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

There were meals and groups and games and meds and movies and levels and points and, of course, a padded cell. It’s not so bad in there. Cool and soft and a place to wonder how you landed yourself in a place like this. There were babbling teens with thick gauze wrapped around their wrists and abuse victims who couldn’t make it back and secret drug addicts and Jesus fucking Christ. Jesus Christ? Yeah, even he was in there. Or at least some guy said that’s who he was. I could feel, from deep underneath my belly, this fire of anger bubbling and smoking and trying to get out. I had been getting high so much at this point that it had been awhile since I’d felt that. But with a two-week break courtesy of my 5150 and that terrible Dr. Susan, the topical anesthetic I’d been dabbing at my life was starting to wear off. I couldn’t believe what they had done to me, where they’d sent me. I hated those fucking adults so much, I could hardly stand it. This therapeutic environment hardly seemed therapeutic. I was so angry I couldn’t believe it. And I imagine I’d have been angrier still had I known then what I know now due to the advantage of my 20/20 hindsight goggles—that all of my therapists were right. I wasn’t angry, I was scared. The anger just served as a line of defense from the terror that it protected. Sure, I hated those adults but mostly because they represented something I wasn’t. In control. Stable. Powerful. I was none of those things. I stayed angry because what was right ...