Amy Winehouse has a lot of issues. The drinking. The drugging. The assaulting. The falling off the stage drunk. Let’s say on top of all those things, Amy still carried around her childhood blanket. Or worse, some tattered little barely-there piece of the blanket. People would find that weird, right? Certainly, comments would be made. But would it really be Amy’s biggest problem? Sadly, no. Could it be the root of all the other issues, or offer some sort of insight into them? Sorta… no.

While she doesn’t still carry her blankie around, Amy does, in fact, suck her thumb. At the ripe old age of 25. In fact she was photographed sucking away all weekend long, and the Daily Mail is absolutely fixated.

Amy Winehouse enjoyed cuddles from local children on at St Lucia beach today.

The friendly displays seem to confirm why the singer is so besotted with life on the island.

The Back to Black star has been living there since visiting on holiday last December.

She is a regular presence on the beach and in the island bars and restaurants and seems to have made friends for life if these pictures are anything to go by.

The 25-year-old appeared childlike as she sucked on her thumb and later broke away from the embrace to take a phone call.

According to Amy’s record label Island, she is currently working on her third album although there is no word yet on any release dates.

She was due to fly back to Britain to perform at the label’s 50th birthday celebrations but cancelled at the last minute.

[From the Daily Mail]

The Daily Mail has had a string of “OMG Amy Winehouse is sucking her thumb” type of stories over the last six months. They tend to get really fixated on one thing – celebrities knees for example – and then report on it obsessively, like it’s some kind of worldwide crisis. They’ve been moderately sedate in their thumb coverage, and I commend them for that.

I sucked my thumb until the third grade, and let me tell you, those were not easy times. I was also five feet tall on the first day of third grade and had very adult-looking features, so it made for quite the jarring image. That whole “kids can be cruel” thing was such a mantra from my parents that they should have just had it tattooed on their foreheads. So there’s a stubborn, pissy part of me that is bizarrely glad Amy didn’t succumb to peer pressure and give up the thumb.

Or maybe she did – after all, while we’ve had a lot of thumb reports, they all seem to have emerged in the last six months. Maybe as she’s been working harder on her other addictions, old ones have picked up. I’ve heard you always have to replace on with another. I’ve been working really hard on my food issues over the last several months. And while I haven’t had a cigarette in several years, I’ve been craving them so badly I’d practically eat one if I had to. Maybe Amy’s reverting to old comforting behavior. And like the kids on the playground say: a thumb in the mouth is better than a bottle.