Barely over five feet tall and far too thin, the Londoner was getting acquainted with a glass of wine.

She quietly summoned the Berkeley Court Hotel waiter and ordered a tequila. No salt or lemon required, fanks. It was dispatched promptly and conversation turned to the song that she was to perform later on Tubridy Tonight. "They tried to make me go to rehab, I said no, no, nof" The rest was a bit of a shambles. Amy had arrived in Dublin last Saturday in a bad mood, began drinking and just continued. Her mascara told its own upsetting story and she either forgot some of her lines or just didn't bother to sing them. Tubridy gave a look of bemused resignation as the studio audience clapped politely. At least she had shown up.

At just 23, Winehouse looks like someone who needs a little minding but, quite apart from the usual celebrity-in-trouble cliches, hers is a familiar story faced by a great many ordinary folk. You know, the guy who sits opposite you at work or the girl who serves you your coffee every morning. The sister you haven't spoken to in weeks.

Christmas is a lonely, difficult time for functional alcoholics or those with eating disorders, but it's the under 25s I always think about, the ones for whom the suggestion of rehab is about as enticing as the priesthood. It's no surprise the resistance to face up is so strong. It's not just the 28 days away, the shame of having your private life picked at like a scab by dull strangers or even the potential withdrawal symptoms.

The hardest thing the young have to get their head around is that they have a disease . . . one that needs treatment every day for the rest of their long, long lives.

How difficult it is for them to admit they have reached bottom when all seems ahead of them and their friends, popular culture and the media are telling them getting wasted is what you do when you are young. Christmas is a testing time for the abstinent; the coffee shops and cinemas are closed, regular life stops and everyone parties hard. A good time to go to rehab really. The shame is that it has such a bad rep among celebrities like Winehouse and, thus, society as a whole.

What is less understood is that rehab is a great way to kick-start your life and that it isn't a prison sentence; the paradox being you have to accept that it is before you realise it doesn't have to be. The only way to discover that yourself is to go, go, go. . .