How Failure Saved My Life

I'm ashamed to admit that I'd never paid any real notice to Amy Winehouse before her death. The first time I saw her image was in a series of caricature sketches that a long-ago penpal sent me, the drawings were of rock stars  and I identified most of them but couldn't place Winehouse. Is that what's-her-name from the B-52s?

My friend was surprised that I'd never heard of Amy Winehouse, after all she was  all over the press back then. Not for her singing, but for her personal life, such as it was.

So anyway, I listened to her music last week after my show. And I found that she was really, really good. At least for two CDs...two CDs doesn't exactly qualify one for Hendrix comparisons, not musically anyway, but the songs are good and her voice is amazing. I had expected some sort of electro-techno-disco glop, not soulful, heartbreaking and sometimes funny songs, songs largely played with real instruments. There was a lot of potential there.

I hate the tabloid media and the way they emphasize all the wrong aspects of an artist. I don't give a damn how much weight some actress that I've never heard of has gained or what kind of drunken voicemails some Hollywood clown leaves on some other Hollywood clown's phone.

Even things that I would normally enjoy-such as swimsuit photos of beautiful women- are ruined by bright red circles and highlights that point out the 'imperfections' on human bodies that any sane person would consider to be natural wonders: 

Omigod, is that a wrinkle on Suzy Creamcheese's face? Are her boobs sagging? Is that a trace of cellulite? Get her to a plastic surgeon before it is too late!

Can you imagine a young Joni Mitchell  being transported through time and marketed by a team of 2011-era Hollywood producers?

                                       
                                                  (still alive and fine)


Well, we'd better do something about that hair. Maybe we can salvage it...we'll need to add some weight in the right places too, maybe raise the cheekbones just a tad, they are not-terrible...lose the nerdy clothes and start  showing some skin, at least  once the cosmetic scars heal...oh, and try playing  something you can dance to, maybe guitar stuff that isn't so complicated, be more like Lenny Kravitz and less like Django Reinhardt, right? ...and stop using so many  words- I mean, can't you just find a hook and stick with it? Our producers will be handling  the songwriting from now on, ok? 

No one will be able to see your new tits with that guitar in the way, so we'll find someone to do that for you too, or maybe we'll get your stylist to design a transparent guitar you can wear like a bra...now go meet your personal trainer and start toning those skinny legs so's you can learn some moves fer your video...
 

Whomever said: "Live fast, die young and leave a beautiful corpse" was a fucking idiot. If your fast-living kills you while you are still young, your corpse is not going to be a beautiful work of art- it is going to be a mortis-sculpture that  requires a HazMat team to clean up. Seriously.

Because chances are you've played with needles or slept with someone who has, and that makes your blood an upgraded potential biological hazard. And there's probably going to be a lot of blood when they find you. You would be unpleasantly surprised at the number of orifices that can bleed simultaneously. I sure was surprised when my time came.

So forget about the glamor of an early death brought on by a hard life. There isn't any glamor in being found dead in a congealing pool of your own blood, vomit, shit and piss. Fabulous!

There isn't any way that I can judge her strength of character or know if Winehouse really wanted to quit using or not but I will give her the benefit of the doubt. I have been there myself and I know how hard it is. It takes a long time- a lifetime- to adjust to sobriety and the first attempt doesn't always work. I know.

But what I can't know is what it would have been like to try to get clean if I had left the hospital and suddenly found out that I was rich and famous. That every detail of my life- real or fabricated- was uploaded to the internet in real-time as it occurred and viewed with obsessive fascination by people who really should have better things to do with their time.

And that I had piles of money and plenty of new 'friends' willing to help me spend it.

I have a very talented friend who desperately wanted to be a rock star when she was younger but never quite achieved that dream. This was a source of pain for her, but it shouldn't be, because if she'd become famous back then, she'd be dead by now and that would suck. I understand the desire to attain immortality through art, but the 'immortality' once granted to artists just isn't what it used to be. Most 'celebs' don't even seem to get 15 minutes of artistic recognition, their "fame" is all about their personal lives, not their art; they are lucky to get  a few hits, 140 characters of obituary and a Tiny URL for a tombstone.

I wanted the same fame for myself as my friend wanted, of course. I was sure that I'd be a rock star by 21 and dead by 30 and at the time I saw this as some sort of transcendental, darkly poetic and tragically beautiful fate. Lucky for me, I was a failure as a rock star, because I was a hugely successful addict and if I'd had a trainload of cash and a retinue of vampires for friends to go with that success, I'm sure I'd  be dead now.

It seems as if the public does not care about talent or skill , it is all about gory spectacle and prurient distractions..one person's escapism becomes that person's nightmare addiction and then that person's  nightmare addiction becomes the escapism of millions . Vicious.

I think the  gossip media must appeal to the same dark, reptilian part  of the human psyche that the ancient Romans tapped into when they forced slaves to fight to the death for the public amusement of a privileged audience. At least the ancient Roman had to show up and watch the death in-person and physically give the 'thumb up or down' life-or-death gesture. Today we have the 'like' button with  "lols" and 'smiley' emoticons to help add a passive-aggressive veneer of plausible deniability  to our otherwise murderous statements. Fuck off :) lol :)

But is being successful a good thing? Especially in the context of addiction? It seems like only yesterday that the nation was transfixed by Charlie Sheen tweets and rants. For me, the most immediate benefit that I realized when I quit using cocaine was not having to listen to crazy-ass cokehead bullshit anymore...many years later, people were actually paying money to listen to crazy-ass cokehead bullshit. Unreal.

Let's look at other forms of popular entertainment from the not-so-distant-past.

Death and torture:

Obviously, human beings have a perversely morbid fascination with watching other human beings suffer and die. Crucifixions, lynchings, hangings, beheadings...these are all huge crowdpleasers. Do you think humans have changed much since the photograph above was taken?

Think again.

 The only difference is now we can watch people destroy themselves and others from the safety of our own carefully filtered custom-aggregated electronic cocoons. We don't need to be physically present to  extend our condemnation of others, we can do it anonymously with the click of a single button or a  snarky text shortcut. We have violent videogames and movies like the 'Saw' series and Mel Gibson's S&M Jesus movie to satiate our bloodlust and morbid fantasies. It is only a matter of time until someone does a 'Faces of Death' reality TV series.
(If they haven't already).

Ultimately, it is up to the addict to quit.  I know this because I have done it, alone and without any formal support system. But I don't know that I could have done it if I'd been famous. I don't think I'd have survived my success.

But I was lucky. The only misery that I was addicted to was my own and my suffering wasn't public enough to be called 'entertainment'. I never made the Big Time but at least I lived to talk about not making it.

That's more than Amy got. She got success instead.


.

CAUTION: Improved Conditions

September 7, 2005 was a bad night for me. I didn't know it at the time, but decades of heavy drinking had given me a large number of separate tiny bleeding ulcers in my lower esophagus and upper GI tract. On 7 Sept, these small perforations united and I began hemorrhaging. I was losing blood by the mouthful.

I knew I was dying but I wasn't sure I cared. I did some truly last-minute thinking and I decided I didn't want to die, so I drove myself to the ER late at night.
I got lucky.
I walked into the ER and vomited blood on the floor, an act for which I gained immediate attention, medical and otherwise. The medical attention saved my life. I was later informed that I had anywhere from a few minutes to an hour or so to live at the time of my arrival- without immediate care, I wouldn't have lived to be outraged about this story:

LOS ANGELES—A woman who lay bleeding on the emergency room floor of a troubled inner-city hospital died after 911 dispatchers refused to contact paramedics or an ambulance to take her to another facility, newly released tapes of the emergency calls reveal.

Relatives said Rodriguez was bleeding from the mouth and writhing in pain for 45 minutes while she was at a hospital waiting area. Experts have said she could have survived had she been treated early enough.

If you are vomiting blood, your life is in serious jeopardy. ER personnel should know that and I'm sure that they did. What they lacked was concern and any semblance of human empathy. The staff and the 911 dispatcher display a sociopathic indifference to human life and suffering:

"I'm in the emergency room. My wife is dying and the nurses don't want to help her out," Rodriguez's boyfriend, Jose Prado, is heard saying in Spanish through an interpreter on the tapes.

The man was calling 911 from the ER. It wasn't a frivolous call. He was unable to get help , which prompted a bystander to place a second 911 call. The police finally responded by driving to the hospital and arresting Ms. Rodriguez for a parole violation. They put her in a wheelchair and started to remove her from the hospital, presumably to jail, but she died before they could leave the hospital .

The woman went to the ER , in obvious peril for her life, and wound up dying in police custody.

UPDATE: Here is a more detailed account from the LA Times.

The Hospital, (King-Harbor), had already been cited by the Federal government. The Feds don't seem to realize that if you are puking blood, you don't have 23 days to wait for the medical staff to rehab itself:

Federal inspectors last week said emergency room patients were in "immediate jeopardy" of harm or death, and King-Harbor was given 23 days to shape up or risk losing federal funding.

Dr. Bruce Chernof, director of the county Department of Health Services, which oversees the facility, has called Rodriguez's death "inexcusable" and said it was "important to understand that this was fundamentally a failure of caring." He has said conditions are improving, though.

Conditions are improving? The police just arrested a dying woman in the Emergency Room. She didn't survive the visit.
What was it like before the 'improvement'?

"Conditions are improving"...hmmm. That sounds familiar. Where have else we heard that sentiment expressed?

"In the 83 days since I announced the end of major combat operations in Iraq, we have made progress, steady progress, in restoring hope in a nation beaten down by decades of tyranny."
-George W. Bush
July 7, 2003. 2003. 2003.

"The plan sets out ambitious timetables and clear benchmarks to measure progress and practical methods for achieving results. Rebuilding Iraq will require a sustained commitment. "

-same asshole, same speech

What happened to the clear benchmarks? I thought BushCo was against putting timetables on American withdrawal from Iraq. In fact, Bush recently vetoed a withdrawal timetable.
BushCo argues that timetables encourage terrorists...we've seen a massive upswing in terrorism since Bush gushed about his "timetables" in 2003, so perhaps they are correct.

Bush in 2003:

"America has assumed great responsibilities for Iraq's future. Yet, we do not bear these responsibilities alone. Nineteen nations are providing more than 13,000 troops to help stabilize Iraq. And additional forces will soon arise -- arrive. More than two dozen nations have pledged funds that will go directly towards relief and reconstruction efforts. Every day we are renovating schools for the new school year. We're restoring the damaged water, electrical and communication systems. And when we introduce a new Iraqi currency later this year, it will be the first time in 12 years that the whole country is using the same currency.

Our greatest ally in the vital work of stabilizing and rebuilding a democratic and prosperous Iraq is the Iraqi people, themselves. Our goal is to turn over authority to Iraqis as quickly as possible. Coalition authorities are training Iraqi police forces to help patrol Iraqi cities and villages."

47 months later:

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 13 (IPS) - The U.S. Coalition is the principal cause of Iraq's current woes, charges a report released Wednesday by the Global Policy Forum (GPF), a New York-based watchdog group.

Since the March 2003 invasion, the U.S.-British occupation of Iraq has "utterly failed to bring peace, prosperity and democracy, as originally advertised," says the report, entitled "War and Occupation in Iraq".

"The United Nations and the international community must end the complicity of silence and they must vigorously address the Iraq crisis," it says.

Produced by GPF and 29 international non-governmental organisations (NGOs), the report was released to coincide with U.N. Security Council consultations on the Iraq problem. The 117-page report assesses conditions in the country, especially the responsibility of the U.S.-led Coalition, for violations of international law and concludes with recommendations for action, including a speedy withdrawal of Coalition forces.

It covers areas such as destruction of cultural heritage, unlawful detention, killing and torture of civilians, displacement, corruption and fraud, attacks on cities and long-term military bases.

"This is ongoing, is not under control, and is something the Coalition is saying it is doing under mandate of the U.N. Security Council," James Paul, GPF's executive director, told reporters Wednesday.

'Progress is being made.'

'Conditions are improving. '

Lovely epitaphs, those.