Eddie Van Halen struggled with addiction his entire life.

After doctors gave him steroid pills toward the end of his life to control swelling following surgery to remove a brain tumor, the legendary guitarist began abusing them, his brother Alex told Rolling Stone in an interview published Tuesday.

One day, Alex said, he realized that Eddie had taken an entire bottle of pills because it made him “feel like Superman.”

“I didn’t see the bottle, but there were like a thousand pills in it,” he added. “If two is good, twenty is better. That was our mantra.”

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Eddie and Alex Valen Halen together in 1980. (SGranitz/WireImage)

Eddie Van Halen died in October 2020 after suffering a massive stroke following a battle with throat cancer.

“You know, he fought to the end,” Alex told Rolling Stone. “Anyone 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 have traditional treatment. s— created such a toxic mix in his body. And yes, you shouldn’t drink with it, Ed!”

Alex said that before his death, Eddie went to Switzerland for experimental cancer treatments and continued to make music there.

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“I don’t know what drove him to the end,” Alex admitted. “There was something, an itch he couldn’t scratch, something he had to do. Until the very end he was making music. … To be honest, it wasn’t that good. But that wasn’t the point. That is what he did.”

Alex admits that his brother’s death has broken him. Alex was even diagnosed with PTSD.

Van Halen – drummer Alex Van Halen, bassist Michael Anthony, singer David Lee Roth and guitarist Eddie Van Halen – in 1978. (Fin Costello/Redferns/Getty Images)

“I quit,” he told the magazine, with what he called “ocean sadness.”

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“I screamed and screamed. I was beside myself,” he said.

Alex Van Halen, David Lee Roth, Eddie Van Halen and Eddie’s son, Wolfgang Van Halen, in 2007. (Steve Granitz/WireImage)

“There’s a part of me that’s made up of common sense. If this confuses me, why would I do that? … Common sense wasn’t Ed’s strong point.”

—Alex Van Halen

Alex, who is writing a memoir about his relationship with Eddie called ‘Brothers’, said their father was an alcoholic who gave Alex his first drink at the age of six, and they both struggled with it, but Alex eventually came around to it millennium sober, buoyed by the support of his wife of 24 years, Stine Schyberg.

“There’s a part of me that’s made up of common sense. If this confuses me, why would I do that? … Common sense wasn’t Ed’s strong point.”

Alex said that Eddie continued to make music until the end of his life. “That’s what he did.” (David Tan/Shinko Music/Getty Images)

Alex said that Eddie’s ‘biggest curse’ was his enormous ‘talent’.

“The fact was that Ed was an incredible player, but ultimately he paid for it with his health, paid for it with his life,” Alex said of his brother, who died at 65, adding that Eddie was “overwhelmed through his life.” the burden of being called “the greatest living guitarist.”

EDDIE VAN HALEN’S SON WOLFGANG ON MOURNING HIS FATHER: ‘HE’S THE ONLY THING THAT KEEPS ME INFORMED’

Eddie opened up about his drug and alcohol abuse in a 2015 interview with Billboard.

Eddie Van Halen’s ex, Valerie Bertinelli, with their only son, Wolfgang Van Halen. (Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Recording Academy)

“I didn’t drink to party,” he explained, adding that on tour, when the rest of the band went looking for women, he would stay in his hotel room writing music while drinking and doing cocaine.

“Alcohol and cocaine were private matters for me,” he continued. “I would use them for work. The blow keeps you awake and the alcohol lowers your inhibitions. I’m sure there were musical things I wouldn’t have tried if I wasn’t in that mental state. You just play alone with a running band. and after about an hour your mind goes to a place where you don’t think about anything.”

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Valerie Bertinelli, Eddie’s ex-wife, opened up about their relationship earlier this year, writing on Instagram that it “quickly descended into drugs, alcohol and infidelity” after they met when he was 26 and she was 20.

“I loved Ed more than I can explain. I loved his soul,” Bertinelli wrote in her 2022 memoir, “Enough Already: Learning to Love As I Am Today.” “I hated the drugs and the alcohol, but I never hated him. I saw his pain.”