Launched in 2013, the harris project is a nonprofit dedicated to the prevention and treatment of co-occurring disorders (COD) — the combination of mental health challenges and substance use issues. Us Weekly has partnered with the harris project to bring you The Missing Issue, a special edition focusing on the stories of celebrities who struggled with COD. Here, we’re revisiting our past coverage of some of those stars.
This story ran on usmagazine.com on October 26, 2011:
ORIGINAL STORY: Coroner: Amy Winehouse Died from Too Much Alcohol
[Read the full original story.]
NEW STORY: Amy Winehouse Died From Too Much Alcohol While Coping With Eating Disorder and Depression
Found dead on July 23, 2011, just two months before her 28th birthday, Amy Winehouse didn’t go into great detail about her mental health or publicly share an official diagnosis, but her use of alcohol, heroin, marijuana and cocaine have been often reported.
However, her struggle with co-occurring disorders was clear. Her father, Mitch, explained in a 2020 interview with The Jewish News: “Of course, it’s all linked,” he said “A lot of people thought it was about being in the limelight and being a big singing star. Now, people have a completely different attitude and opinion of Amy. They know she’s a strong woman that had strong issues; mental health issues.”
Her family launched the Amy Winehouse Foundation to provide assistance to people struggling with mental health conditions, substance use, homelessness, eating disorders and other issues.
She Struggled With Self-Harm
At just 9 years old, Winehouse cut herself out of “morbid curiosity,” she told Q magazine in a 2007 interview. She told the BBC in 2006 that “I’m quite a self-destructive person.” And though Winehouse didn’t confess to continued self-harm or cutting, Rolling Stone journalist Jenny Eliscu noted during a 2007 interview that “the scars that cover her left forearm … look considerably fresher” than Winehouse claimed. Winehouse did tell Eliscu she’d self-harmed in the past during “desperate times.”
Her Family Recognized Her Bulimia
While she didn’t publicly disclose it, her father, Mitch, said she had battled an eating disorder in addition to her struggle with substance use. Her family says that it was that eating disorder that weakened her body in the days before her death. “She suffered from bulimia very badly. That’s not, like, a revelation — you knew just by looking at her,” her brother, Alex, told The Guardian in 2013. “She would have died eventually, the way she was going, but what really killed her was the bulimia…Absolutely terrible. I think that it left her weaker and more susceptible. Had she not had an eating disorder, she would have been physically stronger.”
She Self-Diagnosed as Manic Depressive (Now Identified as Bipolar Disorder)
In a 2006 interview with The Album Chart Show on British television, Winehouse said she was “manic depressive” and told Rolling Stone, “I do suffer from depression, I suppose, which isn’t that unusual. You know, a lot of people do.” She didn’t go into details or share anything in interviews to indicate she was given an official diagnosis or that she received treatment connected to depression.
In multiple interviews, Winehouse said the heartbreak she experienced after the end of a relationship led her to lose herself in partying. “I went back to a very black few months,” she told CNN in 2007. “I was drinking a lot, not anything terrible. I was just trying to forget about the fact that I had finished this relationship. And my management at the time … strong-armed me into [a] rehabilitation facility. I didn’t need it.”
Her father, Mitch, says that now he tries to tell parents to find ways to talk to their kids about substance use and about mental health, to have real conversations as much as possible. He said that with his troubled daughter, he resorted to yelling, screaming — even faking a heart attack — to try to get her attention.
“That is not the way to handle it,” he said to Tamron Hall on her talk show in 2020. “She would get dry … she was clear of drugs for three years at the point of her death.” Her strength and determination were evident to those closest to her. She was a loving and maternal person trying to find ways to cope amid co-occurring disorders, which continued to be a struggle for her until her death. “She never dealt with her addictions properly,” her father said.
To purchase The Missing Issue for $8.99 go to https://magazineshop.us/harrisproject.
If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health and/or substance use, you are not alone. Seek immediate intervention — call 911 for medical attention; 988 for the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline; or 1-800-662-HELP for the SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) National Helpline. Carrying naloxone (Narcan) can help reverse an opioid overdose.
