome.
He should know what he’s talking about: Brand too is an addict. Which is perhaps why he took a fancy to Winehouse the first time he met her, years ago, when he was fresh out of rehab and she was yet to become the international superstar she is to this day.
“Winehouse and I shared an affliction, the disease of addiction. All addicts, regardless of the substance or their social status share a consistent and obvious symptom; they’re not quite present when you talk to them. They communicate to you through a barely discernible but un-ignorable veil,” Brand writes.
He and Amy instantly saw each other for what they were: addicts. Later on, Russell would also discover why fans seemed to love Amy despite of her addiction and of the fact that her troubled life kept getting more coverage in the press than her music.
He saw her perform live and just then understood that he was in the presence of genius.
“Entering the space I saw Amy on stage with Weller and his band; and then the awe. The awe that envelops when witnessing a genius. From her oddly dainty presence that voice, a voice that seemed not to come from her but from somewhere beyond even Billie and Ella, from the font of all greatness,” Brand writes.
“A voice that was filled with such power and pain that it was at once entirely human yet laced with the divine. My ears, my mouth, my heart and mind all instantly opened,” he adds.
“That twerp, all eyeliner and lager dithering up Chalk Farm Road under a back-combed barnet, the lips that I’d only seen clenching a fishwife fag and dribbling curses now a portal for this holy sound. So now I knew. She wasn’t just some hapless wannabe, yet another [expletive]-ed up nit who was never gonna make it, nor was she even a ten-a-penny-chanteuse enjoying her fifteen minutes. She was a [expletive]-ing genius,” Brand adds.
Still, she succumbed to the disease of addiction and her death shouldn’t be romanticized. Neither should it be discarded through a tabloid story. Instead, Brand says, it should serve as a lesson of how we should act when in the presence of it.
“All we can do is adapt the way we view this condition, not as a crime or a romantic affectation but as a disease that will kill. We need to review the way society treats addicts, not as criminals but as sick people in need of care,” the comedian argues.
“We need to look at the way our government funds rehabilitation. It is cheaper to rehabilitate an addict than to send them to prison, so criminalization doesn’t even make economic sense,” he adds.
For Russell Brand’s full blog post, please see here.