MADRID, SPAIN — Madeline Bemelmans, 82, formerly of Paris, France, has passed away in an old house all covered in vines, of morphine powder in two straight lines.
Always open about her addiction, Madeline struggled with morphine and other painkillers from the time she was seven years old, when she had her appendix taken out and was mistakenly given adult-dosage painkillers. Attending a selective private boarding school in Paris, Madeline spoke at the 2013 Global Addiction Conference of the ease at which she was able to hide her drug-habit during her time at school and called for better recognition of drug-use symptoms. One of Madeline’s former schoolmates, who wished to remain anonymous, said: “We all knew. It was Miss Clavel that ignored her. That bitch was sneaking around with a bottle herself, you know.” Miss Clavel’s family was not available for comment, but it is known that she and Madeline had a falling out long before Clavel’s death.
Though only discovering AA later in life, Madeline was nevertheless able to claim sobriety from the age of 27—she is famous for saying, “Drugs? Pooh-pooh!”—when her longtime friend Pepito, son of Spanish diplomats who requested their last name not be used, overdosed and died.
Madeline began attending university after spending time in different recovery facilities, and proved to be more than capable at her studies. She graduated with a First from the University of Oxford and went on to work in the French Foreign Service, quickly rising through the ranks. She spent the last half of her life as a French Ambassador to Spain, a choice which she always said was to honor Pepito.
Madeline has also been a supporter of PETA for many years. She has had a succession of dogs, all named Genevieve, one of whom survives her but is said to be lost. Anyone with information about the pup is asked to contact Madeline’s live-in nurse, Mimi. “I hope she shows up before the funeral,” she commented. “Madeline would have wanted her to be there.”
The red-headed Madeline—who unabashedly dyed her hair in later years, proud to be the reddest head in the room—is not being buried in the Catholic cemetery she requested, as there is a suspicion that she committed suicide after a recent diagnosis of skin-cancer. “That’s what you get for being so vain about your pale skin,” the same anonymous schoolmate said.
Madeline’s friends and proud members of AA are gathering to protest at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, demanding that Madeline be buried there, claiming that she simply fell off the wagon and didn’t mean to overdose.
More information will be reported as events unfold. As of now that’s all there is, there isn’t any more.
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