Chasing Amy

Your life has changed so much in the last year. Is it difficult dealing with the press chasing you everywhere?

“There’s no point in being pissed off about things you can’t control. It’s cool. It causes problems with my husband, though. He doesn’t like it.”

Let’s talk about Blake. How did you two meet?

“It was 2003. January 23, 2003. No, January 31, 2003 … at the pub … ” But she’s gone, words trailing off, eyelids fluttering, falling asleep mid-sentence.

She shakes awake again.

“It’s too dark in here — it makes me drowsy,” she says finally. “There’s no windows. Maybe we could do it another time in a corridor with windows. Some place with more light. I’m really, really sorry. From the bottom of my heart.”

In spring 2007, the state of the Winehouse nation was uncharacteristically calm, even idyllic. On May 18, during a U.S. promotional tour, Blake and Amy went before a justice of the peace in Miami and were married. That weekend, the newlyweds were photographed poolside looking happy and healthy — as healthy, at least, as can be expected of a couple of emaciated, ghostly-pale confessed alcoholics.

But Winehouse had married against the wishes of her parents: The day before the wedding, her father begged her not to marry Fielder-Civil; her mother simply didn’t believe she would go ahead with it. “I thought she would lose interest in him,” Janis says now. “I didn’t think they would actually get married.”

Members of Winehouse’s extended family maintain that Fielder-Civil introduced his wife to a darker world of drug use, including heroin and crack. “Amy’s no saint,” one relative tells Blender. “But she wasn’t into heavy drugs until she met Blake.”

In the months following the nuptials, the self-destructive episodes began piling up. In late June, Winehouse disclosed that she had carved the words I LOVE BLAKE into her stomach with a piece of broken glass. In early July, she canceled a string of concert dates, citing illness and “exhaustion.” When she did turn up for shows, things got even weirder. At a July 24 gig in Cornwall, England, tabloids reported the singer ran offstage after just two songs. She returned some minutes later but appeared disoriented, mangling her song lyrics and conking herself on the head with the microphone. According to witnesses, she turned her wrath on the audience, spitting into the front-row seats.

Finally, 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.”