Real Life: Alcohol killed my brother, but he'll always be an inspiration

"I still haven't deleted his number from my phone. I don't want to. It's too final.

"Tom was really into his football and obsessed with Arsenal. Back in the day, he was very athletic and a real gentle giant. He was a cheeky chappy though, he had a wicked sense of humour. Such a character."

Tom Maybury passed away on February 22 last year after more than a decade of alcohol abuse. He was just 29.

"People have a stereotype in their mind of an alcoholic: a 50-year-old man who's been drinking for 30 years and ends up on Jeremy Kyle," says 21-year-old Henry. "But it can happen to anyone, anywhere. It's a brutal, merciless thing.

"And it can happen very quickly too. Tom was completely dependant on drink for an entire decade, think of the damage that did. Think of how bad you feel after just one weekend on the vodka and then imagine that for 10 years."

Tom, the eldest son of Neil and Sally and big brother to Toby, Natasha and Henry, turned to alcohol after losing both his driving licence and job due to epilepsy.

"That's when things turned against him," continues singer/songwriter Henry, whose song Lost Days is in memory of his brother and has already had more than one million views on YouTube.

The track's heartbreaking video shows a family being torn apart by a loved one's drinking. "In the blink of an eye, everything had changed, everything went against him. That's when he started to drink.

"It started off just going down the pub to watch the football with his mates but soon escalated. Before we knew it, it was 24 hours a day and he would drink absolutely anything – when you become that desperate and dependent on something, you'll reach for anything that gives you a kick.

"There's quite a big age gap in my family and for a long time, after Toby had moved out and Natasha had gone to uni, it was just me, Tom and mum at home. That was hard to live through, it was so difficult. By now, without a drink, Tom was totally self-conscious. He would have the shakes, he was overweight: he looked and acted like a totally different person.

"He went from looking like David Beckham to getting chucked out of Sainsbury's for his appearance. He was really struggling.

"He was drinking constantly and would be fitting in the night because his epilepsy medicine wouldn't be working because of all the alcohol. The ambulance was called on a regular basis. The blue lights were just a normal occurrence for our family. Towards the end, he was dodging death on a daily basis."

As Tom's struggle continued, former Ellesmere College student Henry threw himself into his music as a means of escape.

Performing whenever and wherever he could, he built up a strong fanbase, including Harry Potter star Rupert Grint, and also found himself performing at London's O2 in the grand finals of Open Mic UK.

But Tom continued to deteriorate - and Henry felt a growing sense of inevitability about the outcome.

"We knew it was coming as a family. We had tried everything to help him, everything to get him into rehab, but nothing would ever get through. It ended up being a matter of time. We knew he wasn't going to get better.

"We got through Christmas 2012 and then I performed at the O2 and was on a massive high for a while but then I got the call to come back home."

Tom had been admitted to Royal Shrewsbury Hospital. He had liver failure, kidney failure and alcohol poisoning.

"The family were taking it in shifts to watch over him in hospital," says Henry, who's in his final year of a music degree at Chichester University. "It was exhausting. And then one day, a doctor came in and said to my mum 'Mrs Maybury, I need to talk to you'. I went with her, I didn't want her to be alone as I knew what was coming. We sat down and they said 'His kidneys have gone, it's now a matter of time'. He died five or six days later at 6am.

"My parents lost their first-born, their eldest son. It affected my mum very deeply, she and Tom were always close, she understood him.

"It was the most difficult time of my life and I found things ridiculously hard. I found it very hard to just get back to normality. Those first few months are a blur. I remember I had to go on the radio and I nearly broke down on air. Things were so fresh in my head, it was almost too much to take. I didn't want to talk about it though.

"I miss Tom so much. We had things in common, little things like both being left-handed and loving sport."

Following his brother's death, the effects on Henry, who hails from Cruckton, near Shrewsbury, were intense.

"I find it difficult to go out drinking with my friends," he explains. "Sometimes when we're all out and they're drinking I find it hard to accept. But that's because I've seen what it can do, the damage it can cause.

"I find it difficult to accept social drinking but it's such a huge part of our culture now – going out on a Saturday night and getting drunk. But I've seen firsthand the impact alcohol can have on families: it's not just the alcoholic who is affected, the whole family struggles."

Thankfully, Lost Days is bringing him some comfort. He hopes the song and its powerful video will educate others, especially the younger generation, about the dangers of alcohol.

"I've always been into my music," he concludes. "Always put my own experiences and emotions into my songs, that's extremely important to me. All my songs tell a story. Tom has been – and will always be – a massive, massive influence on my life and music, in both good ways and bad.

"Music is my future. I am a singer/songwriter and 2014 will be all about Lost Days. All my feelings came out in that song and it was very difficult, but the feedback has been amazing, it's nice to know there are others out there. People have been contacting me through Twitter and Facebook and saying how inspirational it is. And that means so much to me.

"You know, I could go into schools and talk to 15 and 16-year-olds about the dangers of alcohol and I could go on and on for an hour or I can tell them everything in three minutes via music they think is cool. That will have so much more impact. That's what I want to create – music with meaning.

"If this helps just one person, I can sleep easy at night."