Tyler James, who was Amy Winehouse’s best friend since she was 12 years old has spoken out this week, asserting that the public never knew how close the singer was to recovery.
Winehouse, who died of alcohol poisoning on July 23, 2011, at the age of 27, had struggled with drug and alcohol addiction for a significant part of her career. James had left their shared house two days before, attempting to stop her from drinking. When he returned home, he saw an ambulance parked outside, and she had been found dead in the bedroom.
“Whenever she relapsed, I’d leave because I was worried she would think I was supporting that,” James explained in an interview with the UK’s This Morning on Wednesday. “So I’d leave, and within two or three days, she would say, ‘Tyler, come home,’ and I would come back.”
James recalled the last time he left: “I had a massive argument with her because there were letters from the doctor saying if she drank any more, she’d die.”
Winehouse had remained clean from heroin and crack for three years at the time, “But she never gets credit for that,” James said in an interview with The Times on Friday.
James has published a book on his and Winehouse’s lives, titled My Amy: The Life We Shared, with the goal of putting the record right on her efforts to get clean.
James said: “I want people to please, please recognize how hard she had worked to come off drugs and just how close she was to [giving up drink] for good, how close she was to being healthy.”
Winehouse’s brother, Alex Winehouse, has suggested that bulimia, which she had battled throughout her teens, also played a role in her death.
James, who battled his own alcoholism – and has now been clean for 13 years – told This Morning that he was “the only friend [Winehouse] had left by then,” and that he is still grieving over her death.
“Amy was my soulmate,” he said. “We were two halves of the same person. I never envisaged life without her. She was my best friend.”
Following her death, her family established the Amy Winehouse Foundation, which aims to prevent drug addiction in the youth.
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