His death came as a huge surprise to me.

My father, the charmer, he is always says,

the only surprise is how long he lasted.

My brother had issues with depression and addiction,

and he'd been in and out of rehab since high school,

but he'd never attempted something like this before.

What he had done was fall off the wagon over and over again.

Maybe I'm an idiot for putting this kind of hope into an addict,

but this time felt different.

He'd been sober for a few months, his longest run ever.

Got in a job, he was doing really well from what I could tell.

He even started to talk about becoming a writer.

I'd never known him to have a dream, so this was really big for me.

I'm trying to say, he didn't seem like someone

who was planning to kill himself.

He seemed like he was really determined to stay sober this time.

I got my hands on his journal a few days ago.

I knew he'd been keeping one since he got out of rehab,

and I was really hoping there'd be some kind of clue as to what happened.

Honestly, I have no idea what to make of its contents.

If taking a face value, it looks like he might have had

some kind of psychotic break or something like that.

...