When the Dark and the Edges Feel Less Dangerous than Seductive

I no longer think I could have saved him when others tried and failed

Flip was like an Eiger climber scaling the icy Alps peaks of the mind. He was brilliant and handsome — a promise with a destructive core.

Flip and I enrolled in the same low-residency Clinical Psychology Ph.D. program. Flip was determined to work on breakthrough science using psilocybin.

Overall, Flip was more complicated than my romanticized versions of him. He had not followed the silver spoon route. He had a baby — named Taylor — with a girlfriend when he was 19. He and the baby’s mother broke up. Flip stayed engaged in his daughter’s life.

When Flip was 18, he almost died in an ER after a bender that carried him from Atlanta to New York. His heart stopped in the ER. He was on the verge of death. Then, he was shocked back into the room where his body was lying on a gurney in pain.

Flip referred to being revived as a reluctant second birth. He recalled floating ever closer toward a luminous beckoning light before being pulled back into a room of artificial lights, and loud machines.

Flip did three days of hospital detox followed by drug rehab in Florida. He committed himself to sobriety when he was in treatment.

When Flip started the graduate program, he had a long-term girlfriend he hoped to marry. When she broke up with him, Flip fell into a downward spiral. He began drinking and using drugs again.

Flip moved on to fall in love with a young woman named Vanessa he had spent summers hanging out with as a pre-teenager on the Gulf Coast. She helped Flip motivate through his final months of school.

The couple later married in the same Gulf Coast town where they had played together as kids.

Their wedding ceremony was idyllic — in a white chapel with an A-frame roof and a bell tower. The couple read handwritten vows aloud. There was music and dancing. Flip seemed at the pinnacle of happiness.

The newlyweds honeymooned in Bali, then traveled around Southeast Asia before returning to Atlanta.

They rented an RV to attend a week-long wedding near Portland, Oregon. They had a big fight about Flip’s drug and alcohol use at that wedding. Flip promised Vanessa he would keep his drug and alcohol use in control.

This incident seemed to foretell a dissonant pattern that threatened the integrity of Vanessa and Flip’s marriage.

Flip circled back into AA and back on track with his career ambitions. He accepted two prestigious postdoc positions in New York.

The couple purchased a brownstone in Brooklyn, where Vanessa became a well-respected yoga teacher, and Flip opened a small therapy practice. He was happy when Taylor came to Brooklyn for a long visit. She took dance and acting classes.

For some time, Flip and I lost touch.

I, too, fell in love with an old friend, and my life entered a new phase a I was unexpectedly diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer and started heavy chemo treatment. Around that same time, the marriage of Flip and Vanessa started to unravel.

The dissolution was related to Flip’s continued drug use, but it was hard to know what was happening. Flip’s communications were sporadic.

He expressed profound sadness and a sense of betrayal. He had difficulty seeing how his addictions were impacting his marriage.

He sometimes called me in the middle of the night, crying. He left a message — They were kicking him out of his home and stealing his art.

He was poised to start a legal battle with Vanesa’s family. When I would return Flip’s calls, his message box was full. He never picked up.

After the divorce, Flip seemed to move from city to city between San Francisco, LA, and New York. He would post images on Facebook, disappear, then surface again. Sometimes he posted photos of attractive young women.

*****

I met up with Flip in Santa Barbara in the spring of 2019. He had just landed teaching positions at two local graduate psychology programs. Flip was excited about the prospect of becoming an academic.

We decided to make dinner plans which were unusually complicated. We finally arranged to meet at 7:30 p.m. He walked right past me at 8:15.

I called out his name.

Flip sat down and immediately started talking about all his trauma since the last time we met. I knew about some of them — the suicides of several friends.

The divorce had sent him reeling, Flip said. He had lost a sense of structure and a stable place with opportunity. He wanted to continue his therapy practice.

Flip said his relationship with his ex-wife was improving. She had called him right before he drove to the restaurant to check on him.

During the divorce, she was so cold, he said, She was all business She had promised him their house in Atlanta. He got nothing in the end and felt exiled.

They kicked me out of my home,” Flip said. “They stole my art.”

Flip said he had been lo at a place to rent in Santa Barbara earlier that day. He needed to maintain a base there for his two new jobs. Then he started talking about needing to get back to LA tonight. It took me a while to put everything together. His disorganization, his one-sided conversation, his meager appetite.”

“Are you high?” I asked.

“No, he said. “I mean, I was but not now. ”

After paying the bill, I convinced Flip to leave his car and get a cup of coffee with me downtown. He talked about it seeming easier to stay sober in a smaller city.

We made plans to meet up at 9:00 AM for breakfast near his motel. I ended up driving behind his car back to his motel to ensure Flip’s safety.

I had a text message from Flip the next morning. He couldn’t sleep. So he drove back to LA to get some things he had left there.

We stayed in close touch for a few months. Flip continued going to meetings and staying sober, or so he told me.

I assumed things were going well until I received a call from my adviser and friend from graduate school. He had been coaching Flip on preparing lectures.

The adviser let me know Flip had died.

He was sorry. He didn’t know if it was an accident. It seemed to be an overdose. Fentanil. He knew Flip had lost one of his teaching jobs a few days before.

I wanted to believe it was an accident. Not suicide. I convinced myself he wouldn’t intentionally abandon Taylor.

Could I have done more to help Flip? Or was he wired to a deeper, unconscious goal?

To finally touch the light that always beckoned him.