Moshe Kasher is known for, among other things, writing an autobiographical book called 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. Growing up on welfare and struggling with many difficulties caused by his parents’ hostile relationship, he was a multi-drug abuser even in middle school. These are his words:

They tell you that you feel loopy and disoriented, but no one tells you that it crawls through your skin, filling in every place of deficit, every gaping crack where your humanity didn’t fuse. The thick warm lava of euphoria fills in the crevices of your psyche, and you realize your soul was an electric blanket that hadn’t been plugged in until just then.

It was not, strictly speaking, a high that he chased, but rather the feeling that he was all right; and the ability to forget all the reasons why he hated himself. And the pain, of course. “The world stung. I was born a mess of paper cuts, the world was a pool of lemon juice I’d been shot into.” Made to enroll in a 12-step program modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous, as well as numerous other programs for wayward youth, he alternated between insincere participation and obnoxious resistance. He particularly loved the sport of “cracking a therapist’s professional armor.”

These are his words: One piece of information that Kasher seemed eager to pass along in his sober, grownup writings, is that those teen programs he was subjected to operated on a faulty premise. There was constant urine testing, but the only drug to persistently accumulate in the body and show up in the testing (at least in those days) was cannabis, which is possibly the least harmful one. So the rehab kids made do with LSD, amphetamines, nitrous oxide, and psychoactive mushrooms.

It was around this time when Kasher told his mother that part of his “amends” step involved paying back people he had stolen money from. She helpfully gave him some, and he used it to buy drugs. One of his quotations goes like this:

Every night I’d swear I’d never do it again… Every night I quit. And every morning I woke up and forgot about the promises I’d made to myself the night before… There was simply an empty space in my brain where the night before there had been a firm declaration never to do this again.

A point he makes is that people who consume a lot of substances might not actually even be getting “high,” but trying desperately to just feel normal. Another realization was that, when you’re a kid of 13, a mind-expanding drug does not have much raw material to work with:

[E]ventually, I hit the point where I couldn’t take enough medicine to make any pain go away… I was never again going to find relief in drugs and booze… I was only going to feel slightly less misery.

Of course, even in these grim reminiscences, there is humor to be found:

I am here to tell you that if your drug dealer ever does an intervention on you, it’s time to get help. That’s when I started quitting.

After several failed rehab attempts, he chanced to find the right program at the right time, got clean and sober at age 15, and has stayed that way ever since. Among other diversions and life experiences, he developed an interest in surfing.

When Kasher was 16, and six months sober, a counselor gave him a copy of The Catcher in the Rye, which is referenced in the title of his own first book.  J.D. Salinger’s novel made a mark on him, as it did on a whole generation of young people, and was only one of the rewards to be found when looking for meaning somewhere other than substances. After doing a lot of make-up and catch-up work, Kasher eventually graduated from UC Santa Barbara.

In adulthood, he spent a period of time as his grandmother’s caregiver and was for 15 years employed as an American Sign Language interpreter. He developed a serious interest in the justice system and prison reform, as well as other righteous causes.

And eventually, like so many other drug abusers both reformed and otherwise, became a standup comedian, completing the transformation from being part of the alleged dregs of society to being a world-renowned entertainment figure. His many credits as a writer and performer are not listed here but are easy enough to find.

Written by Pat Hartman. First published November 15, 2024.

Sources:

“Kasher in the Rye,” Amazon.com, undated.

“Five Sober Comedians You Should Know,” KatieMacBride.com, May 29, 2015.

Image copyright: Cleft Clips/Attribution 2.0 Generic.