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Parents say Winehouse needs 'to be rescued'

Wesley Johnson,Press Association
Tuesday 16 June 2009 18:39 BST
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Janis Winehouse said: 'The need to rescue her is enormous'
Janis Winehouse said: 'The need to rescue her is enormous' (Getty)

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Amy Winehouse is constantly in denial and needs to be rescued, her mother said.

Janis Winehouse said she just wants her daughter to be okay and "would do whatever it took to make that right".

Her comments to interviewer Daphne Barak come as ITV News will show footage of the troubled singer trying to play the drums while seemingly under the effect of alcohol as she battled her addiction in her private villa in St Lucia earlier this year.

"The need to rescue her is enormous," Mrs Winehouse said.

"I just want her to be okay and I would do whatever it took to make that right.

"Amy is in denial all the time. She probably feels trapped, her body is trapping her. But I know with addiction you do not have the choice because the substance itself directs you."

She went on: "I want to say to her - 'Amy, what are you doing? Don't you know what you're doing?' But she by then has got herself on to it to help her get through, and I understand that."

The 25-year-old Back to Black singer's father Mitch added: "I need my daughter to be a whole person again.

"I tried it all - I said, Amy you've got to do this, you've got to go to this doctor, you've got to do this, you've got to do that, you're killing me, you're killing your mum. None of it worked."

He said his daughter was on a drug replacement programme but drinking heavily.

"For the last six months there's been a remarkable recovery," he said.

"A gradual recovery, which is good. With slight backward steps - not drug backward steps, more drink backward steps if you follow my drift. I think that will be the pattern of recovery."

Mr Winehouse also blamed his daughter's estranged husband Blake Fielder-Civil for fuelling her drug habit.

"The option of them being together is too horrible to contemplate," he said.

"They are going to get divorced and who knows what's going to happen down the line.

"Amy and Blake have decided that they want to get on with their lives separately, and if they get back together again in the future and they're both clean and they still love each other, that's up to them."

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