that this is the third installment Yahoo’s special three-part series The story of Jamie Adler and the extraordinary, family-shattering, and most definitely illegal measures he took to wean his brother and Guns N’ Roses drummer Steven Adler off heroin.
Part 1: Introduction / Growing Up Guns N’ Roses
Part 2: An infamous GNR firing and the turmoil that followed
Part 3: The Kidnapping of Steve Adler
“We’re going to literally kidnap this dude.”
March 2007. Jamie receives a frantic phone call from Dianna. Doctors at Sunrise Hospital in Las Vegas contacted him because Steven was in terrible shape. Due to the bullet, his whole body had developed boils and there was a serious infection in the blood. There was talk that they might need to gouge out his eye. “The doctors told him and my mother that he needed to take this medicine for the next 30 days to clear his blood. And if he didn’t, he would die,” recalls Jamie. They didn’t believe Steven would take the drugs.
I said, ‘This will be my last huddle with my brother. This will be the last time I will be able to try to save this man.’ … I needed to bring him under my control.
Jamie asks Lobel for help. He called Slash and said, “It’s life or death.” Slash contacted Eric Clapton, who offered to enroll Steven at Crossroads, the recovery center Clapton opened in Antigua in 1997, for free. On March 19, 2007, Jamie, Lobel, Slash and an interventionist flew to Vegas to bring Steven back. He lets himself into the house and Jamie goes upstairs to Steven’s drug den, where he finds his brother in a dark room, with the TV on, completely passed out. “He just looked so bad. So weak and sick and murderous.
Jamie lures his brother in with the promise of weed. Steven was shocked to see Slash (and who was now sober) for the first time in years. “I think (Steven) went into the bathroom and threw up all over the place,” Jamie recalls. Slash told Steven during the two-hour interrogation, “I’ll do whatever it takes to help you, you’re my brother.” “You’re the reason I am who I am,” Steven yelled back, blaming his habit of getting kicked out of GNR. “And Slash just sat there and took it,” says Jamie. “I’ve always loved Slash for that.”
Steven prepared to go to Crossroads, but stayed for hours as he “packed”. Says Lobel: “Steven was just going back up, coming down, going up, coming down.” They eventually threw Steven out of the house and moved into hip-hop producer Jamal Rashid’s mansion, which was known as Mali Mall. Steven’s condition was so bad that Moll called his personal doctor to campus. “She looked at Steven and determined he was in critical condition,” says Jamie. Jamie held Steven as the doctors cut open the abscess with a knife. “As soon as he made the cut, the poison spread all around me. And everywhere. It shot up to the ceiling,” Jamie recalls in horror. “I threw up my milkshake, it was disgusting,” says Lobel. The doctor sent Steven to the hospital to recover.
There, Jamie lies to the doctors and tells them that Steven is making suicide threats. “I knew they were going to hold him for 72 hours, and that would be 72 hours before we could feed him this medicine. And 72 hours together to plan how we could save this man’s life. Steven without The fight didn’t go down. “He’s swinging at the doctors,” Jamie recalls. “They brought it to safety.”
“I said, ‘F**k it. We’re going to go and literally kidnap this dude,'” Jamie said. (Corroborating Jamie’s story, Lobel went on to talk about many of the details of remains reticent: “I don’t want to blame anyone,” he says. “I know Jamie says we’re beyond the statute of limitations.”)
Three days later, Jamie arranges for his colleagues to pick up Steven from the hospital. They gave him a milkshake – Steven loved Milkshake. What the musician didn’t know was that the drink was laced with Valium and Xanax. “There were enough bullets,” says Jamie, “to kill the king horse.”
By the time Steven woke up, he was in North Hollywood.
Jamie says, “I’m doing a lot of f**king hooliganism at this point.” “But one thing I knew, I had so many witnesses, so many people in our lives who would go to bat for me if, God forbid, the police came for me. Because everyone around Steven knew he was going to die.” Was gonna
Over the course of a month, they moved Steven between three residences. All were locked from inside. Avoiding it was impossible, but Steven tried every day. Jamie keeps his distance, remotely calling the shots as two security guards, known as G and The Shadow, are on 24-hour duty, making sure Steven gets his medication. Got it.
Jamie knew the risk. He knew that his brother might disown him. But more immediately, Jamie knew that guerrilla rehab could be extremely dangerous.
Steven fought his forced captivity “tooth and nail the whole time”. There were also days when he had to be physically restrained. At one point Steven managed to get hold of a phone and called his dealer in Vegas, who sent him a microphone hidden inside. When the FedEx package arrives, Jamie’s guards view it with suspicion, eventually opening Mike up to find a bag of drugs.
Jamie eventually enlists Drew Pinsky aka Dr. Steven to give him advice. Sent to Drew. (Jamie says that Pinky knew about the kidnapping.) Others also came to talk to Steven, including one of the Crips’ heads and the late L.A. rap legend Nipsey Hussle. “Everyone was trying to help my brother,” says Jamie. “I was a big part of saving that man’s life,” says Lobel, who eventually opened his own treatment facility, holistic-based heavenly center in Studio City. “I think he’s alive because of what we’ve all done collectively to help him.”
A month into his imprisonment, Jamie finally reveals himself to his brother. Steven yelled at his brother, “You can keep me here for a week, a month, a year, 10 years.” “The first thing I’m going to do as soon as I leave here is get high. And there’s nothing you can do about it. Once Jamie releases Steven, the drummer makes good on his threat, returning to Vegas and abusing heroin. But only a few months later, Steven determined he needed to get clean and approached Lobel for help. In 2008, a year after his kidnapping, Steven became one of the most high-profile subjects of VH1’s popular reality series. Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew and its spin-off Sober House (including relapse and even an arrest,
Their brotherly bond was irreparably damaged. Jamie now glumly says: “It was so bad that we’re not in a relationship to this day.”
But Steven is alive.
“He was never a junkie again.”
In the 16 years since the kidnapping, the brothers “are sober, and then they’re not sober,” comments Lobel. Now stuck on cold.
Jamie hasn’t seen or spoken to Steven in five years. Jamie says, “I can call my brother right now and he doesn’t know the names of my three kids.” “That’s the f**king family, I guess.”
Diana says: “For me this whole situation is very sad. And when Steven supported his mom’s book release in 2017, he’s since cut it too. When people ask her about Steven, “I have to lie,” she says. “You think I’m going to tell people my son doesn’t talk to me? I say, ‘He’s fine. Thanks for asking.'”
Jamie was not there when Steven and the band were elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland in 2012.neither did axel, It breaks down when Jamie is invited to Steven’s Los Angeles reunites with Guns N’ Roses at Dodger Stadium on August 19, 2016. Jamie left anyway. “I didn’t care what our relationship was, I wasn’t going to miss this opportunity,” he says. Jamie sneaks into the show with a friend, Tommy, and ends up in the front row, injured. where he proudly videoed Steven’s introduction,
“I’m literally standing there in tears,” says Jamie. “I thought, ‘This is the greatest moment of my fucking life. With Guns N’ Roses I got my brother back on stage. And I felt like that. The truth is, Steven might have turned upside down a couple of times. but after what we did, he was never a junkie again. He never became a heroin addict again. He never became a meth addict. He never became a crackhead again. Still is today. Because if all that And I didn’t directly scare Steven, if we didn’t do what we did, he’d never get back on stage with Guns N’ Roses. That was the closure I needed.
Steven has spoken openly about his addictions over the years, on Dr. Drew’s show, in the media, and in his biography. But he rarely discusses the abduction. He has briefly mentioned this incident in his book.
“The f**kers knew that the only way they could keep track of me was to enlist a squadron of Jamie’s friends to help, and they all lived in LA, not Vegas,” Steven writes. are, describing “hell time” as a “guaranteed recipe for failure.” (during an appearance Bill Burr’s Monday Morning Podcast In 2017 where he was joined by Deanna and Jamie in support of his book, Steven said the kidnapping “made it worse.” Jamie says: “He would never want to admit that this little brother saved him. My brother is a very harsh person.”)
Steven continued in his autobiography: “I couldn’t blame Jamie and (her colleagues), though, because deep down, I knew I had given them no other choice. the way they drove me to L.A. could that be considered a federal crime. However, I have no evidence, no way to prove that they defrauded me, kidnapped me, and They took me across state borders against my will. Besides, they were trying to help me, and what’s done is done.”
Jamie understands the outrage: “I literally took a man hostage and kicked him on drugs against his will and completely terrorized him in a month.”
“I wouldn’t wish anyone the life that Jamie lived with his brother,” says Diana. And as a mother, I do not wish my life for anyone.
Jamie has had her own awakening in recent years. “My whole life I’ve never lived for me,” he says. “I always lived for my brother. My brother was my medicine. It was time for me to start living. That’s why Jamie relocated to Australia, where he focuses on his family (wife Rebecca and kids Lani Mae, 5; Tahlia, 4; and Jake, 2), his newfound Christian faith, his sobriety, his now Also thriving booking agency Adler Music Group, and himself. “I never thought Jamie would be like that,” Lobel says of his friend’s homely ways.
And while Jamie’s relationship with his brother may not be entirely salvageable, Jamie still holds on to hope.
After nearly 50 years of bickering between the two of them, Jamie keeps coming back in a jiffy.
In May 2017, 10 years after the kidnapping, the brothers met with the death of “King of the Sunset Strip” Mario Maglieri, who owned the Whiskey and Rainbow Room, venues that helped launch GNR.
Steven was off drugs and looking healthier than he had been for years. Jamie picked up the story: “I said, listen, ‘I’m sorry,’ but I’m not sorry either. I didn’t know what else to do. I really thought you were going to die.” Steven put his hand on Jamie’s leg. Kept it.” He says, ‘I love you, little brother. I know exactly what you did, and thank you.’ In his clearest moment, he validated everything I wanted. They gave me that credit and respect, and that’s all I always wanted. So whatever happened after that, I know that deep down he knows that I did what I did out of love.
“And I know I did the right thing because my brother is still alive.”
Part 1: Introduction / Growing Up Guns N’ Roses
Part 2: An infamous GNR firing and the turmoil that followed
Part 3: The Kidnapping of Steve Adler
