Pump your breaks, Amy

I'm having some trouble with the fact that Amy Winehouse now allegedly smokes crack. I'm pretty liberal, and was with it when she sang about not going to rehab, and even when she was spotted roaming the streets of London looking like someone who froths at the mouth on the C train, but I can't support the crack smoking.

I've actually met someone who smoked crack. Well, I'm sure we all have. But I was actually friends with someone who smoked crack, unbeknownst to me. I overheard her trading drug stories with a mutual friend, and listened as she said, "oh yeah, I've smoked crack before". Now, she had a very strong Scottish accent, so I wasn't sure that I had heard her correctly'. I was definitely not part of the conversation, perhaps because I couldn't run off a laundry list of drugs I'd tried, but I interrupted anyway. "Excuse me, did you just say you smoked crack?" "yeah, i did. it was awesome" she said. Errrr, no thanks. I don't smoke crack, homey.

And I wonder. Who smokes crack? I had always hoped that everyone that currently smoked crack did so because they got addicted back in the 80s, before people understood how addictive it was. I had hoped that all those poor, lost crackheads I saw just couldn't withstand rehab, so here they were, in 2008, scratching invisible sores, wearing tattered rags, and talking about how they just got out of the hospital and needed money for food (while wearing their hospital band from 1998 as evidence).

But nope, some people just don't know any better. Stacy the Scottish druggie was one. And Amy Winehouse is another. Crack clearly kills, people. But I guess that some people don't care. I guess that some people are unfazed by the shells of people that stick their heads in a phone booth outside the bodega, only for smoke to rise above it, thinking they're fooling us all into thinking that the phone is just smoking as they talk on it.