Sweet brother of mine: The wild, untold story of how Guns N’ Roses drummer Steven Adler was kidnapped by his sibling to break heroin addiction,

“I was 14 and he’s f***ing smoking heroin right in front of me.” — Jamie Adler

“I saw Sam Kinison overdose. He was literally on a table and they were pumping his stomach. They literally revived him right here. I was only a few feet away. It was really scary.” — Jamie Adler

Jamie Adler recounts for the first time his felonious plot to abduct his drug-addicted rock-star brother and hold him hostage for 30 days in 2007.

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Metal Sludge — In a brand new three-part series Yahoo has published a mind bending and heart breaking story as told by Jamie Adler about his life growing up in the shadow of his older brother, and former Guns N’ Roses drummer Steven Adler.

The younger Adler, now 47, a career booking agent in the Hip-Hop industry has told Yahoo some incredibly personal details about his famous rock star sibling that will leave you teary eyed and questioning how Steven is still alive today.

We have shared excerpts below, from the three-part 7,000 word story as published on Yahoo.

If this doesn’t make you feel an array of emotions, then you just might be dead yourself.

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Part 1: Growing up Guns N’ Roses

“I was just so proud of my brother, he was my hero.” — Jamie Adler

“I’ve got stories for f***ing days,” Jamie Adler says with an air of braggadocio. He watched Axl Rose and Kurt Cobain’s notorious fight at the 1992 VMA Awards from steps away. He rescued Randy Castillo’s snare drum from a looter as 600 rabid Ozzy Osbourne fans rushed the stage in Irvine. He saw Sam Kinison overdose at a celebrity baseball game. All by the time Jamie was 17.

Within a year Guns N’ Roses fulfilled little Jamie’s prophecy. Quietly released on July 21, 1987, Appetite for Destruction gradually found a fanbase through word of mouth, local radio airplay and the eventual national breakthrough of the singles “Welcome to the Jungle,” “Sweet Child o’ Mine” and “Paradise City.” It would sell 30 million copies, still the benchmark for the best-selling debut album of all time, ranking as one of the top 10 albums ever. GNR “toured their f***ing asses off” promoting Appetite, as Slash would say. Between June 19, 1987 and April 7, 1990, over the course of 16 months and eight legs, the band played a staggering 176 shows — while dropping a second album, 1988’s abbreviated G N’ R Lies, right in the thick of it.

Jamie, meanwhile, became the most popular kid at school. “I would open up my locker and have notes from secret admirers,” he gushes. Jamie, like a chip off the block, turned his newfound fame into a side-hustle: He printed hundreds of autographed photos of the band and sold them for $10-$15 a pop. One day, word got out that Steven planned to pick Jamie up from school. The drummer arrived in a monster truck to 500 adoring preteens. He signed autographs. One girl fainted. “It was the coolest moment ever,” Jamie says. “I got to share my brother with all these kids.”

“But then by high school,” Jamie says wistfully a few moments later, “my brother got kicked out of Guns N’ Roses.”

Steven’s appetite for drugs had become so untenable it was threatening to bring about the band’s destruction.

“You never want to believe your brother’s in the bathroom for 30 minutes shooting heroin.” — Jaime Adler

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Part 2: Steven Adler’s unchecked heroin abuse leads to his high-profile termination from Guns N’ Roses and a dark downward spiral.

“I was 14 and he’s f***ing smoking heroin right in front of me.” — Jamie Adler

As the Appetite for Destruction tour wound down, the band’s bus dropped off its members across L.A. “Steven had $5, $10 million in his bank account. And he had nowhere to go,” Jamie says. The drummer eventually bought a house in Laurel Canyon previously owned by MTV VJ Martha Quinn. “He basically never left the house for the next two years,” Jamie says. “Steven didn’t talk to us. He disowned us because he was in this downward spiral.”

It was the fall of 1988. Jamie was in eighth grade, and he was lying to all his friends. “Welcome to the Jungle” played in heavy rotation on the radio, and he couldn’t admit to his peers that his world-conquering, rock-star brother had shut out the family.

A year later, however, in September 1989, Steven reconciled with his family, invited them over, and broke the news that GNR would be opening for the Rolling Stones at L.A.’s Memorial Coliseum for four consecutive nights. Steven wanted the family there.

Months later, on Jan. 21, 1990, Steven was a celebrity player at MTV’s First Annual Rock N’ Jock Diamond Derby at USC’s Dedeaux Field, part of the Salamanders team with Kevin Costner, Tone Loc, Bruce Hornsby and Daryl Strawberry, coached by Sammy Hagar. They battled Bret Michaels, Mark McGwire, MC Hammer, Keanu Reeves and the Sam Kinison-coached Aardvarks. Jamie tagged along with his brother.

“I was smoking weed with Tone Loc in the dugout,” Jamie says. “I saw Sam Kinison overdose. He was literally on a table and they were pumping his stomach. They literally revived him right here. I was only a few feet away. It was really scary.” Kinison later stumbled right back into the game. “He continued coaching or whatever the f* he was doing,” Jamie remembers. “I’m like, ‘How the f*** is he walking?’”

After the game, Steven and Jamie hopped into a limo. “We’re sitting there, and he had this little bag, this little hippie sack,” Jamie says. “And he pulls out tinfoil, this little balloon, and a lighter. And he starts smoking heroin. I was 14 and he’s f***ing smoking heroin right in front of me. I’m like, ‘What the f*** are you doing, dude?’ He’s like, ‘You don’t understand what it’s like to be me, to be a celebrity. … Man, it’s just a lot of pressure.’ I’m like, ‘Bro, smoke F***ing weed.’ He says, ‘I wish it was that easy… But don’t worry, I’m not addicted to this s***.’

“And then he started convincing me that it’s not as bad as I think. But he also said, ‘Please don’t tell mom. We’re brothers. Whatever happens when we’re together, that’s just between us.’ I never told mom. But I was just so hurt.”

Jamie was 15 now. “And I remember telling his friends and other people around, ‘Let’s go get Steven. Let’s go tie him up, hold him hostage in some room some place and get him off these f***ing drugs. Let’s go kidnap him. But nobody would ever listen to me. Because everyone knew that if you went against Steven, you were out of the circle.”

Jamie would revisit that plan 16 years later.

“But from that point on,” he says of Steven’s GNR exit, “it was just really, really dark for years.”

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Part 3: As Slash and Eric Clapton intervene, Jamie Adler conspires with friends to abduct Steven in a last-ditch effort to wean him off drugs.

“We’re gonna go and literally kidnap this dude.” — Jamie Adler

March 2007. Jamie receives a frantic call from Deanna. Doctors from Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas contacted her because Steven was in ghastly shape. He had abscesses all over his body from his shooting up and had developed a serious blood infection. There was talk they might need to remove his eye. “The doctors told him and my mom that he needs to take this medication for the next 30 days to clean out his blood. And if he doesn’t do this, he will die,” Jamie recalls. He had no confidence Steven would take the meds.

“I said, ‘This is going to be my last hoorah with my brother. This is going to be the last time I’m going to be able to try to save this guy.’ … I needed to get him under our control.”

Jamie asked Lobel for help. They called Slash and said, “This is life or death.” Slash reached out to Eric Clapton, who offered to admit Steven at Crossroads, the recovery center Clapton opened in Antigua in 1997, free of charge. On March 19, 2007, Jamie, Lobel, Slash and an interventionist flew to Vegas to retrieve Steven. They let themselves into the house and Jamie ventured upstairs to Steven’s drug lair, where he found his brother in a dark room, TV on, completely strung out. “He just looked so bad. So frail and sickly and deathly.”

“I said, ‘F*** it. We’re gonna go and literally kidnap this dude,’” Jamie recounts. (While corroborating Jamie’s story, Lobel remains reticent to talk about many of its details: “I don’t want to incriminate nobody,” he says. “I know Jamie says we’re past the statute of limitations.”)

Three days later, Jamie arranged for his associates to pick up Steven at the hospital. They handed him a milkshake — Steven loved milkshakes. What the musician didn’t know was that the beverage was laced with Valium and Xanax. “There were enough pills in there,” Jamie says, “to kill a f***ing horse.”

By the time Steven woke up, he was in North Hollywood.

“I’m committing so many f***ing felonies at this point,” Jamie says. “But the one thing I did know is I had so many witnesses, so many people in our lives that would go to bat for me if, god forbid, the cops came for me. Because everybody around Steven knew that he was gonna die.”

Jamie eventually dispatched Drew Pinsky, aka Dr. Drew, to counsel Steven. (Jamie says Pinksy was aware of the abduction.) Other people came to talk to Steven, too, including Crips members and late L.A. rap legend Nipsey Hussle. “Everyone was trying to help my brother,” Jamie says. “I was a big part of saving that man’s life,” says Lobel, who eventually opened his own treatment facility, the holistic-based Heavenly Center in Studio City. “I think he’s alive because of everything we all did collectively to help him.”

A month into the confinement, Jamie finally revealed himself to his brother. “You could keep me here for a week, a month, a year, 10 years,” Steven yelled at his brother. “As soon as I leave here, first thing I’m going to do is go get high. And there’s nothing you could do about it.” Once Jamie released Steven, the drummer made good on his threat, returning to Vegas and his heroin abuse…

… and then…

To read the full story, please visit Yahoo.

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