“I can’t let her go. I know that I’m going to regret it for the rest of my life”
Ahrele was a young man from a chassidishe family who’d suffered abuse at the hands of a relative, dropped out of the frum world, wound up in a psychiatric hospital after use of psychedelic drugs, and had gotten his life back together over the past year. But his father still couldn’t accept him. Part IV
It was just over two years since Ahrele had been out of the hospital, and since he’s been asymptomatic, we slowly tapered him off the antipsychotic medication that he’d needed to escape the delusional nightmare brought on by psychedelic mushrooms. He was in a good place, forging a new identity as a personal trainer. And for better or for worse, business was booming; Ahrele had developed quite a following.
He was booked solid from morning to evening with personal workout sessions, group workouts, and had even completed formal certification. He was making money, living drug-and-alcohol free, and building up honest self-esteem for the first time in his life.
And he was finally ready to work through the early trauma of child abuse, which had been festering for so long. He was even allowing Yiddishkeit to creep slowly back into his life. Tefillin was on his arm and over his tattoos most days and he’d become a regular at a Carlebach-style Shabbos minyan in his neighborhood.
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