U.K. Doctor Told Amy Winehouse She Risked Death If She Didn't Get Help

According to a clinical psychologist at the Royal Free Hospital in London, Amy Winehouse declined to receive therapy for her drug addiction at the government-run facility. "She was actually up there, and she was referred to us, but she turned down a referral for it," Ash Medforth, who was also a neighbor of Winehouse's, tells Rolling Stone. "In my report at the hospital it does say if she doesn't receive state help, state psychological help, then it's more than likely that she will not reach the age of 28."

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Medforth adds: "One of the big problems is that [celebrities such as Winehouse] choose to have their own therapy. That doesn't work – as a clinical psychologist, you can't have somebody coming to pay you for it. She was offered a lot of therapy, she chose to go to Priory because she could basically choose her own therapy then. So that was the biggest problem with it . . . She went to pay so that she could be told what she wanted."

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Winehouse was in and out of rehab facilities for much of the past six years, but she rarely stayed long and often began using quickly after leaving the centers. According to her father, Winehouse even began developing early symptoms of emphysema from all the crack and cigarettes she had smoked. A European tour was canceled last month after Winehouse was barely able to sing her own songs at a show in Serbia.

Reporting from London by Chiara Atik.

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