Today is my 75th day of sobriety. It’s not worth celebrating, I know. But when I heard of Mathew Perry’s sudden curtain call, I was hit harder than I initially thought I would be.

Perry’s struggle with addiction, which I can personally relate to on a few levels, his overdose, and apparent suicide in a hot tub, are very similar circumstances to how my younger brother Tyko’s life suddenly ended.

Like Mathew Perry, my brother was also an addict. But instead of pain pills, he was so addicted to carrying around negative thoughts and dreadfully dark memories, that they forced Tyko to abuse anything that would help him get through painful days and sleepless nights.

One evening, he too decided that his pain and suffering were beyond what he could handle. And just like so many other abysmally sad people, on the night that he decided to end it all, Tyko had concluded that there was no other way to get off the emotionally volatile roller-coaster he had been strapped to for so many years.