Alex Van Halen details Eddie Van Halen’s prescription pill addiction

Alex Van Halen he is giving light to his brother Eddie Van Halenaddiction to prescription pills.

In his first interview since Eddie’s death, Alex, 71, explained that his late brother, the Van Halen guitarist, became addicted to prescription steroid pills after undergoing a surgery to remove a brain tumor in the years before his death. (Eddie died in 2020 of complications from cancer. He was 65.)

“You know, he fought to the end,” Alex said Rolling Stone in an interview published on Tuesday, October 15. “Anyone who thought he was anything less than that can suck my ya-knows. … If I knew what had to happen to beat cancer, I wouldn’t do the traditional treatment. Some of those outside the wall caused such a toxic mixture in his body. And, yeah, you shouldn’t drink with him, Ed!”

Alex added that the pills made his brother “feel like Superman” and one day he saw Eddie take all the pills in the bottle. The intention was not to hurt himself, but to pursue this feeling.

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“I didn’t see the bottle, but the bottle had, like, a thousand pills in it,” he said. “If two are good, 20 are better. That was our mantra.”

Alex, who was also Van Halen’s drummer, laughed when he said it, although he accepts that the pills probably contributed to his brother’s death.

During the time before Eddie’s death, he continued to create music while pursuing experimental cancer treatments. Alex admits that the music wasn’t very good, but that’s not the point, the point was that he was capable of it.

When Eddie died, the family was unable to have a proper funeral with the world still in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. Alex called it “unceremonious” and added that Eddie was cremated and his son, Wolfgang, has his ashes.

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“I have to say that Wolf did a phenomenal job of handling all of this,” he said. “It was far more than any young person should have been in charge of.”

Meanwhile, Alex had to deal with his own “ocean grief.”

“I was screaming and screaming. I was beside myself,” she said. “I just miss him. I miss the arguments. I live with him every day. And I can’t bring him back. I can’t make things right.”

Sometimes, he can still feel Eddie’s presence, explaining Rolling Stone“Ed has been a couple of times.”

“Okay,” Alex concluded. “Wherever it is, it’s fine.”