Very Moving Piece: Russell Brand on Amy Winehouse: 'We have lost a beautiful, talented woman' | guardian.co.uk

Russell Brand on Amy Winehouse: 'We have lost a beautiful, talented woman'

We need to review the way society treats addicts – not as criminals but as sick people in need of care

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• • Russell Brand
  • guardian.co.uk, Sunday 24 July 2011 23.14 BST
  • Article history

Russell Brand: 'Addiction is a serious disease; it will end with jail, mental institutions or death.' Photograph: Dave Hogan/Getty Images

via guardian.co.uk

Excerpt from a very moving article:

"...I was myself at that time barely out of rehab and was thirstily seeking less complicated women so I barely reflected on the now glaringly obvious fact that 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 unignorable veil. Whether a homeless smack head troubling you for 50p for a cup of tea or a coked-up, pinstriped exec foaming off about his speedboat, there is a toxic aura that prevents connection. They have about them the air of elsewhere, that they're looking through you to somewhere else they'd rather be. And of course they are. The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of the day with some purchased relief..."

Posted via email from Siobhan O'Flynn's 1001 Tales