Summer House star Carl Radke has been very open about his past addiction to drugs and alcohol.
On the February 5 episode of Nick Viall’s The Viall Files, Carl detailed how dark things got when his brother Curtis died.
His brother fought a lifelong battle with mental health issues and addiction. He finally lost that battle in September 2020, sending Carl into a tailspin.
Curtis’ death sends Carl into a downward spiral
“Everybody really rallied around me that particular summer,” Carl said, particularly his costar and best friend Kyle Cooke. “But it was when the summer ended, I went back to my old SoHo apartment … I went right back into doing drugs and drinking all the time … I would drink … and do cocaine by myself in my apartment, and, like, call people, text people, say crazy sh*t.” Carl was spiraling.
Thinking a change of scenery might help, he moved to an apartment in the same building as his friend and castmate Lindsay Hubbard. They started dating, fell in love, and got engaged, which ended disastrously. In August 2023, Carl canceled the wedding less than three months before the ceremony.
“I thought at the time … I’m gonna get in this new apartment,” Carl told Nick. “I’m not gonna drink or do drugs in it. That lasted a day.”
In addition, knowing he was going to have to watch and relive the Summer House episode where he learned that Curtis had died triggered “horrible anxiety.”
“Here I am drinking [and] doing cocaine alone,” Carl said. “People were celebrating me … People were celebrating how I was reacting to my brother’s passing … I felt like an impostor.”
Carl turned his life around with Alcoholics Anonymous
Carl first used cocaine on a college spring break trip to Mexico. In 2019, a Bravo exec confronted him about his substance abuse. It was the first time someone called him out on his drug use.
It took him nearly another two years to “fall on my knees” and get sober. He started attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, and in January 2025, Carl celebrated four years sober.
“The perception of going to AA is like everybody’s … dirty and haggard looking,” he says. “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 [from] major TV shows, successful people … Seeing other people living like that, I was like, ‘Oh, I can do that too.’”
Growing up, Carl remembers watching Curtis shoot up heroin in the room they shared. “I was about 12,” he shared. “I saw him with needles and stuff, and I found needles.”
Carl and Curtis had a falling when he mentioned Curtis’ heroin addiction on Summer House. “What I said … created a massive divide,” he told Nick. “The last time I spoke to him for real was actually at my grandmother’s funeral.”
These days Carl’s “at peace” about his brother’s death. He considers his own sobriety as a tribute to Curtis, who would’ve been 45 on February 4.
Summer House Season 9 premieres on February 12 at 9/8c on Bravo.
TELL US – ARE YOU PROUD OF HOW FAR CARL HAS COME WITH HIS SOBRIETY? ARE YOU LOOKING FORWARD TO SEASON 9?
