Alastair Mordey, Head Counseller and Programme Controller at The Cabin ChiangMai looks at the sad demise of Amy Winehouse and what can be learnt from this terrible loss:

"I am the director of The Cabin, a drug and alcohol treatment centre in Northern Thailand, and within hours of the news of Amy Winehouse’s death breaking we had already received ten times the normal amount of global enquiries. It appears that Amy’s untimely death could ultimately save lives as it has already provided the catalyst for a number of people all over the world, not just in the UK, to examine their addictions, acknowledge they have a problem and seek help.

It is tragic that is should take the shocking and untimely death of a prodigiously talented and popular young person to have this effect but Amy’s death has caused people to reassess their opinions about her life and her well publicized problems with drugs and alcohol. From the shambolic stage appearances when she could barely string together a sentence, let alone remember a lyric, to the tabloid scoops of her actually in the act of taking drugs there have been regular reminders that Amy was fighting, and quite probably losing a battle to control her use of various substances.

The problem is that Amy’s struggle all too often provided a source of amusement. By continuing to live a debauched lifestyle she was also living up to the public perception of herself as embodied in her smash hit song Rehab which was effectively a celebration of here refusal to seek help for her various addictions.

Her behavior satisfied the media’s lust to have a hard living rock star it could regularly expose and make the subject of moralistic and, in light of the level of exposure they gave Amy, highly hypocritical editorials. The public seems to enjoy it when celebrity  stereotypes are enforced, ‘oh look Shane McGowan’s drunk again,’ ‘Charlie Sheen’s on another bender’, ‘Mikey Rourke’s been womanizing…’. There is a certain sense of acceptance that people will continue to live a certain lifestyle and it is only the families and close friends who are aware of just how destructive and ultimately unnecessary that lifestyle actually is.

Amy had tremendous potential to influence people whilst alive and that sad fact is that her ultimately tragic failure to deal with her addiction disorder could and probably will prove to be a turning point for many. The sheer unnaturalness and perverseness of a young person’s death has a way of bringing us back to reality.

Death’s like Amy’s are also perpetuated by the myth of the tortured artist and the idea that creativity can actually be enhanced by drug use.  The reality is that Amy’s creativity and career would have been vastly improved by rehabilitation and recovery, you only need to compare the scintillating live performances  early in her career to the shambolic ones once drink and drugs took over to realize this.

Amy was in all probability a lovely, gentle middle class girl, with minimal real traumas in her life. Her death should stand as testament to the negativity and destructiveness of the bacchanalian lifestyles so lauded and feted in unreal and trendy ghettoes like Camden.

I would challenge the media, music business and wider society to stop perpetuating the myth of the tortured artist. It shouldn’t take the death of a prodigiously talented young woman such as Amy to make people realize that there is absolutely nothing glamorous about addiction."

For more information about The Cabin visit: www.thecabinchiangmai.com.