- Summer House star Carl Radke’s older brother Curtis died in September 2020, and he learned about it on the Bravo show
- Radke said on the Feb. 5 episode of The Viall Files podcast that he entered a “downward spiral” of drug and alcohol use after his brother died
- The Bravo star revealed that talking about his brother’s heroin addiction on Summer House caused “a massive divide” between the siblings
For years, Summer House’s Carl Radke has been open about his struggle with addiction before getting sober. But on the Feb. 5 episode of Nick Viall’s The Viall Files podcast, Radke, 40, shared a raw account of how he overindulged after his older brother Curtis died in September 2020 following a lifelong battle with mental health issues and addiction.
“I immediately ran up to Kyle’s bedroom to tell him what had happened, and everybody really rallied around me that particular summer,” Radke said of his costar and best friend Kyle Cooke. “But it was when the summer ended, I went back to my old SoHo apartment. As I would joke, it was like my f—boy pad, and I went right back into doing drugs and drinking all the time, but I was doing it alone. I would drink all day by myself and do cocaine by myself in my apartment, and, like, call people, text people, say crazy s—. It just was on this downward spiral.”
Radke explained that he thought moving out of his apartment would help, so he rented a new place in the same building as his castmate Lindsay Hubbard before they started dating and eventually got engaged. (They’ve since called off the wedding.)
“I thought at the time, like, it’d be good to be around a friend if I’m gonna actually go and, like, get sober,” Radke told Viall, 44. “But, yeah, I moved into that apartment, and first weekend, I told myself I’m gonna get in this new apartment. I’m not gonna drink or do drugs in it. That lasted a day.”
The Bravo star said he started experiencing “horrible anxiety” knowing he’d have to watch back the Summer House episode where he learned about the death of his brother.
“Here I am drinking alone, doing cocaine alone and people were celebrating me at that time, like, because I was seemingly doing okay publicly,” Radke said. “And people were celebrating how I was reacting to my brother’s passing.”
Radke said he “felt like an impostor” and recalled “holding a jar of cocaine in my hand” when he saw an online article at the time praising how he appeared to be coping with Curtis’ death. Radke credited his time at Syracuse University with being “a crash course” in “not only drinking, but, you know, cocaine use,” explaining that he first used the drug while on a spring break trip to Mexico in college.
The TV personality said a Bravo exec confronted him in 2019 about his substance abuse — and sensed that it went beyond alcohol.
“For the first time, I actually had someone call me out and say, ‘I know it’s not just alcohol. It’s coke. All the other s— as a result,” Radke said. “I would take Xanax to kinda come down. I would take Ambien to help sleep, all the things. But, it still wasn’t right away, like, I’m gonna go to get my help. I did it in my own.”
Radke said it took him another nearly two years to “fall on my knees” and get sober. He began attending Alcoholics Anonymous and celebrated four years sober last month.
“The perception of going to AA is like everybody’s got a brown paper bag and they’re dirty and haggard looking. And, yes, there are folks that are still really struggling and come in like that, but I was blown away by the other side of this world, which was Goldman Sachs executives, actors you recognize on major TV shows, successful people, well-to-do individuals who couldn’t get out of the way or drugs or alcohol,” Radke said. “And hearing that and seeing other people living like that, I was like, ‘Oh, I can do that too.”
Radke sees his sobriety as a way to honor his brother who had a heroin addiction and would’ve turned 45 on Tuesday, Feb. 4. The Bravolebrity said on Viall Files that he remembers watching Curtis get arrested as a teenager and seeing his brother shoot up heroine in the room they shared growing up.
“I didn’t realize at the time, but I was about 12,” Radke said. “I saw him with needles and stuff, and I found needles.”
Radke shared that he and his brother had a falling out after he mentioned Curtis’ heroin addiction on Summer House, which caused him to go on “a Facebook tirade,” tagging Bravo execs and the season 1 cast.
“My TV show showed what I said about his addiction created a massive divide,” Radke, who founded non-alcoholic bar Soft Bar + Café in N.Y.C., said. “And the last time I spoke to him for real was actually at my grandmother’s funeral.”
The reality TV star explained that he is “at peace” now with his brother’s death. Still, “if I could have changed and gone back that episode of Summer House and not get that call while we’re filming, I would have done that,” Radke said.
He plans to keep “sharing openly” about his addiction and subsequent sobriety in hopes that others will do the same.
“I know five years ago, if you I would have thought I would have ever admitted publicly I had a cocaine problem, you would have been crazy,” Radke said. “But, I now it’s like, let’s go.”
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Summer House season 9 premieres Wednesday, Feb. 12, at 9 p.m. ET on Bravo.
If you or someone you know is struggling with substance abuse, please contact the SAMHSA helpline at 1-800-662-HELP.
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