Orthodox grapple with alcoholism

Peter Gould had his last drink — or, more accurately, his last drinks — on Purim night, seven years ago.

“I drank more alcohol in a day than a human body can handle,” he says, relaxing on a puffy couch in Baltimore in jeans, sneakers and a black knit kippah.

At the time, Gould — not his real name — had been a functioning alcoholic for years, and his body could tolerate a lot of booze. He lists the staggering litany of alcoholic beverages he consumed that Purim, a holiday some Jews mark by drinking to excess:

• three bottles of Amaretto

• two bottles of wine

• one bottle of Champagne

• a fifth of scotch

• a fifth of bourbon.

“And then I drove home with my kids in the car,” he recalls. He made it home fine — after all, he was used to driving drunk.

Gould may be an extreme example, but he isn’t unique.

Alcohol and drug addiction exist in every sector of American Jewry, but addiction and recovery specialists say Gould is part of a growing problem in the Orthodox community — a problem that, because of the pressures and particularities of an observant Jewish lifestyle, has hit the Orthodox community in different and sometimes more troubling ways than other segments of the Jewish community.

“The Orthodox community really does have a need,” said Adrienne Bannon, executive director of Baltimore’s Jewish Recovery Houses, two centers in suburban Baltimore that house recovering Jewish drug addicts and alcoholics. “I thought most of the addicts and alcoholics filling this house would be long-estranged from religion, but it isn’t true,” she says.

Pinchas, who has been sober for 19 years and asked that his real name not be used, is one example of a recovering alcoholic who never gave up on religion.

A Potomac resident, Pinchas said he joined JACS, the Jewish Alcoholics, Chemically Dependent Persons and Significant Others because “when I got sober, I found very few synagogues would hold meetings” for recovering alcoholics, and he wanted Judaism to play a role in his recovery.

“[I thought], ‘I’m Jewish, how do I handle this?’ Because the 12 Steps were written by two Episcopalians and they wrote it from an Episcopalian perspective,” he said, referring to the famed rehabilitation mantra of Alcoholics Anonymous and the two professionals who created it in 1935.

“I almost killed myself,” continued Pinchas, who attends meetings at both groups. “I’d been drinking pretty successfully for about 11 years [and] was living by myself between my junior and senior years in college. I had four things happen to me in a row.”

First, he woke up next to someone he didn’t remember meeting.

Then, in a blackout state, he walked through a floor-to-ceiling glass pane.

Third, he lost a summer job because he missed so much work.

“Then I decided to go to shul,” he said, “and I got kicked out for being drunk.”

Asked if he had noticed an increase in the numbers of Jews he sees at A.A. meetings, which he attends weekly, Pinchas said: “I don’t think there’s been an upsurge, per se, I think the Orthodox community … is not as accepting of the fact that there’s alcoholics or drug addicts in the community. They have more blinders on than the general population.”

He recalled a time when he spoke about his experiences at an Orthodox synagogue, only to have the rabbi ask afterward if he had been adopted, believing, Pinchas said, that adoption was the only explanation for an alcoholic Jew.

But Rabbi Hirsh Chinn of Silver Spring, who has been involved in JACS for more than 20 years, believes that traditional communities are increasingly willing to admit to substance abuse among their members.

“That’s not to say there are more people using now than used to, but we’re more aware of it,” he said.

Asked why this awareness has been rather long in coming, Chinn, who makes a policy of not revealing whether he is merely involved in JACS or is himself in recovery, said, “When you’re a minority within a minority, you don’t want to make yourself more vulnerable ... there’s the expectation, ‘You’re a religious community, you’re not supposed to have these problems.’ ”

But, he said, “Orthodox or not, we’re human, and there are all sorts of pressures.”

Solid numbers on addiction in the Orthodox community are hard to come by, but experts say that anecdotal evidence suggests the problem is getting worse.

“What has opened people’s eyes is that, first of all, there’s been much more talk about the problem,” says Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski, founder and medical director emeritus of Gateway Rehabilitation Center, a nonprofit drug and alcohol treatment system in western Pennsylvania. “Unfortunately, there have been several young deaths from overdoses, and these were not covered up and they raised the alert of the community.”

Rabbi Kerry Olitzky, an expert in chemical addiction in the Jewish community and author of Twelve Jewish Steps to Recovery: A Personal Guide to Turning from Alcoholism and Other Addictions, notes that the Orthodox aren’t the only members of the Jewish community with addiction issues.

“Alcohol and drug abuse is about an issue of individuals feeling an emptiness inside of themselves, and they’re self-medicating, trying to fill that hole and get rid of the pain they feel,” says Olitzky, who also is executive director of the Jewish Outreach Institute.

Many communities are making efforts to fight abuse by forming support groups, A.A. and Narcotics Anonymous societies, treatment centers and clearinghouses for referral services. The religious streams also have made efforts to address the issue and inform their constituents about it.

The number of Jewish addicts is proportionally similar to the rest of America, Olitzky says.

Insiders say the Orthodox lifestyle offers another gateway into and cover for addiction: the frequent availability and consumption of alcohol at religious life-cycle events.

Habits developed at these celebrations can eventually lead to alcoholism, observers say.

A person can drink a l’chaim at a morning brit, or ritual circumcision ceremony, followed by another at an engagement party that evening. Later in the week, there may be a wedding, followed by a sheva bracha ceremony, followed on Shabbat by a bar mitzvah reception — and alcohol often is available at each event.

Then there is the increasing popularity of so-called synagogue Kiddush Clubs, which offer shul-goers alcohol during and after services.

Alan Smith, who asked that his real name be withheld, is involved with one of the Jewish rehabilitation services in the Baltimore area and has noticed an increase in the number of observant Jews he sees there.

It’s because “the message [rehab] is sending — you don’t have to break your anonymity, but you don’t have to sweep it so far under the rug that you don’t get clean either,” he said, adding, “It’s a solution to alcoholism that Orthodox Jews have been able to find.”

Smith, who has been clean for more than six years, credits God for his sobriety. “Each morning I wake up and say today’s the day I don’t drink. Today’s the day I’m going to ask God to help me ... it’s God that keeps a person clean, it’s the infinite God, because people fail. God can’t fail. He does things I don’t understand, but he doesn’t fail.”

Washington Jewish Week