"T here’s someone on the phone for you” my son Naftali told my wife one fine day. Naftali was 23 and had recently returned from yeshivah in Eretz Yisrael. He had never been a top student but after returning home he had become increasingly passive and listless. First he stopped attending yeshivah. Then he took a job but was fired for poor performance. He seemed stuck. Aimless.

The man on the phone told my wife Gitty that he was the manager of a frum drug rehabilitation center in a different state and he began describing his facility and its programs.

Gitty was confused. “What does this have to do with me?” she asked.

“Uh maybe you should have a talk with your son ” he responded.

That phone call changed our life forever.

In our wildest dreams we would never have imagined that our son would be addicted to heroin. We are a respected frum family with sons and sons-in-law who are bnei Torah and daughters who are fine Bais Yaakov girls and kollel wives. How in the world could this have happened in our family? Where did we go wrong?

Apparently Naftali’s friend had introduced him to heroin and unbeknown to us he had quickly become addicted supporting his habit by using up his savings then cashing in an insurance policy he had. He probably stole from us too. As typical frum parents who knew nothing about heroin addiction we were utterly clueless about his problem — until that fateful phone call.

Fortunately Naftali wanted to get himself into rehab so when he noticed an advertisement for this rehab center he had called up to find out more about it. Not knowing how to tell us that he needed rehab he had simply handed the phone to Gitty after speaking briefly to the manager.

Dazed and stunned we sent him to the rehab center and paid the bill out of our savings. Four months into his stay he called to tell us that he was in the hospital. He had developed an infection from the unsterilized needles he had used previously and his liver enzyme levels were sky-high. “I’m not coming out alive ” he predicted.

Gitty jumped on a flight and went to join him in the hospital while I stayed home with the younger kids. She stayed with him for a few days until he was released from the hospital and then she brought him home.

He walked into our house looking like a ghost. His hair was dyed some strange color and he could barely stand.

The next morning when I went upstairs to his room to check on him I found him sprawled out on a chair unconscious. His head was hanging backward his mouth was open and he wasn’t breathing.

I called Hatzolah. “My son is having some sort of drug reaction ” I cried. “I’m not sure if he’s alive!”

Hatzolah arrived within three minutes and administered a shot of Narcan which blocks the effects of opioids like heroin in the body. They also opened Naftali’s airway by simply moving his tongue which was blocking his windpipe.

They managed to resuscitate him in the nick of time. Had they come a minute or two later it would have been too late.

Naftali was in the hospital for a few days after which we signed him into a kosher halfway house and then into an outpatient day program. As part of that program Naftali was placed on suboxone a legal narcotic that helps relieve symptoms of heroin withdrawal without producing a high. Unfortunately suboxone is addictive and hard to detox from and we didn’t see it as a real solution.

As we searched for an alternative, we realized that only a long-term rehab would have any chance of success at healing our son. An askan in our city who has experience helping people in the community with addiction issues recommended that we send Naftali to a facility in Eretz Yisrael run by frum people, and he got me a deal with the rehab center to pay a discounted rate of $4,000 a month. (I thought that was a lot — until I discovered that some rehab centers charge $30,000 a month.)

We sent Naftali to Eretz Yisrael, thinking that the distance would be a plus as it would deter him from leaving. But after arriving at the facility, Naftali called us and said he wanted to leave. “They don’t know what they’re doing here,” he complained. “It’s not a good place.”

We didn’t know what to do. On the one hand, we were already painfully aware that we couldn’t take anything Naftali said at face value. As the saying goes: “How do you know an addict is lying? Because his mouth is moving.” But on the other hand, we were across the ocean, with no way of knowing what was really going on at the rehab. And forcing a young man in his twenties to stay in a facility he didn’t want to be in was hardly the same as dropping off a bawling three-year-old in preschool.

I turned to the askan who had gotten him into the facility for advice. “I’ll help you, Gedalya,” he said, “but only if you go to four meetings a week.”

At that point, I didn’t know which meetings he was talking about. But I needed his help, so I agreed to go.

When I told the askan that my son was unhappy in the rehab facility and wanted to leave, he responded, “Oh, they all say that. What they really mean is, ‘Get me out because I need drugs.’ You leave him right where he is.”

In the meantime, Gitty and I started going to “meetings.” These were meetings of Nar-Anon, attended by people whose loved ones are addicted to drugs. (Nar-Anon is the equivalent of Al-Anon, a support group for loved ones of alcoholics, while Narcotics Anonymous, or NA, is the equivalent of the Alcoholics Anonymous 12-step recovery program for alcohol addiction.)

Gitty hated the Nar-Anon meetings. She preferred to keep her tzaros private, and she certainly wasn’t interested in sharing the personal details of her life with a bunch of non-frum and non-Jewish strangers.

I loved the meetings, however. Hearing from people in similar situations — devoted, upstanding parents of all stripes who were heartbroken over their child’s drug addiction — and receiving support and encouragement from them helped strengthen me to go on with life while dealing with the challenge of being the parent of a drug addict.

Gitty dropped out after the first few meetings, but I continued to attend. With time, the Nar-Anon messages began to sink in. I learned that I wasn’t attending the meetings for Naftali; I was attending for me.

Some of the ideas that began to guide my life were “Let go and let G-d”; “One day at a time”; “Detach with love”; and “You didn’t cause it, you can’t control it, and you can’t cure it.” These and other Nar-Anon refrains convey that only the addict can change his behavior, and nothing you do can make him change. He has to hit his own “rock bottom” and be ready to do the hard work of getting clean.

Many parents of addicts make the heartrending decision to kick their child out of the house and not give him one cent. While that may or may not help the kid to hit rock bottom and resolve to take responsibility for his recovery, the alternative — allowing the child to remain at home and live off his parents while using drugs — is often deadly, because it shields the addict from the consequences of his habit. In Nar-Anon parlance, this is known as “enabling.” Enabling doesn’t accomplish anything; all it does is teach the addict that you think he is incapable of change and you are prepared to bail him out no matter what.

Naftali’s friend who was also addicted to heroin lived on the street for several years after his parents banished him from the house. That boy, who later recovered fully, told his father, “Had you not kicked me out, I would not be alive today.”

Thankfully, our son was far away in Eretz Yisrael, so we did not have to grapple with the conundrum of whether to allow him to stay in our house.

During the time Naftali was on and off drugs and in and out of rehab, Gitty and I were zocheh to marry off three children, even though we never covered up Naftali’s addiction. Our attitude was that anyone who wouldn’t want to marry one of our children because of Naftali obviously wasn’t the right match for our family.

After Naftali had been in the rehab center in Eretz Yisrael for seven months, Gitty and I went to visit him, and we joined him for several sessions of family therapy.

During one of the sessions, Naftali shared the following memory with me: “When I was a little boy, maybe seven or eight, you were doing homework with me, and you got frustrated with me and told me I was stupid.”

I remembered the incident. Naftali had trouble grasping information and concepts, so doing homework with him was a challenge. Most of the time, I controlled my frustration, but on that particular occasion, I had let it show. I had not actually said the words, “You’re stupid,” but that was the message he had absorbed from whatever it was that I did say.

“I decided at that moment that I was never going to let you hurt me again,” Naftali concluded.

Over the years, I had tried many times to do enjoyable things with Naftali and build our relationship. But nothing I said or did could banish Naftali’s sense that he was stupid and make him feel better about himself.

Painful as it was to hear that Naftali blamed me for his addiction, I had attended Nar-Anon long enough to know that addicts invariably blame others. Even if I had made mistakes in raising Naftali — and which parent doesn’t make mistakes? — I hadn’t caused him to become an addict so many years after that incident with the homework. Yes, my son struggled in school, but many kids with learning issues don’t become heroin addicts. I have other children who are not addicts, and not every one of them is a top student.

When Naftali finished rehab, he was already 25. By this time, I knew that recovering addicts are especially at-risk immediately after they emerge from rehab and begin to reintegrate into society. Having just been cleansed of drugs, their bodies no longer have the same tolerance for narcotics as they did before rehab. If they inject themselves with the same drug doses they used prior to rehab, a fatal overdose may result.

It was critical, therefore, that Naftali find a suitable framework that would keep him busy and help him feel good about himself. He didn’t want to return home to our community, though, because he thought it would be too easy for him to get drugs there.

“I want to stay in Israel and join the army,” he said.

I called my rav to discuss the possibility with him, and he thought it was a good idea.

We quickly learned, however, that the army had no interest in a recovering drug addict straight out of rehab. And Naftali was already 25, while most new recruits are only 18.

Our rav is a well-connected person, and he immediately got to work contacting people he knew in Eretz Yisrael who had ties with Nahal Haredi. A new cohort had just completed the enlistment process and was about to begin training, and our rav’s contacts pulled strings to get Naftali to join that cohort.

The discipline and regimented structure of the military — which, in Nahal Haredi, included mandatory tefillah b’tzibbur and Torah shiurim — was very conducive to Naftali’s rehabilitation. Netzah Yehuda (the official name of Nahal Haredi) is a combat unit, so Naftali was trained as a “locheim” and assigned to a base near Jenin. Many nights, he accompanied the Shin Bet into Arab towns to help arrest terrorists. On Pesach, he guarded the army base in a watchtower so his fellow soldiers could hold a Seder. He and another soldier made their own Seder in the tower, high above the base.

Naftali became proficient in shooting many types of weapons and actually earned a “Mitztayein Hagedud” award that pronounced him the best soldier in his unit. It was the most prestigious award he had ever received in his life.

By the end of his army service, Naftali — who hadn’t been able to put together a sentence of modern Hebrew when he enlisted — spoke Ivrit fluently and considered himself a frum Israeli. He had learned to love Eretz Yisrael and felt proud to be defending the Jewish People.

After his discharge from the army, Naftali learned in a yeshivah for six months and started looking for a job. Then the 2014 Gaza war broke out, and Naftali was called up for reserve duty. The unit he was assigned to was the military chevra kaddisha, which enters hostile territory after battles to retrieve the bodies, or body parts, of fallen soldiers. These missions are quite dangerous, as the Arabs know that the Jewish soldiers will return to retrieve their fallen brethren, and they often lie in wait for them.

After Naftali was called up, a chassidic rav in my community approached me and asked, “Does your son have a bulletproof vest?”

The question hadn’t occurred to me. Of course the army would provide Naftali with a bulletproof vest!

“I was in Eretz Yisrael during the previous war,” the rav said, “and I discovered that many of the soldiers didn’t have the proper equipment. You should find out if your son does.”

The next time I spoke to Naftali, I asked him whether he had a bulletproof vest. “No,” he said.

“Why not?” I asked, quite horrified.

Naftali asked his commanding officer, who explained that bulletproof vests are very expensive — they cost thousands of dollars each — and are distributed by the IDF on a priority basis. Frontline combat soldiers receive them automatically, while rear-guard soldiers, such as Naftali’s chevra kaddisha unit, typically do not.

“You were right,” I told the rav in disbelief. “My son’s unit doesn’t have bulletproof vests.”

I wrote an article in our local Jewish paper describing the situation and requesting that people donate money to buy bulletproof vests for Naftali and his friends. As a result of that article, a committee was formed to launch a fundraising campaign to purchase bulletproof vests for Naftali and his fellow soldiers. Rabbanim from across the frum spectrum supported the campaign, and even Yidden who had serious ideological issues with the IDF donated eagerly, understanding that this was a clear-cut case of pikuach nefesh that transcended ideological considerations.

The campaign brought in enough money to equip Naftali’s entire unit with bulletproof vests, after which we started buying vests for another unit as well. And then the IDF clamped down on our campaign. Offended that outsiders were buying equipment for its soldiers, the IDF refused to allow us to donate any more bulletproof vests. From then on, they began providing bulletproof vests even to lower-priority soldiers. I think we embarrassed them.

I didn’t get any thanks from the army. But the Military Rabbinate decided to honor me for spearheading the campaign, and they arranged a ceremony at which the chief rabbi of the army spoke. “We appreciate the vests,” he said, “but even more than that, we appreciate that you love us.”

Those words remain etched into my heart.

Naftali, who was present at the ceremony, felt like a million dollars as well. Because of his father, his entire unit had bulletproof vests.

After completing his reserve duty, Naftali returned home for a visit, during which he was invited to speak to a group of college students about his experience in the army.

I wasn’t present when he spoke, but the rabbi who organized the gathering told me afterward that Naftali ended his speech with the words, “And now my father is proud of me.”

I always cry when I tell that story. I cry because although I always loved Naftali dearly, and I often told him that I loved him as he was growing up, he never felt that he was worth loving. And the agony of feeling that you’re not worth loving can drive a kid to do anything to dull the pain — even shoot himself up with heroin.

Ultimately, however, the reason Naftali fell prey to drug addiction remains a mystery. And the fact that he succeeded in turning his life around is nothing short of a miracle. So many others in his shoes end up on the streets, in jail, or dead, no matter what their parents and loved ones do to save them.

In my Nar-Anon meetings, I’ve learned that drug addiction is a raging epidemic that does not discriminate by race, religion, social stratum, or income level. One of the members of my Nar-Anon group is an upper-class gentile woman who sent her daughter to a ritzy private school — and that daughter is now in jail for stealing money to buy drugs.

Even in our community, the epidemic of drug addiction strikes indiscriminately. The rehab center in Eretz Yisrael that Naftali attended allows parents to visit their kids on Wednesdays. There is a kollel on site at the rehab, and one Wednesday, a choshuve rav whose child was recovering at the center met an even more choshuve rav there. Ashamed, the first rav went over to the director of the center and said, “I understand that you invited that rav to give a shiur to your kollel, but why did you have to invite him on Wednesday, when he’ll see me?”

“He’s actually here for the same reason you are,” the director said.

This isn’t just my problem — it’s Klal Yisrael’s problem. It could become your problem, chas v’shalom.

Unfortunately, despite the prevalence of addiction in our community, frum people often opt to drive across town to Al-Anon or Nar-Anon meetings of non-Jews rather than risk meeting people they know. So instead of receiving much-needed support and chizuk from fellow Yidden, many frum parents and spouses of addicts are stuck attending these non-Jewish meetings, which are often held in churches or Reform temples. (Which shuls are offering to host these meetings?)

I know many frum people who are suffering in isolation because of fear of stigma. I know them because they reached out to me confidentially — but they’d be terrified to reach out to each other in a public way.

There are no ready solutions, no easy answers. But there is one thing we can all do, and that’s to stop passing judgment on addicts and their families and instead commit to studying the problem, implementing strategies for prevention, and establishing support and treatment resources within the community.

In addition, those of us who are suffering need to be courageous enough to speak up about the problem, instead of quavering in shame. By assuming guilt for our loved one’s addiction, all we do is make it harder for ourselves and others to find support and solutions. After all, the problem of drug addiction isn’t something we caused, and it isn’t something that we, as individuals, can control or cure. But together, as a united community, we can contribute to a solution.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 675)

The narrator can be reached through LifeLines or the Mishpacha office.   

To have your story retold by C. Saphir, e-mail a brief synopsis to lifelines@mishpacha.com or call +1.718.686.9339 extension 87204 and leave a message. Details will be changed to assure confidentiality.