The soul singer Amy Winehouse has been refusing to cart herself off to a rehabilitation centre since, well, before she released a song about how "they" tried to make her go to rehab (and she said "no, no,no"). Back then, "they" were her record company. Now, "they" are the British nation.
Her parents-in-law call for a boycott of her records and every tabloid, magazine and blog works itself into a fever pitch of hand-wringing, demanding that Amy stop saying "no, no, no" and cart herself off to be toned down by the men in white coats.
There's no question that these days, Winehouse isn't wearing her drugs that well. Recent pictures of "Amy Declinehouse", as The Sun has christened her, suggest she weighs little more than five stone. Last month, she was reportedly dragged into casualty, "with the dead eyes of a shark" after a three-day cocktail of booze and drugs, her life apparently saved by an adrenaline shot.
But aside from the fact that Winehouse should be able to take whatever drugs she likes (drugs are mighty helpful to the creative process - even Shakespeare, it is said, smoked pot) why does everyone seem to imagine that rehab is the answer to sorting out your problems? The solution to your problems is you deciding to sort them out, not a 12-step discussion group in a countryside location.
Certain stars do what Julie Burchill calls the "rehab hokey cokey". They go in, they go out and then they shake it all about again. They rarely come out reformed, balanced and well-adjusted, with a penchant for little more than omega-3 supplements and soya milk.
Pete Doherty, Lindsay Lohan, Kerry Katona, Courtney Love and Britney Spears have all been dispatched to rehab within the last year, and have all yo-yoed in and out again, brandishing umbrellas at passing paparazzi and looking not the slightest bit less troubled. And when rehab does "work" the results aren't always pretty.
Like comedians who get therapy, musicians who clean up often come out zapped of their best lines. Robbie Williams, who's in rehab so often for his troubled relationship with caffeine he may as well get a loyalty card, came out looking reasonably well after his last stint in Arizona. So well, in fact, his latest album was complete bilge. Rehab, it seems, had been "worse than a concentration camp" and had sapped the last bit of creative juice from Robbie's caffeine-starved brain.
Worrying about a pop star's drug abuse is a peculiar, and relatively new, phenomenon. Back in the day, rock stars used to be able to take drugs without the rest of society getting distraught about it. And if drugs turned out to be no good for them, they quit drugs, without going to rehab. If you look at pretty much any band of the 60s and 70s whose music is still appreciated, chances are at least one band member could have speedballed our Amy under the table. Many of them are not only still with us, but still sprightly.
As Keith Richards frightens the NME with claims that he snorted his father's ashes, Yoko Ono (yes, even the quiet ones were at it) has, at the grand dame age of 74, just released the critically acclaimed album Yes I'm a Witch. In the 1970s, both Yoko and her husband, John Lennon, used heroin and both decided to ditch it when they recognised it wasn't doing them much good - creatively or otherwise.
Another septuagenarian who's still around, still producing great music and never went to rehab is Leonard Cohen. Cohen spent a good 40 years riddling himself with drugs and booze, ploughing through relationships like so many car crashes, and his lifestyle helped him produce some of the most beautifully miserable music in existence. Try listening to Lady Midnight and insist debauchery hasn't got something in it.
Troubled souls tend to dig deep and prove enduring. The squeaky-clean Spice Girls come and go and nobody minds much. The last time Amy Winehouse refused to go to rehab, she employed her time much better. She stayed at home with her Ray Charles records and wrote an award-winning album, which will be the soundtrack to every young girl's broken heart for the next decade at least. You could say not going to rehab worked pretty well for her.
Winehouse doesn't want to go to rehab, one suspects, because she doesn't want to emerge emotionally neutered, chewing on pine nuts and with a comeback album like Rudebox. Arguments that her behaviour is ruining her career aren't necessarily sensible - not turning up to gigs has nothing to do with songwriting. And it's the songs that last, not footage of one's bobbing, nine-inch beehive at the V festival.
Besides, if rehab is to work, you have to want to be there. Winehouse clearly doesn't. She thinks it's a "cop out". Which it is. If she wants to stop taking drugs and settle down to square meals again, she can look to Yoko, Leonard and Keith, who at a certain point in their lives took the Noel Gallagher route to rock-star reformation. As the Britpop legend once declared: "If you take drugs you end up in rehab, unless you're a fucking rock like me and then you just give them up. We've all been there, but if you can't stand the heat ... "
So no, no, no Amy still doesn't need to go to rehab - she can get out of the kitchen, if she wants to, all by herself.
