Carl Radke reflected on his journey to sobriety during the “Summer House” reunion.
“I feel really good,” the reality star, 36, told his co-stars in Thursday’s episode, noting that he has sought therapy. “I mean, five years on TV, you guys have seen me up and down, but I think where I’m sitting now is the best place I’ve ever been, so I’m happy to be here.”
Radke proudly stated he was 92 days sober at the time of filming the reunion after his brother Curtis died from a drug overdose in August 2020 while Season 5 was in production.
“I reflect a lot on what happened last summer, but it’s put a lot in perspective for me personally. It’s a wake-up call,” Radke said. “This was a path my brother went down, and clearly the path I’ve been choosing can sometimes lead me down that way. I can’t live like that.”
His castmate Lindsay Hubbard then revealed that fellow Bravolebrity Captain Lee Rosbach from “Below Deck” reached out to Radke after Curtis’ death, as Rosbach, 70, “experienced the same thing with his son.”
“It was, like, the most beautiful, sweet thing — this connection through traumatic experience,” Hubbard, 34, said.
Page Six exclusively reported that Rosbach’s son Josh lost his battle with opioid addiction in July 2019.
For Radke, sobriety was something he considered even before his brother’s passing.
“It’s a blessing in disguise that I had done the work I had done leading up to this past summer,” he said in Thursday’s episode. “I think had I been in the place I was previous summers when I got that news, I don’t think I would be here right now. Not kidding.”
He went on to thank co-star Kyle Cooke for supporting him as he was going down “a dark path” over the winter where he was in a “really bad” spot and “scared a lot of people.”
“Kyle came over my apartment and I didn’t know he knew I had been messed up for a couple of days — well, a couple of months after that. He came over to my apartment and he told me he loved me,” Radke said through tears. “When you lose your brother and you don’t have that, like, male influence that you wanted for so long, Kyle’s been my brother, man.”