I was surprised when I heard that Steve had been to South Pacific, if only briefly. I saw a glimmer of hope that he might beat his alcoholism after all, and grabbed him and admitted him for treatment. I loved him always.
When we fronted together that first day, I knew this was the last roll of the dice for my little brother. I said to the bloke who ran the place, ‘Mate, if my brother doesn’t beat his addiction, he will die.’ He said he understood and asked questions and took Steve away with him. What Steve endured was unimaginable and to see it through took unimaginable courage. They took him apart and reconstructed him.
I was there with Steve for much of his treatment, and was front and centre during intervention, when I had to tell him how he had devastated me, and he had to admit to the terrible damage his drinking had done. On ‘family day’ intervention, the confessional session included about fifty people, and we were all witnesses to each other’s most terrible experiences. The thing took hours, it was horrific. Steve was moaning, screaming, the pain that was coming out of his lungs and body was extraordinary. It was like childbirth, that noise: animal, yearning, the sound of humanity in desperate trouble. He squeezed all his pain into a primal scream of rage and sorrow. Everyone in that room was transfixed by Steve as he let it all out. At one stage he apologised to me for things he’d done when he was only ten. It was a cleansing. In the end he was given a gold medal that belongs right up there on his lounge room wall alongside his boxing medal. No, not alongside his boxing medal, but higher.