In a life punctuated by cycles of chaos, there was always one thing 35-year-old Nathan Brosnan kept constant. “It didn’t matter if he was having a mental health issue, committing crime, in jail, or living normally,” says his sister, Claire Brosnan. “He was always in contact with someone.”
The youngest of four siblings – “the baby of us” – Claire says her brother veered between mental illness and addiction. “He was happy and sad all at once,” she says. “He would take his prescribed medication until he felt better and then stop taking it. And then he’d self-medicate with illicit drugs and alcohol and spiral into crime. And things would start. Then in jail, he’d take the prescribed medication again. So, he was caught in that circle.”
