Nearly a decade after recovering from drug addiction, Asher Ehrman, 31, is paying it forward by helping others who struggled as he did.
A native of the ultra-Orthodox enclave in Monsey, N.Y., today Ehrman works as a broker for people requiring merchant cash advances, to support his wife and three pre-school-aged daughters. But giving back is still important to him. “There’s living and there’s existing,” he said. “Unfortunately, to exist you have to work and support your family. But when I am living, that is when I am giving back.”
Ehrman said his accessibility and personal contact information are widely known in the addiction community and he gives back by being available at any hour to help people struggling with any kind of addiction; advising families on where and how to aid troubled relatives; hosting weekly AA meetings with his wife in their Mid-City home, where he says 98% of attendees are Jewish; and raising money to send people to treatment.
He shared the story of how three months ago a panicked friend called him saying he needed $10,000 within the next 24 to 48 hours to send a young woman to rehab. “With the help of my wife and a few friends, we raised the money in 24 hours,” he said.
Ehrman’s downward spiral began when at 14 he came home from yeshiva wearing a blue shirt instead of the prescribed white one. Fearful of Ehrman’s rebellious traits, his parents’ rabbi told them to evict Ehrman. The rabbi assured his parents that after a night or two in the cold, Ehrman would return home and conform. But Ehrman didn’t come home. He spent the next four years just four houses away, living with his best friend’s family. Neither Ehrman’s parents nor his siblings spoke with him throughout that period.
“Beit T’Shuvah had something no other rehab had. They gave me love, community and acceptance.”
Ehrman said his best friend’s mother acted as if she were his mother, raising him, buying his clothes, even paying for a trip to Israel. At 18, he enrolled in a yeshiva in Israel, where he said, “I was introduced to marijuana. For me, it was love at first sight [and] numbed all the pain I ever had. So it became the love of my life.”
By 19, Ehrman knew he needed help and returned home to ask his parents for $9,000 to enter rehab. They told him to raise the money himself. He did so in under a week, with the help of a few friends and knocking on doors.
Over the next two years, Ehrman attended five rehab centers in four states. Then, in 2011, he went to Beit T’Shuvah for 15 months, where he met his future wife, Rachel, and turned his life around.
“I wish the whole East Coast would know about Beit T’Shuvah,” Ehrman said, “because they had something no other rehab had. They gave me love, community and acceptance. There was no agenda to ‘be this way’ or ‘be that way.’ ”
Rather, he said, “The main question they asked me from the day I walked in until the day I walked out was, ‘What is it that you want, and how can we help you get there?’ ”
He also heaps praise on his wife. “Without Rachel, her family, the community that came with her, the love and everything I never had in my life, there’s a strong possibility I would not be sober today.”
And, he added, today he and his family in Monsey are reconciled.
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