He was Ira.

He was someone’s son, someone’s brother, someone the community had watched grow up.

But he could not stay stable.

The drinking took him away repeatedly.

The pattern cycled: stability, disruption, arrest, return.

He tried to stop drinking.

By his own accounts and those of people who knew him, he was not indifferent to what was happening to him.

He was not simply self-destructive or careless.