And so it has come to pass that Amy Winehouse has joined the 27 Club. Other members include Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Kurt Cobain – all bright, groundbreaking talents who self-destructed before they reached their 28th birthdays to the detriment of pop music in general and their fans in particular.

Mind you, I’m no scold when it comes to indulging in recreational pharmaceuticals, but I find it tragic when such activity becomes a lifestyle of addiction, despair, and death. I can’t – and won’t – presume to know what drove Ms. Rehab, the Lizard King, Mr. Hand Tricks, the Pearl, and Mr. Nevermind to self-medicate themselves to such an extent that drug abuse led to their respective deaths.

But I will stick my neck out to assert the personal demons that killed them also might have been responsible for the art that made them celebrities in the first place. The Dionysian urge guiding many artists to creative heights may lead them to believe too highly in their celebrated artistic status. Convinced that they are indestructible, they knot themselves to the umbilical cord of death by imbibing, snorting, or injecting their drug of choice, perhaps in the belief they can pull out of the rattling spiral of life-ending indulgences at any time to party another day. Except, at the end of the binges, nodding, and comfortable numbness, mortality catches up and they succumb to shuffling off the mortal coil. Who knows? Certainly not I.

What I do know – or at least believe – is that the outcome is lamentable. Winehouse was a powerhouse singer as well as a songwriter whose best artistic days might’ve well lay ahead of her. Now we’ll never know. Like other members of the 27 Club who checked out too soon, we’re left with the question of what could’ve been.

There are those who will smugly assert the deaths of these musicians were self-fulfilling, prophesied by their respective headline- grabbing antics and lyrics celebrating chemical inebriation. However, I do not count myself among those who believe these deaths were inevitable or deserved. The waste of all that unrealized talent is a tragedy, as is the waste of all human life abruptly ended by one’s own hand gripping a bottle, syringe, firearm, or other implement of death.

Rest in peace, Amy Winehouse. And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest.