Amy Winehouse's Dad: She Has Emphysema

LONDON — Soul diva Amy Winehouse has damaged her lungs by smoking crack cocaine and cigarettes, her father said in an interview published Sunday.

The Sunday Mirror quoted Mitch Winehouse as saying that Amy has early stage emphysema and an irregular heartbeat, and has been warned that she will have to wear an oxygen mask unless she stops smoking drugs.

"The doctors have told her if she goes back to smoking drugs, it won't just ruin her voice, it will kill her," Mitch Winehouse was quoted as saying. "There are nodules around the chest and dark marks. She has 70 percent lung capacity."

Winehouse, 24, collapsed at her north London home Monday after signing autographs for a group of fans and was taken to a London hospital for tests. She remained there all week.

She is still scheduled to sing at a concert in London on Friday celebrating the 90th birthday of Nelson Mandela, the South African Nobel Prize-winner, and plans to take part in the Glastonbury music festival the following day.

Mitch Winehouse said it would be good for his daughter to perform.

"When she's been inactive work-wise then that's when the problems really start. The doctors have said that medically there isn't any reason why she can't do Glastonbury," the paper quoted him as saying.

He also pleaded with her drug-taking friends to stay away from her.

"What hope does she have if people are taking drugs around her," he said.

Chris Goodman, spokesman for Amy Winehouse, said "If that's what Mitch says, that's what he says. It sounds right."

Mitch Winehouse could not immediately be reached for comment.

Comments

[glitzqueen]

09:24 PM on 06/23/2008

The whole celebrity-worship thing appalls me and I even believe public figures deserve to have private lives, but Amy interests me strangely. This is a case of Janice, Jim and Jimi redux. She's that good -- or this old hippie would never have bothered learning her name. And back in the day, I was the Bad Girl, too.

It seems to me extremely salient that she'd barely burst onto the scene with a couple of tough broad tunes before she started imploding in plain view. How do you wail proud rejection of rehab and yet seek it in earnest? A want of definition more or less goes with the territory at 24, but we aren't usually caught so publicly in self-contradiction. She must be terribly embarrassed. Obviously she needs new material: a song worthy of her power that isn't about destruction. A rationale for living. It's a problem of aesthetics more than anything else.

[OhComeOnNow]

06:05 PM on 06/23/2008

You reap what you sow, and baby, has she sowed!

Could she just please put herself out of OUR misery?

[happycat]

08:18 PM on 06/23/2008

Not to worry. She will be gone soon enough and then the story of this "tragedy" will play over and over again on everything from Entertainment tonight to CNN. Then we really will be in misery. Be careful what you wish for!

[BroMan]

05:04 PM on 06/23/2008

Sorry, I meant to begin my post with .. "Too bad..."

[BroMan]

05:03 PM on 06/23/2008

To bad she does not have much of a repetoire except for a few songs. Maybe she has some stuff in the can. I feel really bad for her. Her Dad is right about the drug friends, but even without someone egging you on, when you have an addiction like that you either have to want to kick it on your own or your dead. There's nothing I've read about Ms. Winehouse to make me think she wants to get better. I could be wrong.

[Jinxykb]

01:56 PM on 06/23/2008

Has anyone ever heard of a person getting emphysema at 24? Ever?!? There are people who have been drugging & smoking harder & longer than Amy Winehouse. Half of the Rock & Roll hall of fame should have died of it before 1977. I just don't get it.

[MiraMcB]

04:58 PM on 06/23/2008

A thousand different reasons... Everyone's constitution and genetic risk factors are different . 24 years old. She looks 50. What a shame and a waste.

[Boobaloo]

11:50 AM on 06/23/2008

Good.

The sooner death takes her the sooner we'll be free of hearing about this crack head.

[andvoodoo2]

12:48 PM on 06/23/2008

I can't help but wonder how many are secretly hoping the same thing about you.

[happycat]

08:22 PM on 06/23/2008

Oh that's mean.

[OhComeOnNow]

06:06 PM on 06/23/2008

I agree.

[ohiomark]

10:20 AM on 06/23/2008

I think "Doctor Dad" has got the diagnosis wrong.

Smoking crack is not the cure for emphysema.

[brijit]

07:16 PM on 06/23/2008

Where does it say that her father believes that smoking crack will cure emphysema?

[ohiomark]

09:33 AM on 06/24/2008

It's called sarcasm, look it up.

[AurigaRa]

08:36 AM on 06/23/2008

intervention from someone other than dad
I say yes, yes, yes

[meanguy]

08:14 AM on 06/23/2008

what a great dad...just keep pulling the handle on the money machine till it gives out...it would be good for her....

[helonias]

07:56 AM on 06/23/2008

Has dad and Amy picked out her coffin

[rubberneck]

05:13 AM on 06/23/2008

I give her a year. At most.

[SayonaraSnot]

07:48 AM on 06/23/2008

I was just about to make the same comment. She is an amazing singer, but if she doesn't clean up RIGHT NOW, she will die. And she's probably irreparably damaged her voice.

[LeaveArtieAlone]

10:21 AM on 06/23/2008

Wow so was I. Talented and self destructive.

[heal57]

02:31 AM on 06/23/2008

I have 22% lung capacity and hope to get stem cells eventually to keep me alive. This is a serious disease and for such a young woman to have this started [as I did from smoking when younger] is sad. Actually, I have never heard her sing. I don't know much about her except she's kind of out of it by the pictures. When lung power diminishes enough the singing voice subsides and that's the least of the problems. Hopefully, she will refrain from smoking anything anymore. I hope her Father has influence and can steer her in the right direction.

[watchingthings]

12:50 AM on 06/23/2008

I saw this on TV. It's so sad that her dad thinks she'll never get to see her thirtieth birthday because of cocaine and other drugs. He says that he knows no way of stopping her from her suicidal slide. She goes to a rehab only if it gets her out of a legal bind........she has no intention of helping herself. She is one one of the few that would have been better off without the money and the glory. Most can handle it....we don't hear about them....like Cher or Shania Twain could handle big bucks, Madonna could handle big bucks......Britney Spears can't. Amy Winehouse sure can't.

[Jinxykb]

01:49 PM on 06/23/2008

Very insightful.

[alieninvader]

11:58 PM on 06/22/2008

My Grandfather died from emphysema. It's a horrible disease, and I don't think it's reversible. Even if she were to clean up right now, she probably won't live to old age. She has so much potential. Sad.

[MikeDu]

06:13 PM on 06/22/2008

Don't think this can't be your child. The safer you think you are the more likely your teenager is keeping some baaaaaad activities from your view. There's the old old observation that it's always the preacher's children who are the wildest in town.