Chasing Amy

Blender magazine has the first interview conducted with Amy Winehouse in months. The series of chats, done as she traveled through Europe on tour in early October, paint a frightening picture.

In the article, her father publicly admits that she’s taking heroin and cocaine and Wino has severeal moments where she repeatedly falls asleep while being interviewed, on seperate occasions.

Click here to check out the full Blender piece.

Here are our HIGHlights:

She’s never exactly been a picture of health, but tonight she looks especially worse for wear: hunched, heavy-lidded and frail.

She sighs and plops down on the couch. She lights a cigarette and turns a drowsy gaze toward Blender; she’s ready to talk. We start by asking if she’ll be recording the follow-up to Back to Black anytime soon.

“Yeah, we’ve got a couple of more bits … I’m writing … ” she mumbles. “On the whole … ” She trails off.

Um … Back to Black was such a personal record — the songs were clearly about your relationship with Blake. Are you still writing confessionals?

“I’m still writing about the dynamics of being in a relationship … Would you like some wine?” she asks, fetching two glasses and beginning to pour. “I believe in relationships,” she continues, “whether it’s your grandmother or your dog … ”

Now her words are slurred, her eyelids drooping. Her head wobbles into a nod. She falls asleep for a second, wakes with a start, mutters and drops off again. The smoldering cigarette in her left hand falls to the floor.

“Oh, God, what is wrong with me?” she asks, coming to. “There’s something wrong with me … ”

We inquire about her brief rehab stint in August. What was it like there?

“You go in and you’re just sat down. They looked at me and said, ‘You’re an alcoholic.’”

And are you?

“No … I don’t know.”

Are you clean these days?

├óΓé¼┼ôI take, like, anti- ├óΓé¼┬ª I take stuff for my depression. Prescriptive stuff. But I don├óΓé¼Γäót take it.”

And you don’t do any other drugs?

“I don’t have time.”

On August 8, Winehouse was admitted to University College Hospital in London after the U.K.’s News of the World reported she had slipped into an overdose-induced coma after smoking, snorting and otherwise ingesting a combination of heroin, cocaine, Ecstasy and ketamine, topped off with vodka and whiskey quaffed on an evening pub crawl. “I don’t know how to explain what happened,” said Winehouse, who was released after having her stomach pumped. “I can’t remember what I looked like. I couldn’t recognize myself. It was terrifying.”

On August 13, at the urging of both Winehouse’s and Fielder-Civil’s parents, the couple checked into The Causeway, a $20,000-a-week detox clinic in Essex, outside of London. Less than 48 hours later, following what London papers described as “blinding” marital arguments, the couple left rehab. Winehouse’s family now squarely blames Fielder-Civil for this. “He refused to cooperate with the staff,” says one of her relatives. “They said Amy had been willing to work with them but that Blake wasn’t interested. He knows that he’s lost if they both clean up.”

The official story from Winehouse’s camp is that there is no story. Raye Cosbert, her manager, will say only that Amy “takes prescription medication, which makes her drowsy.” What medication, exactly? “That’s between Amy and her physician.” Is Blake a bad influence on his wife? “Blake and Amy love each other very deeply. And love is a good thing.”

But Mitch Winehouse, for one, is not so reticent about the state of his daughter’s health. “We know she’s on hard drugs — heroin and cocaine. That’s why we’ve been trying to get her into rehab,” he says. “Janis and I worry that she will seriously harm herself, but mercifully that hasn’t happened yet.”

Beyond that, Mitch allows himself little optimism. “I don’t know what they’ve been doing for the last month or so. We’d like to think that she and Blake have stayed clean since they went to St. Lucia,” he says. “But the thing with drug addicts is that they rarely tell you the truth.”

[Image via Mavrix Online.]