Amy Winehouse has emphysema

“The doctors have told her if she goes back to smoking drugs it won’t just ruin her voice, it will kill her,” he was quoted as saying in the Sunday Mirror.

“The doctors have said that if she had continued the way she was going she could have ended up an invalid - she wouldn’t have been able to breathe.”

He added: “She’s got emphysema. It’s in its early stages, but had it gone on for another month they painted a very vivid picture of her sitting there like an old person with a mask on her face struggling to breathe.

“With smoking the crack cocaine and the cigarettes, her lungs are all gunked up. There are nodules around the chest and dark marks. She’s got 70 per cent lung capacity.” He added that a spell in hospital last week and renewed treatment for her well-publicised drug addiction had offered a ray of hope for his 24-year-old daughter.

“If she doesn’t go back to drugs, then she can lead this magnificent life,” he said. “We are praying that that’s what Amy really wants. She seems resolute.”

Sydney Morning Herald

I hope this disease is enough to get Amy off drugs, because I think for the first time her livelihood is truly threatened. Obviously Amy needs to have good lungs to sing, and she definitely needs to breathe to live.

Amy Winehouse has an estimated fortune of $20 million, but if she can’t work her money may eventually dry up and instead of being a drug-using rock star she’ll just be a junkie. Which would be a shame because she is so talented.

Her father says in the interview that she abstains from drugs when she’s working - although her recent string of canceled concerts suggests otherwise - and that she should focus on her music.

Amy Winehouse is shown taking out the trash with a cigarette in her mouth on 5/27/08, thanks to WENN.

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