Bowie mother's side of the family had a history of mental instability. His Aunt Nora's 'bad nerves' were treated with a lobotomy and his Aunt Una died in her 30s after extended stays in mental hospital. (Dailymail)
'One puts oneself through such psychological damage trying to avoid the threat of insanity, you start to approach the very thing that you're scared of,' Bowie said.
The glam rock star was reportedly haunted by the idea of going insane after watching Terry's fits of psychosis.
David Bowie never escaped the haunting streak of madness that ran in his family.
It was viewed as a curse and an accepted part of his family folklore.
A dark cloud of mental instability hung over his mother Peggy's side of the family and Bowie never quit believing that he would inherit the same schizophrenic gene as his beloved half-brother, Terry who was institutionalized and later committed suicide by stepping in front of a train.
The question was not if, but when was he going to go mad.
He experimented with drugs for most of his career as a superstar, but his fear of going crazy was still enough to put him off LSD during the era of psychedelia.
'One puts oneself through such psychological damage trying to avoid the threat of insanity, you start to approach the very thing that you're scared of. Because of the tragedy inflicted, especially on my mother's side of the family, there were too many suicides for my liking – that was something I was terribly fearful of,'
But the singer used his fear of madness creatively as a theme for many of his lyrics – while chasing his demons and missing the half-brother he idolized and channeled.
Terry was eleven years older than David and he had introduced him to dive bars and the flesh pots of London's West End when they were young, as well as the world of jazz and the beats, American culture and books.
They were walking home and suddenly Terry started behaving in an extremely strange fashion; it was as though he were having a vision.
He saw fire in the cracks in the road, and he went down onto all fours, trying to hold the road, saying that he was being sucked off into the skies from the Earth.
'It scared the hell out of Bowie', writes author Dylan Jones.
David tried to help Terry after marrying first wife Angie Bowie. They brought him home to live with them for six months.
However, David wasn't home very often and they couldn't really watch over him so Terry was sent back to Cane Hill.
Two years later, he was dead. He had committed suicide at Coulsdon South train station on January 16, in 1985.
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