CRASH & BURN

This week the parents of the singer Amy Winehouse and her husband
Blake Fielder-Civil went on the radio to expose the extent of the
celebrity couple's addiction.

But will this very public intervention make any difference? Patrick
Barkham reports on the painful and messy business of coping with an
addict in the family

For most of this year, the parents of the singer Amy Winehouse and
her husband Blake Fielder-Civil have helplessly watched their
children become the latest, lurid celebrity car crash.

After the slow-motion wreckage of Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and
Pete Doherty, this one at first looked a bit of a laugh: Winehouse
was nicknamed "The Camden Caner" and "Amy Declinehouse", appearing
amusingly out-of-it on television quiz shows while her anthem, Rehab,
became the soundtrack to the summer.

Winehouse was smart, sassy and hugely talented, earning a Mercury
prize nomination for her second album, Back to Black. But then gigs
were cancelled, and finally Winehouse was rushed to hospital after a
reported overdose of heroin, ecstasy, cocaine, ketamine and alcohol.

She entered rehab alongside her husband, but neither managed to stay
for more than a few days.

It looked like the Winehouse story was going to follow the same
well-trodden path as that of all the other celebrity addicts who have
dominated the tabloids and glossy weekly magazines in recent months -
but then this week something extraordinary happened.

The mother and step-father of Fielder-Civil staged a public
intervention, going on Radio Five Live and urging the public to stop
buying Winehouse's records, and for the music industry to stop giving
her awards, in an attempt to shake her out of her drug addiction.

Giles Civil, a headmaster from Nottinghamshire (Fielder-Civil has
added the name of his biological father to his surname), said he and
his wife, Georgette, "believe that they are drug addicts, and they
don't believe they are. I think they believe they are recreational
users of drugs, and they are in control, but it seems to Georgette
and I that this isn't the case." "I think they both need to get
medical help, before one of them, if not both of them, eventually
will die," added Georgette.

Shortly afterwards, Winehouse's father, Mitch, phoned the same radio
programme. He also saw the couple as addicts and was desperately
worried about them, but he accused the Civils of failing to attend an
important meeting with doctors and record company executives the day
after the couple left rehab. "This is the problem we find ourselves
up against," he said. "We have two families pulling in different
directions. Basically, we just want the same things - we want our
children to be safe. But we've got different definitions of how we
can do that."

Will this public intervention do anything to help Winehouse and her
husband? Are they really in as much danger as their parents think?

And is the trouble they are in substantially different from the
trouble faced by "ordinary", non-famous addicts?

Does being rich and a celebrity cushion you from drug addiction?

Sarah Graham, a former addict who is now an addiction therapist for
the charity In-volve, says the parents' fears, in this case, are
fully justified. In their radio interview, the Civils revealed that
on one occasion Winehouse and her husband had been given the
responsibility of looking after Fielder-Civil's younger brothers, but
that the pair had allegedly taken drugs while doing so. "This shows
their using is chaotic and they are powerless over their using," says
Graham, who also points out that the risks of an overdose are
particularly acute for women, such as Winehouse, who have a history
of eating disorders and little body fat to absorb the toxins.

And while this case is unusual in that it is being played out in the
public spotlight, much of the detail will be familiar to the families
of drug addicts - the fact that the two sets of parents are divided,
for example. Parents are faced with terrible dilemmas in these
circumstances, says Moya Pinson, who has set up a support group for
parents and carers of drug addicts in Swindon. Does a mother buy
drugs for her daughter to stop her selling her body? Does a father
pay his son's debts to stop him being beaten up by his dealer?

Should parents turn a blind eye to their children robbing them?
People will disagree about what is right.

Families are ripped apart.

Pete Doherty, probably the best-known drug addict in Britain right
now, is perhaps typical of many drug users and their families: his
mother, Jackie, has been fiercely protective while his father has
hoped that "tough love" will sort him out. "His mother kept in
contact with him. I dealt with it as only I could," Doherty's father,
Peter, once wrote.

After numerous false dawns, Doherty's army major father cut off
contact from his son, concluding: "Peter's greatest misfortune was to
become famous. I watched as he was voted one of the most influential
rock heroes of all time in NME. People seem hell-bent on perpetuating
his wretchedness - a pathetic, limp figure." Doherty has talked about
his father's ostracism of him: "I say to my dad, 'I respect you and I
love you enough not to talk about you any more. Do you hear me? But
fuck you. Because there's a fellow here who's your son and he wants
to be your mate and he doesn't want to upset his mum. Why are you
being so stubborn? Why are you being so hard?'"

An addict can become the pivotal figure in a family, according to
Anna (not her real name), whose son was in his 20s, with a blossoming
career and from a respectable home, when he became hooked on heroin.
"It makes the addict quite powerful," she says. "They think, 'Mum and
dad were quite happy before this but I've been able to come between
them.' And if an addict comes out of rehab clean and comes home the
parents are still in this terrible mess."

So is it better or worse if your kid is a celebrity? "We all have our
public," says Anna. "We all have our friends and workmates." Many
parents strive to keep their child's addiction hidden from
colleagues, friends and relatives for years.

Then, just as publicly as if the child were famous, people hear about
their addiction in a local newspaper when the addict child is put in prison.

There are differences, of course.

Winehouse will not struggle to find treatment if she does ever agree
to it. Those less well-off must go on a waiting list. According to
Pinson, there is a three-week wait for rehab - but, in reality, it
can be up to two years.

She is, however, sympathetic towards the parents of Winehouse and
Fielder-Civil. "In this case the parents can probably go and buy
treatment, but until Amy and Blake are ready to go into rehab all the
money in the world won't buy it."

Do interventions work? Opinion is divided among professionals - but
all agree that being as open and honest as possible with your
children is a good step. This certainly counts as open and honest.

The truth is that drug addiction and its treatment is full of
cliches, none more so than the "tough love" view that they will only
start to get better once they hit "rock bottom". But what is rock
bottom? "My view on tough love is that things can always get worse,"
says Gary Sutton, head of drugs advice at Release. "You can be
homeless, you can have a heroin habit and then get hit by a bus and
lose your foot. Then you pick up a blood-borne virus from sharing
needles. What about sex work and shoplifting? People's rock bottoms
are very different." And other events can trigger an addict to seek
help: often it is social services threatening to take away their
child, says Sutton, or more positive changes - a job offer or a
change of scene.

A change of scene to the island of St Lucia, where Winehouse and
Fielder-Civil were pictured on a beach yesterday, is probably not the
professionals' rehab of choice.

As Graham points out, "St Lucia is awash with crack cocaine."

Graham became addicted to cocaine during an ostensibly successful
career in television and is acutely aware of how the creative
industries are awash with drugs, users and addicts. "People look at
celebrities and say they've got it easy, they've got loads of money,
they can go and get the best treatment. However, because there are so
many liggers and arselickers in the industry, these people get very
'enabled'. How many artists have we lost to addiction? Far too many."

Graham says families of addicts must strive to remain united. "They
must try to work together and present a united front. The addict in
the family will play people off against each other, try to divide and
conquer. You need to work together, set very clear boundaries and
encourage the person to seek treatment." Pinson believes that the
"unconditional love" approach advocated by some experts actually
encourages addicts to seek help, but parents must always ask
themselves if they are enabling their child's drug use. "Enabling is
the worse thing you can do for them. An addict will never go
completely forward but each time they lapse, the parents must ask,
have they made a little bit of progress?"

Anna says she lost four stone during her son's addiction but, helped
by their attendance of a family programme of drug rehab, he has been
clean for five years.

She is now a support worker for families and addicts, and wants more
rehab facilities with programmes that involve parents or carers. "You
need to understand the relationship you have with your addict," she
says. "Addiction is an illness that takes over the whole family".