Alex Van Halen has recently shared that his brother Eddie began misusing steroid pills near the end of his life. Doctors had given Eddie the steroids to reduce swelling after brain surgery, but he started to overuse them, as Alex revealed recently in an interview with Rolling Stone.
“You know, he fought until the end,” Alex said. “Anybody who thought he was anything less than that can suck my you-know-what… If you knew what he had to go through to beat the cancer — he wouldn’t do traditional treatment. Some of the off-the-wall sh*t caused such a toxic mix in his body. And, yeah, you shouldn’t drink with it, Ed!”
“I don’t know what was driving him near the end. There was something, an itch that he couldn’t scratch, something he needed to do. Up to the very end, he was making music… Quite frankly, it wasn’t very good. But that wasn’t the point. That’s what he did,” he added.
Alex also opened up about Eddie in his recently released book, ‘Brothers.’ Before the release of the book, the drummer shared an audio clip called ‘Overture’ to send a message to his brother. He shared his love for him and added that he was ‘supposed to die first’ as the older brother.
“Since you’ve been gone, I catch myself talking to you, yelling at you, in my head or sometimes out loud. I still have trouble believing you’re gone, and probably for me, you never will be. Outliving my little brother, this just wasn’t the plan. As the older brother, I was supposed to die first. Same as always, Ed, butting in line,” the drummer said.
Eddie Van Halen passed away in October 2020 after a stroke following a long battle with throat cancer.
‘Brothers’ is now available, featuring ‘Unfinished,’ the last piece of music Alex and Eddie recorded together.