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Ashley Hamilton & DJ AM: Sobered Up Together

Wed., Sep. 2, 2009 1:20 PM PDT by Marc Malkin

Jeff Kravitz/Getty Images; Albert L. Ortega/Getty Images

Ashley Hamilton still can't believe his good friend DJ AM is gone.

"There are a lot of people with drug and alcohol [problems] that if you heard they died, you'd be like, 'Yeah, I saw that coming,' " Hamilton just told me during a break from his training for the upcoming season of Dancing With the Stars. "But people like Adam [Goldstein], you just didn't see it f--king coming. That's what's so shocking about it."

The two men knew each other for years. Hamilton first helped Goldstein get sober, but then their roles were reversed when Hamilton relapsed...

"I spoke to him Tuesday night, and we were just talking about cars and work and how hard he was working and stuff," said Hamilton, 34, who's been clean now for four years and didn't think Goldstein seemed troubled. "There was no sign of anything like that."

"Lots of times people are like, 'Aren't you glad that's behind you now?' and I'm like, 'I hope so, but it's not that easy.' It's not like one day you say, 'That's it' and it's a happy ending. It's a daily thing."

As for reports that Goldstein may have taken his own life, Hamilton simply said, "I don't know."

What he does know is that Goldstein will be missed. "He was such a good guy," Hamilton said. "He cared for people and about people. He helped people."

(Come back here later on to find out what Hamilton told me about Dancing With the Stars. Yes, he has every intention of being as tan as his famously tanorexic dad, George Hamilton.)

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Celebrate the life of DJ AM with our photo gallery tribute to the late music man.