The first point on drugs ...

Addiction is a recognized form of mental illness.

Mentally ill people do not make decisions in the same way as non mentally ill people. People with addictions are driven by them and this affects their behaviour in ways that shock and appall the rest of us.

Otherwise nice people turn into monsters.

There is nothing you can do to help an addict until they accept that they have a problem and decide to do something about it themselves, in which case you can support their efforts.

Never underestimate the lure!

People like Winehouse and Doherty have genuine problems that will be with them for life.

Point two

As regards drugs and high profile musicians, it is interesting to note, without trying to make any point one way or the other, but purely on an observational level, that many of the most influential musicians and authors throughout the ages have been users of drugs.

From Byron to Lewis Carrol, From Charlie Parker to Billy Holiday, the symphonie fantastique by berlioz is all about a massive Opium trip and concerns itself in a disturbingly modern way with surrounding issues of psychosis, fear and obsession.

Whether you agreee with the argument or not, it is certainly arguable that the evolution of art and music and the use of drugs have gone hand in hand over the centuries.

I am not for one minute advocating careless miisuse of drugs as I believe that it leads inevitably to deep and lasting unhappiness.

But maybe there are those who have been able to maintain a healthy relationship with them.

Billy holiday died very unhappy through alcohol abuse. She had come off the drugs a year earlier. And she is not the only person for whom theey have helped achieve a tragic end.

But would she have been any happier without them considering the nightmare she endured from the men in her life not to mention the racism she encountered.

She certainly impacted heavily on the art of the Jazz vocal and sang with her soul in much the way that many addicts have been known to over the centuries.