Kasher in the Rye: The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland Who Became a Drug Addict, Criminal, Mental Patient, and Then Turned 16

by Moshe Kasher

I hated New Bridge, but I loved it, too. I met kids like me who were so absolutely unacceptable to everyone that they were shipped off to be fixed. Every day I’d take the bus up to New Bridge and they would try to force me to talk about my feelings. I didn’t care about that; I was used to being analyzed. But right beneath that callousness, I sensed that something was shifting here. I hadn’t left that mental hospital behind. I hadn’t left Claremont. I hadn’t left that chaos behind, it was still all over me. The suspicion of something being deeply wrong with me that had defined my childhood was being made manifest here in these groups. What kind of thirteen-year-old goes to rehab? I couldn’t have articulated this shame, so instead I did what I always did when I was overwhelmed—I acted like an asshole.