Drug addiction is an evil that affects people all over the world – and UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva is no exception.

Brazilian magazine ‘Documento Reservado’ revealed recently that The Spider’s brother – whose name wasn’t cited in the report – is a victim of the drugs industry. Anderson has since confirmed to Sportv.com that his brother is a drug addict.

“Unfortunately this is something that wastes the whole world and Brazil especially. Yes, I have a brother (from mother’s side) who went to Curitiba with me. I went there when I was four years old and he was two,” he says.

“My aunt raised not only me but also him. All care and attention I had, he also had, along with all four of us brothers, but unfortunately, he ended up getting involved with wrong stuff.”

“All family tried to help, we tried to help him many times but there was not response from him that would let us help him more intensively. We need him to understand how bad it is affecting him in order to get him to rehabilitate.

“All my family helped him get the treatment. I helped him lots of times but I don’t like to speak about it because there is nothing I can do.

“I helped him so much, even before all this fame, I always looked to meet the examples I received from my brothers and the relatives who raised me – because we naturally have it in our house – and pass it on to our children and nephews.”

“Unfortunately it happened, it is not only in my family that has someone chemically dependent or something similar.”

Anderson did not reveal what his brother is addicted to, but in Brazil the scourge of cheap cocaine and its derivatives can be found everywhere.

Crack-cocaine is a problem in all the major population centers and Brazil also has some homegrown spinoffs which can be found nowhere else, such as  ‘oxidado’ – ‘Rust’ – a mixture of cocaine, petrol and quicklime which delivers a cocaine-like hit for a fraction of the cost.