The Shabbat Show - Episode 50: Addiction - How Can We Help?

[Music] do [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] so [Music] do [Music] do [Music] hello everybody welcome to another episode of the shabbat show it's great to be back with you again thank you so much for joining us another episode as we chart our way into spring and summer and so much going on so this is such an incredible time of the year both in the world as we see winter behind us spring upon us summer in our in our in our vision and also in the jewish calendar as we enter into this period of time that we're living in right now which is called the omer time in between passover and shavuot the time of introspection and growth the time where we take upon things upon ourselves to remember of a loss to think about the future we are in this unique incredible growth period and it's great to be with you today and we've got really an incredible show it's a powerful show it's a serious show and it's an adult show so i want to begin by just mentioning that we're going to talk about mature topics today we're going to talk about addiction and recovery and so please judge it appropriately depending on who's watching with you and just who's seeing this because this is a serious topic that we're going to be talking about that has real implications and this is the period of time to do that and i want to before i start just really begin um by sponsoring the show in in honor of the pro the sir was a sponsored as a program of the carl enoch goldman center for jewish values dedicated by jay goldman we thank jay goldman for his constant support of this program and i want to share with you where we are what we're doing and why we are focusing on this right now you know like i said we are this period of time called the omer the omer is a count it is a count towards shavuot shavuot is the day in which we are commemorating the giving of the torah mount sinai now as you can imagine there's a lot of stuff we do throughout the year that's super important you know passover is super important rosh hashanah and yom kippur are super important like we don't just do stuff that you don't make it through the generations and there's a holiday we're like well you know that's you know just that's a gimme there's no gimmies and we never count we have a calendar we set the month we have a very specific way of doing things we don't count with this one exception we're counting to mount sinai and the commentators and the rabbi speak about this and what they teach us is that we're not counting down to mount sinai we know when mount sinai knows we know when that that anniversary is going to be we know when the holiday is going to be what we're doing is we're actually counting up and for those that are involved in this count you'll notice the count goes up not down when you count to an event it goes down when you count the omer you're counting up because the count really isn't towards an event the count is from something we're growing up it's an ascent and what this is what's going on now what we're remembering what we are commemorating in this count is the ascent of the jewish people that was at as what we say the 49th level of impurity a moment where they were nearly lost in the abyss of egypt a people that had been slaves for over 200 years never of course because it wasn't given yet had torah lost in idol worship and the mud and the brokenness of slavery and what they were doing right now is that they were all they were pulling themselves up with their booth traps they were growing together they were ascending together from a nation of slaves into a nation of not only free men but those that were going to be the noble nation was worthy of taking on the traditions and accepting the torah from god to go from a broken victim slave to becoming that which is able to go face to face with the creative universe was the greatest transformation it was the greatest road of recovery that we know of and so during this period of time we count because we are remembering growth we were improving ourselves we were working on ourselves in fact we have this tradition to learn pirkei avot ethics of our fathers now because this is a time of growth this is a time when we get better and we overcome challenges and so with that as a backdrop and with that as the theme of this period of time we're doing a show on addiction because there is a large relatively silent minority of people in this world suffering from some form of addiction and probably a majority of people who know someone suffering from an addiction and today we're going to talk about it and talk about people that have this incredible ability to overcome this challenge and pick themselves up and be bigger and stronger than before i want to talk about x from x we can hear from experts about how to recognize these challenges how to get help from these challenges today's show really is a show that is focused on addiction but not from a perspective of negativity it's from a perspective of positivity of the recognition that uh everyone can grow and overcome there's hope and the ability to grow and overcome incredible challenges is actually it's it's nestled into our dna it is exactly what we are celebrating during this period of time so we are excited for the show um we've got a team of seasoned therapists and experts and individuals in the field of addiction that are going to be joining us we have dr akiva prominent the author of social work we have a brave woman in the trenches of helping people recover miriam uh handles men we have asher goddesman from la we've got videos we've got an incredible powerful show of i think real heroes and i know you're going to enjoy it and get it and really gain something from it so let's get going right away um our first guest is uh dr kiva pearlman he's international speaker on the topics of abuse addiction and trauma he's educated more than 300 of the jewish orthodox social workers from our community and is currently serving as a professor at the wordswell school of social work dr perlman is the clinical director of oda's wellness institute a clinic which serves the hasidic community in williamsburg he maintains a small practice in fresh meadows where he resides with his wife tamara and children i had an opportunity to speak to dr perlman and it was really really moving check out this interview so can you help us define what an addiction is so that people have a better understanding of it okay thank you for that question um if it's okay i want to share a meeting i had yesterday with a dear client of mine who obviously is caught up in a myriad of addictions suffering a great deal but just to understand his story where he was speaking about the first time he used a drug i'm going to ask him tell me a little bit about that experience what was it like and and most often we expect to hear you know i was high i was excited it was something new i felt euphoric but when you speak to addicts about their lived experience almost always what they're going to share is what it felt to them in their heart not so much in their body not a physiological or chemical reaction and his answer was when i first used it i felt as though the world was hugging me it was embracing me i felt whole i felt loved i felt lovable and i think if we start looking at addiction through that particular lens we start really to begin to understand what these people are going through there's a wonderful researcher named gabor mate who has a practice out in canada and he says you can't understand an addiction until you start asking the question what benefit does does this person derive from having such an addiction so addiction is almost like a replacement of what in theory should be healthy in one's life and they're replacing you with some really harmful maladaptive behavior but for the same goal as anybody else they're trying to feel okay are there people more likely to fall into these behaviors is there something that we can look at and see individuals that are are more or less prone to this 100 i think the more what i've never worked with an addict or even met an addict who didn't suffer a tremendous amount in their life i've never encountered such a person you know sometimes we read these articles about here's a person that lived a great life everything was okay and they stumbled upon a drug and then life just got out of control um i don't buy those stories my whole experience of my work discourages such stories addiction makes sense um when you start paying attention it really really makes sense and so the to answer your question the more pain a person lives with in their heart and the more loss of self that they ultimately have the more likely they are to go out looking for things that would provide them with some comfort so we could we could define pain however we'd like but the people who tend to find their way into this world are people who are suffering a tremendous amount for a variety of reasons it could be divorce it could be a learning disability it could be poor self-esteem but but most people who use drugs and then just move on with their lives are generally intact individuals people that we're speaking about are just not it's interesting that as you're saying it i it's dawning on me that the greatest thing that we can give some of these individuals is the love from everybody and it almost feels like they're stuck in that the the potential shame and the silence of it keeps them feeling apart when the community around them and the people around them uh maybe part of the solution and the embracement of those around maybe part of the solution a hundred percent yeah when you go if you i don't know if you've ever had a chance to witness like a 12-step meeting but one of the things you'll notice about them which i find to be of the most healing aspects is that they're all holding each other at the end of the meeting they gather around in a circle they hold hands or embrace and they recite together the serenity prayer which is a prayer of hope and and connection and that to me is the healing i want to ask one of these guys i said why is there so much like hugging why is there so much embrace that takes place in this room and he said we're making up for lost time wow we just didn't have it in our lives and that is the solution and unfortunately usually we go the other direction i've never met an addict who feels like i'm a lovable person they hate themselves more than we could possibly be disappointed in their behavior one incredible thing but what if you can share what triggers if you will in the mind of someone who is suffering from an addiction that allows them the strength now to not only they're not they're not even like resisting from the addiction now they have to overcome this now so now they have to really work harder if you will than when they first fell into it so what what's that moment what what's that that understanding ah it's a beautiful moment i wish i could uh just bring you into my office as that moment unfolds but we lose sight of the fact that every one of us like we're all kissed by god we all have a soul that is like fully connected to this divine beauty and addicts completely have lost sight of that it doesn't exist within them and that moment that you're speaking about is a moment when they encounter their humanity where they realize that there is something in me that hasn't been nurtured there is something in me that had i haven't been able to see i never had this client this is generally not the case but he came in and i said like what brought you here i happened to have seen him the other night it was just so wonderful to just give him a hug i haven't seen him in a few years i said like really what brought you in and because usually most addicts are coming in because they're they got caught or they're in trouble or spouse said enough is enough and you have no choice but to go to therapy and he said like i've been in a binge for the last three years um which means he's just been high basically the entire time he hasn't like landed at any particular point and he said just this morning i looked in the mirror and and which i haven't done in around three years and most addicts cannot look in the mirror and most people who are in pain can't look in the mirror they said i looked in the mirror and i i couldn't recall what the pain was anymore i couldn't recall like what i was running from i was just sort of caught up in this cycle um and in that moment he realized like that there is something in me that i don't even know what it is i don't even i've lost sight of myself i've lost sight of my ability to connect and i'm here to rediscover that again um and that's the journey looks like ultimately it's like you're bringing a person back to who to who they already are because we're all beautiful and we all have hashem in inside of us we all have godliness inside of us so we're just trying to remind a person that hey by the way you've lost sight of this but i haven't i still believe in you i still know that there's something beautiful inside of you last question i thank you so much for your time um for the families around those that are suffering that feel helpless that don't have backgrounds like yours and other professionals that that really are in many cases could be completely overwhelmed by what's in front of them what would you recommend that they do um when they're there's someone in their lives that are suffering from an addiction right so there's a lot of help and and don't avoid getting help there's many beautiful organizations amudin does beautiful work in this area relief does beautiful work in this area so reach out to the people that could give you that support but if you could for yourselves hold on to the fact that there's a person inside this individual who's suffering that you've sort of lost sight of and they've lost sight of um if you could hold on to the idea that there's something that's beautiful that i need to hold on to and encounter it just gives us some hope and we're generally drawn in the other direction you know we're moving away from that and we're moving more towards uh resentment and disappointment uh and the more we could remind that individual that they have some some inherent beauty the the more likely they are to come back to that place people addicts need a place to return to uh and what unfortunately happens all the time is that because all the chaos they've created then all the people that in theory they would have been able to return to have moved away um and then they slowly begin to get healthy and there's no there's no home to return to so we need to maintain a sense of home maintain a sense of love so that way when they do come around with the right help with god's help then they'll they'll have a place to come that's loving and caring amazing doctor thank you so much for being with us thank you for what you do for for our community and for the world at large and for shining your light on this world thank you it's a great honor thank you for the opportunity thank you we thank dr perlman for that powerful interview there's so much more that we spoke about this and all the interviews of the show will be featured so please i'm telling you these are pieces these are snippets if you will we got to cut it for a one hour show so these interviews have so much more wisdom this and the rest of them so please check out the interview on our website theshabacho.com if you're watching this on any of any other platform go to the shabacho.com and check out the full interviews and we thank um dr paul for his incredible incredible powerful words of hope his problem rewards of spirituality it's really really something special that we have in our community there's a great video from a rabbi david aaron really about the power of the soul and and the power of each and every one of us check this out when i was a kid i felt like a real loser i was short and had curly red hair kids made fun of me and called me carrot top the only comeback i had was that the tops of carrots are green i also had flat feet and have to wear corrective boots that really look stupid when the class was picking soccer teams i'd hear them argue you you take them no no you take them they used to call me crazy legs because when i played i would sometimes miss the ball and kick the nearest guy in the ankle although i felt like such a loser deep inside i knew that i was not i recall seeing the movie funny girl starring barbra streisand it was about a young woman struggling to become a star but she came across like a loser and a klutz there was one line in a song that she sang that really struck deep note within me i'm the greatest star i am by far but no one knows it i felt that was true for me too and today i know that it is true for everyone because we are all souls and there is no such thing as a loser's soul why not because the soul which is the real you your true self is none other than an individualized expression of god the soul of all souls the great self shared by all most people think that god is some super being floating in another realm called heaven watching us from above when the first russian cosmonaut went into space ground control asked him what do you see he answered i don't see god what did he think he would see did he think that somewhere along his journey he would get to the edge of space and there would be two huge eyes peering at him hi i'm god what took you so long a lot of people think this way but this is not what the torah teaches god does not exist in heaven and we exist on earth separate far and apart from him god is not someone over there rather god is the one the only one and each and every one of us is someone some of that one every single one of us yearns and deserves to feel like a precious and cherished masterpiece because in truth each and every one of us is indeed a piece of the master and of course we thank dr everything rabbi aaron for his consistent stream of inspiration every single form our next guest is miriam handelsman she's the clinical director of the high school for girls she's the former women's program and clinical coordinator for the living room and served in that position for eight years miriam is a licensed master social worker specializing in substance abuse prevention intervention and recovery support mirim has dedicated her career to assisting young adults who struggle with addiction and mental illness as well as providing support to their spouses and families miriam maintains a private counseling practice in brooklyn new york where she lives with her husband and children check out this interview with miriam i know that you are involved with addiction in particular you spend your world in the female i guess side of addiction what is unique to the female struggle with addiction okay so i would say that the female struggle of addiction is mostly that there's like this false notion that women don't have an issue with alcoholism and substance use and other addictions as well it was more of like a male thing um and because of that there's a lot of shame and coming forward and seeing that they have addiction but not only coming forward even recognizing that they have it it's kind of like um i'm struggling but how could this be alcoholism if i'm a woman so those two pieces make it very hard for them to be supported with their addiction i would say i even have like women that come in actually to support their spouses so easy for them to recognize that their spouse has something and through the process of looking at them and then looking at themselves they realize that they also have some sort of addiction as well and are then afraid to face it but then they end up facing it and living much more meaningful life so it's interesting and what you're saying is fascinating that um for whatever reason it's it becomes harder for them to see their own addictions so how does somebody notice it like what are some of the maybe the clues or the awarenesses when someone's engaged in behavior whether it's in eating or an alcoholism or any other type of behavior that would i guess fall into behavior that wouldn't be obvious my sense is if you're in using certain drugs i guess right away it may be easier but i guess in other types of uh substances it may be harder to recognize the point in which you go into the world of addiction so how how does one begin to see that awareness so oftentimes it happens slowly over time and other times it's pretty quick you said something about like drugs being something that is um easier to recognize but it's actually interesting because i work with women who some of them actually had like a c-section and then because of that got prescribed for even like back things but specifically things that are like ob related and they don't realize once that addiction is stronger because they think like oh my doctor prescribed it but even in relation to other addictions i would say that some of the signs i mean in general the signs of addictions not just women is when their lives become unmanageable their relationships become um sort of like empty and the noise between them and other people is so great that they can't really um have relationships that are really meaningful anymore um and you know obviously when things become dangerous and scary it's hard to recognize it when they themselves are in it oftentimes their loved ones try to point it out to them but kind of crossing over that threshold is not something that happens very quickly so it is harder to harder to see that's about it what what's the role that the family plays in um both in um maybe recognizing it but also in the impact when it's once it's recognized and how they can be helpful to to help that person get through it so the two words that come to mind are being supportive but then also not enabling um by that i mean being supportive is really recognizing that this isn't something that once they're really in the addiction it's not something that they're choosing anymore um understanding that we really don't can't judge them for human beings that are really struggling um and then they're not like on the flip side if you're if you go too much to that extreme um you can end up enabling that um one of the examples that i was thinking of is there's a book in the al-anon recovery which alanon is for family members of people who are struggling with addiction and alcoholism and um one of the examples it's a really good example that they give there is a spouse right um coming home drunk every single night laying on the floor like passed out and the spouse will pick them up every single night and like bring them to the bed and put the blanket on and then in the morning the spouse that was you know wasted wakes up and they're like oh okay normal day or try to be a normal day because things are okay and there was like a shift at some point when the spouse the one that was supporting them um who was actually enabling them came home and said wait a second i want them to realize the consequence of their action but i also want to be supportive so the spouse put a blanket while he was in that case was he was on the floor put a blanket on him on the floor so that he wakes up and sees like oh i'm being supported and not like judged for it but yeah i'm i'm i have an issue i have a problem and i'm sure that's critically important um especially for women that are in the middle of a family like i would assume that if women are the caretakers if they're playing the role of caretaker and they're suffering from the addiction that may be exactly the hardest part which is they probably don't feel as supported because they're they're needed if you will in ways that could be different but at the same time um they need both that support but people need to be able to call them out and and try to get them to get help and i i mean it's very scary in those cases like with little kids and and they like you said they're needed sometimes i hear women saying like i don't get to fall apart like i don't have that option so i don't get to just say i have an issue because people little people are relying so yeah that makes it even harder for both them and their kids and i would even say it goes further there are so many times where like a mom will be talking to a child and the child is not even being heard the same way that i was saying that like a spouse or a friend but like when you're hugging your kid and you're thinking about when you can find your next drug or when you can find your next meal that's like part of your addiction or anything like that and you're not really present with your kid that's that's like one of the most difficult parts of addiction in terms of like how it impacts the family what does it look like for someone that is that is in recovery or recovered um what's the hope that somebody could could appreciate here now um if they're on on if you will the wrong side of this and watching this and saying wait maybe i really should take it seriously um what does that look like on on the other end so when you ask me that question the first thing that comes to mind is all of really all the faces of the many many women that i've worked with both people women who have children don't um who got married who through this process and the one thing that i would say is like a tremendous sense of gratitude that they were even that they even call themselves addict or even went through the addiction process because for the recovery process because they have real appreciation for life so what it looks like externally is one thing they look like you and me and you know kind of everyone else walking on the street that either you know are okay or pretending to be okay um lives with you know families and and successful careers and all of that but internally i would say that i'm sure the other speakers are talking about that like spirituality and the meaningfulness of their lives they're just enriched people that are living a life of gratitude that's what i would say well miriam thanks so much for being on the show here with us and thanks for what you do for the community in the world at large and thank you for shining your light on this world thanks for having me thank miriam for her incredible words and just the sensitivity of the different parts of the community they're suffering very differently i found it to be fascinating just how much the shame is part of this it it struck me that as we went back to um to a kiva's words and out to miriam's words as you see how sometimes the people around those that are struggling really are the people that can help them the most and not with any specific words of wisdom not with any bit of advice based on years of counseling experience but based on the support the idea of support the idea of being there the idea of creating a place where people can come home to the network around those that are struggling from this from an addiction could be as powerful as everything as anything and everything else it's amazing to always remember that everyone is overcoming challenges and that person inside is holy and and and there's nothing that can touch that there's something that can touch the the true value of the human being nothing a person can do can take away from their true value when we see that in each other no matter what's going on in someone's life but especially someone who's suffering from an addiction the more our eyes are geared on who they could be and who they really are the more we support them we thank miriam for incredible words i had a chance to catch up with an incredible individual who suffered himself from an addiction his name is asha goddess when he's the father of father of five and the founder of transcend recovery community he's recovering himself who's devoted he's his entire life helping people help themselves as they recover from addiction and for mental health struggles check out this interview that i did with asher goddessman so tell us a little bit about what brought you to addiction i for some reason had a pit in my stomach that was unfillable by anything else than service work and it was from a really young age and i tried so hard to fill it from in multiple different ways and i can go ahead and blame my teachers and blame my experiences yet ultimately the gift i have today of working with people who struggle and suffer even though there's a famous quote from rabbi dr abraham torski that says there are two types of people in the world those that are in recovery and those that can be so yet it's it the the people in the people who i get to work with today i say the good news is you get to help other people the bad news is unfortunately you have to help other people it's the only cure literally the only cure it sounded to me that you were saying that you were searching for something deep and meaningful and you weren't finding it and it's at the beginning part at some point in your life and so you were feeling that insatiable desire for something with the wrong things did i hear that correctly i was seeking in all the wrong places and trying to fulfill what i thought was an insatiable appetite right because there was no filling it what happened what did you find tap into that made you turn your life back around so i actually went to overeaters anonymous because my first drug of choice actually in life was food that's i used to be 100 pounds bigger than i am today and that was my first challenge about four months into going to this overeaters anonymous i had this moment of clarity was right after purim i was drunk again and i was you know i had this moment where i was like why am i any different than that junkie on the street who who's destroyed i'm just i'm i'm destroying my life i'm doing this you know what and then i went back into this room and what i what i what when i say i had a spiritual experience greater than i walked into a room where for the first time in my life nobody cared who i was what my name was what board of school i was on how much money i had i didn't have they were all in there to get better they were all and i and i looked around and i was like holy cow no one's forced here no one's told here you know and and to me that was the journey back as they said what's the path of recovery like the details will be different but what does it look like what is what does the journey look like when you are in the mode of recovery recovery and judaism are hand in hand and what do i mean by that if you look at actually the 12 steps there is something called maimonides wrote wrote a book called right the the laws of repentance and the 12 steps are extraordinarily similar to the rambam's 12 12 and i'm not sure if they're 12 steps quite but ways to actually repent and in alcoholics anonymous it says the only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking right so the recovery in general is let's take whatever ill adaptive maladaptive behavior we have right and therefore if you have a child struggling or somebody's listening you have a family member that struggles look at your own struggles look at how many times you wanted to go on a diet whatever struggle you had want to stop tv overworking we all have something that we can identify with that we want it to stop and know that you can't stop it on a it's not gonna it's not a forever thing so we start today and then we first admit right if you do it the 12-step way you don't have to do it the 12-step way right you have to but you do have to attach yourself to be seen you have to attach yourself to a community you have to attach yourself to a sense of purpose and then the most important thing you have to do is kindness is give it away for free wow if you don't mind me asking share with us where are you now because i'll tell you it listen just in listening to you you it feels to me that you are like in control of it that you're you're you're you are whatever you've gone through is now under your control if i can say it that way so first yes i don't have a desire to drink i had my bar mitzvah year this year i'm 13 years sober i don't think about drinking but there are other areas of my life and my maladaptive behaviors that that are cause michigan so and that i choose not to give up whether it's simple ill speak of somebody else whether it's my eating habits whether it's work whatever it may be um you know whether it's my journey with god and and and and the commandments that i'm learning that i could utilize all these tools in all these areas and i and at some point you stop fighting it yeah it's not fighting needed needing to know why you know um because there is no why today you know unfortunately i get phone calls i don't know 50 100 200 a day sometimes people are struggling and suffering and so if i start to ask why i will spend my time being depressed and sad on why they're suffering what would you say to somebody that may be in the middle of their lives and there's there's a real addiction there and what's stopping them from the help and the recovery is they say you know what i'll never be awesome i i i've given up my chance of being excellent again because i failed too miserably i i fell off too hard and so even if i get back on i can never really make it each one each human being in this world is give is put on this world with a unique gift that only they can bring the world and as long as you're measuring your insides by someone else's outsides you'll never win it's over forget about it you know that's what the surrender is all about is saying okay whatever you got in store for me man upstairs right it's it they literally say thy will will be done right so right that the same way is is is as i say so once you start to take away that piece and it's not about the rat race because all of us know that we've sat with people who are much older much more experienced much more successful than us and none of them have said that their dollars in the bank or their big company or their successes is what made them a good person right now i still like to fool myself and think that's true but but um you know uh yeah you know so what is that what is this imposed baloney you're giving yourself what are you imposing upon yourself where is this destination you're trying to get to so and what you know so yeah it the the old you is gone and if you recover you have to knew you so yes i'm not the guy who right i'm not the real estate you know novelist that i once thought i would be right that was a billy joel song i don't even know what a novelist is right but okay i'm not the real estate huge mogul that i that i once thought i should be the ones i was then i fell down but i get to help people i get to be patient and you're right on my bad days i i lament those days i was like okay i'd be richer than this and better than this but when i sit down and i have have somebody that i can share my experience strength and hope and then they have hope well boom i i got i got i got something i can take with me beautiful asha what can i say you've inspired me and i am positive that you inspired everyone who's watching the show tonight god bless you for who you are and for just the continuous the continuous hope that's the word the hope that you give people just by the words that you're saying it's inspiring man really really appreciate you being here well thank you so much for having me on and i want to leave with that is any we can never give up hope right we ask that the man upstairs never gives up hope on us and unconditional love doesn't mean unconditional support it still means that always leave your hearts and doors open don't ever give up amazing thank you so much and thank you for shining your light on this world you got it good job we thank asher for his strong and in in wise words it's so important to remember that no matter where one a person is in life no matter where that person is in life there's there's always hope you can't fall too far there is no too far it doesn't exist in our world i'm reminded by the words of the great rabbi nachman who says the end of the day remember once we were sitting in our synagogue and our shul and my rabbi are by motion weinberger would turn around and we would be singing songs at whatever holiday and there was a song in which they would speak about how rabbi nachman would scream with all of his might in hebrew it's ain you shall there is no hopelessness there is no such thing as being too far there is no such thing as being beyond hope everybody everybody has a path home we thank asha for his incredible words and all that he is doing now to help everybody our last guest is another incredible individual his name is menachem zaninski he's the director of the living room a clubhouse in community for jewish young adults in recovery from addictions he's the author of stepping out of the abyss a jewish guide to the 12 steps and consciously six steps to living vibrantly with our creator nakam is also the editor of of the light revealed a social media publisher focused on the messages of jewish spirituality and recovery and is also the host of two podcasts one called consciously and the other uh practically a fabrian received his master's degree in social work from michigan university wortzweil school of social work and lives in cedarhurst new york with his wife naomi and their children um it is an honor to have him on to share his insights of just how spirituality plays into the world of recovery check out this interview with no sovereign i know you have you wrote a book tell us a little bit about your book and some of the work that you do okay so i actually were two books uh the first one is called stepping out of the abyss it's a jewish guide to the 12 steps and the other one is called consciously which is a book on utilizing mindfulness and meditation practices to evolve and develop a vibrant conscious contact which is a recovery term for like a relationship with god so the work that i do is i work with youth 18 to 35 who are emerging out of substance abuse treatment centers and they're trying to build a life and we try to help them with all the different aspects of that that includes you know spirituality as maybe we'll talk about as a big part of recovery and particularly in the 12-step approach but generally as well and therefore sometimes includes enhancing their spirituality and their connection to judaism and finding a place within judaism but also helping them you know get their lives the jobs whatever school life we have young couples that are part of our program uh helping navigate that all those kind of things so give us a little bit more as to what does spirituality do um during this process for somebody so obviously addiction affects a person psychologically but also um physically people become physically dependent on addiction but something that emerged in the early part of the 20th century was an idea that there was actually an existential or spiritual part of addiction that was driving people back into addictive patterns you know meaning you'd have treatment where someone would fall into addicted an addictive pattern they'd become addicted to alcohol or drugs or some other addiction and then they'd go for treatment and they'd be their addiction would be relieved they would be removed from their addiction and then they would fall back into that pattern again and again and again no one really understood for a very long time and then there was a kind of an event or a series of events that occurred in the early part of the 20th century that culminated ultimately in the development of the 12 steps through the alcoholics anonymous program which is the first 12-step program and now there's hundreds of 12-step programs but based on an idea uh that was put forward by carl jung right the famous carl jung was that the reason why addicts and alcoholics continue to fall into a pattern of addiction is because they're actually seeking in their addiction something other than relief from their dependency and even relief from their emotional problems and there's some kind of spiritual angle it was some kind of spiritual drive so that if they were to utilize spiritual practices and help a person evolve and create a healthy and vibrant spirituality would act as a guard against um further relapse it would actually act as a support while somebody was seeking their initial recovery and it would give them a vibrant and meaningful life and help them to kind of lead a really meaningful existence so and the 12 steps really just developed out of that idea the four bears of the 12 steps the early members of alcoholics anonymous basically started to adapt different things that different people were doing in particular one group the oxford group but others as well which are spiritual practices how a person can develop and evolve have a spiritual awakening that's a term that they use and then develop a very vibrant spiritual life tell us if you can how that sort of general spiritual focus is it in line with judaism is it something that is very much a part of jewish practices it's something we've known already but we didn't really connect the dots until recently the idea that we could utilize and leverage a relationship with god to emerge out of the darkness of an abyss of of uh of addiction is not something that's contrary to using the judaism at all it's in fact it's very very much related the recovery programs in specific the 12-step programs really focused on what works so they weren't looking they weren't being driven by ideology they're working it was driven by trial and error so the fact this is something i say to jewish people all the time the fact that they came out with something that actually is totally in line with judaism is not surprising because the torah is true so it makes sense that what they did was true they weren't driven by a christian ideology or any other ideology they weren't driven even by a psychological ideology they just were trying things to figure out what would work and what would give them a vibrant relationship with god and what they ended up with is in fact very much connected to judaism my my first book stepping out of the abyss which i wrote with um arya book spyev and rabbi yoni finer actually wrote a section on judaism and recovery highlights a lot of these things and and every abraham torski be remiss not to mention him at all he's the grandfather of jewish recovery has highlighted it you know a hundred times a thousand times uh the the connectedness but some of the really meaningful principles that i kind of jotted down here was that first of all the entire basis of the recovery program and the process of incorporating spirituality into a recovery from addiction is based on the principle of acceptance right it's a very very powerful principle today it's become recognized as a powerful psychological principle but acceptance at least as especially as it's practiced through the 12 steps is really what we in judaism called emunah or be takon right which is faith and trust but specifically faith and trust that i'm exactly where i'm supposed to be that the challenges that i'm that i'm having are one that are so to speak destined for and that god wants me to operate from here it's like uh the exci there's a reading in the in in the main text of alcoholics anonymous a story of a doctor who kind of came to the conclusion that and he said that acceptance was the key to his recovery from his alcoholism because he came to the conclusion he said i'm an alcoholic what am i going to do about it now so instead of kind of fighting against that um hide and trying to avoid that fact by accepting that fact that was a springboard towards moving forward and that's the foundation of step one but there's a spiritual side of that because it means i'm exactly where i'm supposed to be as long as a person feels like they're not where they're supposed to be they're always kind of feeling they should be somewhere else and the foundation of the recovery program and this is oftentimes a foundation in a munna it's like i am exactly where i'm supposed to be i'm in egypt i'm in the darkness i'm surrounded by uh servitude and slavery and what we call shibud and god can reach his hand in and help me as we did we did in literally in the story of egypt god he did not send an angel he did not send a messenger he himself came down that principle and that but that the suffering has meaningfulness and purposefulness is a very jewish idea another idea is that honesty is the key and we know that uh our our tradition tells us that the the the um the seal of god is truth and honesty and what they found in the recovery program is that the key to recovery from addiction is to learn how to be honest not only with other people but with ourselves right the foundation of the whole thing is to learn how to be honest with ourselves to be honest with god to be honest with others and that is the principle of the whole thing self-reflection in inventory is part of that honesty process a healthy process of self-reflection and inventory is a vital part of the recovery process and that is a vital part of judaism right we call um but not like a critical kind of destructive form of beating ourselves up but really a vibrant way of kind of looking at what reality is and what we can do better and then finally the really the linchpin of the whole recovery program is service crescent right that is the foundation of the whole thing and not only that but that tested is the main pathway to to invite god into our lives uh the key um in judaism the way that we put a prominence on kindness uh tikkun olam uh but also doing kindness but also charity uh charity is you know the jewish people are of the you know charity is like it's in our blood but the foundation is that when we make ourselves channels of goodness of charity it opens the door for us to recover from our most um pervasive challenges and that's at the core of the recovery process amazing thank you so much for joining us today and for all the work that you do for the community and for the world at large and thank you for shining your light on this world no thank you so much charlie it's an honor and a privilege to be here thanks for having me thank you thank you for his kind words you know it reminds me of a lot of what he's saying what everybody's saying it really reminds me of the great wise words of king solomon in proverbs that a righteous man will fall several seven times and get up check out this wonderful short video from god friedman on this exact topic so there i was south africa about an hour and a half outside of cape town little town called worcester and i come to realize my shoes are falling apart so i turned to the guy driving i said you know any stories around here he says look around no one's really wearing any shoes but you know what i think i know a place we go out there and we find this mall and as i'm going from store to store i can't find anything until i finally come to the sporting goods store i'm looking around and now you know you're in a store you look at other things also i'm looking around i see on the wall all these inspirational quotes you can do it keep pushing don't give up i see this big sign in front of me that says fall seven times get up eight and underneath in big black letters it says anonymous and i think to myself anonymous that's not anonymous i know who said that i called the guy who's working there i said hey come here you know that sign he goes yeah i said i know who wrote that he goes man i got paid 20 rand an hour i don't care who wrote it friends king solomon comes along and he tells us in his best seller mishla proverbs chapter 24 verse 16 and i quote the righteous person falls seven times but he gets up again some of us are mistaken and we think what's the difference between someone who's successful and someone who's not we know the winner we know the successful person he never falls he's always doing great she's always successful she always makes it but little do we realize how mistaken we are the difference between a winner and a loser between success and non-success is not that one falls and one doesn't they both fall the difference is that the winner the successful person gets back up now you ask yourself why seven what does that mean that seven times the righteous person falls what's seven seven are the days of the week this is not a one-time thing you say to yourself well okay i get it you can fall and get back up but i keep falling how could i ever succeed do i have any chance i might as well give up says the verse keep plugging baby keep plugging because it's constant it's every day it's going to happen and not only that our sages tell us we go down in order to go up not only is that falling not bad it may even be the impetus to unbelievable growth any questions comments stories jokes attacks as always leave in the comments looking forward to hearing [Music] and we thank you so much for being here tonight you know like i said earlier in the show it's so critical that we recognize that at the core of what it means to be a jew is the recognition that we are not defined by our bodies we're not really even defined by our actions our actions have weight our actions matter the whole torah speaks about our actions that matter but they don't define us there's something that is inside us that is greater than anything this physical world can bear and that is our soul and just for a minute to drive this point home although it was mentioned earlier the soul that we have the energy that is opening up my eyes and your eyes that energy is literally a piece of the divine in a way that our brains can't possibly comprehend the creator of humanity the divine energy that is this entire world blue if you will infused a bit of him inside us so wherever you are in the world wherever you think you are vis-a-vis god whatever your background whatever your denomination whether you believe in him or not whether you're into it or not whether you're inspired or not whether you are fully quote unquote healthy whether you are in the front of the back of any line that you think is important what you've done pales in comparison to who you are because who you are is a piece of god who you are is array of the divine energy and that value if you will that essence is so much greater than anything that we could do in this world in fact our whole reason for being here is to exude that is to share that is to express that with others is to bring that into the world and the reason why this is so critical is because this was the message that god gave the jewish people in egypt what he shared with them what he taught them was that i know you think that you're a bunch of slaves that have no chance of being the noble nation of prince princes and princesses that could stand before the creator but trust me you are brush yourselves off come out of the country that held you back go to the desert away from all distractions and in between passover and shavuot pick yourself up what's inside is greater there's nothing you can't overcome and when you continue to grow you always have a place in my home a jew always knows that there's a place in god's home for him and you always knows that there's no such thing as hopelessness and no matter what somebody does when they look themselves in the mirror what they see back is an incredible infinite potential that's this period of time and so whether or not a person is struggling with something that is small or whether you know or are someone struggling with something much larger which you think you can't grow out of you think you can't get bigger from you think you can overcome and be better from it's not true there's always hope there's always help and if you're struggling with something there's always someone around that will accept you and you always know that there's a way back home and if you know someone that is struggling remember the most powerful thing you can do besides helping them get help the most powerful thing you can do is see the soul inside them you never lose hope in another you never ever give up on another and when you have that ability to see the greatness in each other to see the greatness in ourselves miracles happen great things happen we have the opportunity to overcome challenges we never knew possible that's this period of time and that by the way in my opinion is what shabbat is all about shabbat is that time where god puts us back in the desert shabbat is that time where god puts us back and says relax i know what you did it wasn't perfect or it was you're with me now and i don't need you to do anything to be valuable you see when shabbat comes you stand in front of the creator and he says we're partners he knows all the ups and the downs and says i'm not judging what you did because i'd have you do stuff you don't do one shabbat you are on shabbat and when a person separates who i am and what i do which is the exercise of shabbat he starts to realize that who i am is a piece of the infinite whatever i did last week i can do it differently next week seven days of the week last week don't have to be the seven days of the week the next week so on behalf of me and mine to you and yours i want to wish you a shabbat shalom let's see the best in each other let's make sure that everyone knows what we see in them let's also see the best in ourselves whatever it is that we're struggling with from what seems like small to what seems like insurmountable remember the jewish people struggled and has been struggling but what keeps us up is that we know that we come from all of us all of humanity comes from different stuff there's always hope there's always help and there's always a home an incredible shabbos shabbat shalom i hope next week we get to see each other in jerusalem but if not we'll see you back here shabbat shalom [Music] as i stand in candlelight with my hands upon my eyes there's a passion in my prayers that rends the skies [Music] for a mother's tears can shatter every gate that bars the way all the heavens will echo those words that mothers say take my children by the hand help them walk along your way may they never go astray may they know you as i know you oh hashem accept my plea give me children who give lovers [Music] take my children by the hell help them walk along your way may they never go astray may they know you as i know you oh my shame accept my pleasure give me children who give love [Music] as i stand in candlelight while my home is dark and still there's a void inside my heart i long to fill [Music] will i ever be a mother will that blessing come my way [Music] will i stand by the candles with gratitude and praise [Music] is [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] may they never go [Applause] [Music] is [Music] foreign