Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Moshe Kasher: Nature vs. Nurture, Growing Up CODA & Rebuilding Trust

Episode Date: May 18, 2021

Moshe Kasher, stand-up comedian and author of Mayim’s favorite memoir ‘Kasher in the Rye,’ talks about his experience through childhood growing up with deaf parents and the mixed emotions of independence, embarrassment, and rage that came with it. Mayim and Moshe explore the idea of the chicken and the egg when it came to his therapy early in life; whether he was exposed to therapy because of exhibited behaviors or whether that exposure fed into those behaviors. We close the episode by coming full circle with a callback to Rick Doblin’s MAPS and the idea that the only way to truly heal from trauma is to go back through it. BialikBreakdown.com YouTube.com/mayimbialik Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is how fucked up my childhood was. I assumed that the alarm system was designed to keep you, was installed to keep people from sneaking out, not to keep criminals from sneaking in. Because that's what it was like in my house. Hi, I'm Myambiolic, and welcome to My Breakdown. This is the place where we break down the things that make us break down. It's Myambiolic's breakdown.

She's going to break it down for you. Because you know she knows a thing or two. And now she's going to break down. Today, we're going to be breaking down. I don't even know how to describe it. Today we're going to be breaking down a stand-up comedian, Moshe Kashir, who, among other things, is the author of an unbelievable memoir 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. This is an unbelievable story, his life. and he's a really unbelievable person.

He's also the co-host of the Endless Honeymoon podcast with his wife, who happens to be comedian, Natasha Legerro. But first, before we get into Moshe Kashar, I'd like to introduce my favorite stand-up guy, Jonathan Cohen. Hello, my name. Hi, everyone. Jonathan, you're coming to us from MBB Studios north? Tucked into the mountains of Ashland, Oregon, hiding away. Jonathan, do you want to tell anybody anything?

Stand-up guy? Not really. I just kind of want to get into the show. Oh, okay. So if you're listening to us, you're missing out on seeing us in person. But if you're seeing us in person and think that it's offensive looking at the two of us, you can listen on Spotify or anywhere that you get podcasts. And although it is adorable to hear Jonathan say resources the way Canadians do, say it?

Resources with the Z. We do have a lot of resources on Biolicbreakdown.com. So make sure to check it out. Also, Jonathan likes to tell people to leave us a five-star review. It really helps us. I do, but I don't do that anymore. I do it at the end of the show. so that we get right in there.

Let's just get in there. All right. So we're talking to like a person that I really, really like. I mean, we've had a couple of these. This is actually, I was thinking about this as I was preparing to speak to you and Moshe today. This is like one of the most fun things about being at this place in my career is that I get to like ask Moshe Kashar to please come speak to me. And he says yes. The asking is not the fun part.

I wondered if people are going to lose credibility in our excitement. Why is my I'm so excited? I'm an excited. I feel things bigly. We cover that in previous episodes. Also, if you're listening to this and you're not already subscribed and you're like, Moshe, who we found out in this episode, isn't subscribed to the podcast, we reference Rick Doblin and our conversations with Maps.

Also, near the end of this interview, Moshe, literally sums up the entire premise of mental health, talking about how the mind becomes a labyrinth when we wall off traumatic events and make decisions as a reaction to that trauma without working through it. It's like, if nothing else, skip to the end to that part, because we get so excited that, like, without any prompting,

he, like, summarizes one of our main points and theories about what makes a healthy person versus what happens to a lot of people unconsciously in reaction to difficult situations. Here's that everything you just said is true. And he's got, he's got one of those minds that just can synthesize information very quickly. He can articulate it very quickly. He's also really, really funny, but like dry funny. He's not like a, hey, I'm a comedian kind of guy.

No, different story. Like his brother's a rabbi. He's got more of that kind of intellectual vibe than like stand-up comic vibe. But the thing that I find fascinating, my girl brain finds fascinating, that's the kind of guy that I would have been so in love with, like, in junior high. Philosopher hip? Yeah. Philosopher hip, but also he has a very heavy and early experience with drugs and alcohol. And I would have seen like, this is a person who I totally get.

And needs a little saving. He needs a little saving. and I just feel like he would be like I have no interest in you. I can already feel how destroyed I would have been if I knew him in school. If there are any artists out there who want to paint that picture of Mime in junior high

being destroyed by this moody hipster, I think we can put a call out for submissions. He was very troubled and his memoir is beautiful. Also, I should mention it, he and his brother were born into a home with two deaf parents. His mom's very funny, very smart, ended up like going to night school, getting her master's degree. He was raised by his mom and his grandmother, his dad moved back to New York. Really, really, interesting, interesting stuff. So, I mean, I've hit all the highlights, but Moshe is, in case you don't know, he's a stand-up comedian.

He's been on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Comedy Central's, Live at Gotham. He's been on Chelsea lately. Super funny. And he does have his own podcast with his wife, as I mentioned. He also was named iTunes's Best New Comic in 2009. And in 2012, he came out with this memoir, Casher and the Rye, which I highly recommend. It is really, really an honor to welcome my friend Moshe Kashar. Break it down. Well, thanks. Thanks for having me. How are you? We're doing pretty good. I'm very excited that you're here. I've told just about everyone I know about your book and about you in general. And the God's honest truth is that the first time I discovered you on the internet, right after watching all the things I could watch,

I googled Is Moshe Gashar married? That's a true thing. Indeed, you are, and I respect that very much. That's the second most common Google search. It goes, is Moshe Gash are gay? and then it goes, is Moshe Kashar married? And then the third, of course, is Moshekashir gay married? Well, it's really, it is an honor to have you here.

And you were really one of the first people that I wanted to speak to when I started this podcast about mental health. Oh, this is about mental health? Nobody told me that. I actually have a thing right now. I know that's a little weird, but I do have a thing right at this exact moment. So we appreciate you talking with us and really are, you know, I'm not going to make you recite your whole book, first of all, because that's obnoxious. And second of all, because, I mean, I have described your book as my favorite memoir that I have, that I have ever read. That's so nice.

She's not lying. She and I played it together. I've listened to your voice. If anyone doesn't read this book, I'll be very upset. So for that reason, I'm not going to make you, you know, talk about it in detail. Wait, I have a question. Yes. Are you, you're the co-hosts of the podcast?

Are you also, like, live-in husband lover? Or? I just carry things for her? Well, no, I didn't know. I don't know the relationship dynamic. Most people, most people don't, even when they do. Yes, we are all kinds of partners. Okay, well, you threw me off because you were like, I Googled if you were married.

and then you were like, we used to go to sleep. No, I Googled if you were married, too. That was option number three, right? You Googled option three. When we started listening to your book, I was like, this is the person I wanted to date, but then we connected again. Beautiful, romantic story of the two of you.

Okay. She's like, if your story doesn't live up to this, I'm not interested. I got it. I got it. I think I have the dynamic. And it was like, there's nothing wrong with how I feel about Moshe Kashar.

let's tuck ourselves in every night by phone by listening to his voice, talk about his life. I love that. Well, just instead of you telling us the story, we actually brought you on so that Maim could read your book to you. Tell me my story. Back to me. Exactly. It just wants to make sure we improvise sometimes, too. We're like, okay, you pretend to be Mocha. Oh, I like this. That's a freaky roleplay.

So this podcast must be the fulfillment of a lot of fantasies for the two of you. many right now. Oh, this is great. Okay. I do want to say, so your memoir came out in 2012, the cutest first part of a title ever, Casher in the Rye. And the second part of the title, I don't know what it's called. This is the subtitle, the next part.

The True Tale of a White Boy from Oakland who became a drug addict, criminal, mental patient, and then turned 16. Also a phenomenal title. Thank you, thank you. that's kind of, I mean, that's literally, that's a huge, that's a huge, very articulate description of what your life was like before you turned 16. But for people who don't know you, I mean, first of all, you're a hilarious comedian. I don't mean to just like, I'm just going to talk about you the whole time. I'll tell you what I am is I'm a great lover and I'm open-minded when it comes to different pairings,

you know, it's like a husband, a wife. It's everything, I'm open to every. I like hot tubs. I have an open-minded lifestyle. Anyway. Which is the key to mental health is openness. That's right. That's right. But in all seriousness, I'm trying here. In all seriousness, you have one of those stories that is, it is very, very unusual. And you were born to deaf parents. Both you and your brother were raised in a signing home. And you are the younger of two boys. And that's part of your story. Your parents, this really is me telling you your story.

Your parents separated and you ended up living this kind of dual life. Your father turned to a very religious life. And so you lived kind of part of your life, summers mostly, in a very, very Hasidic part of Brooklyn. You know, you describe it as like, it's like the place where time stopped. Like you're in the 1800s in that portal. I think the description in the book is, and what I do on stage when I tell this part of my story, He lived in a place called Seagate in Brooklyn, and if your listeners don't know how to get there,

you take the F train to the last possible stop, get off, you walk past Coney Island, past the projects, past the people of color, through a gate, through a time portal to pre-Nazi Europe, but you will then arrive in Seagate. So you lived part of your time there. And the other part, as a poor white kid in Oakland, growing up with your mom and your grandma also for a large part of time and obviously your brother.

So, you know, Jonathan and I talk a lot on this podcast about sort of this like nurture versus nature, which is a, you know, a gross oversimplification of both the scientific universe and the universe in general. But you absolutely grew up in an environment that was very complicated. there was conflict and there was abuse that you talk about. And your kind of solution was essentially numbing out from really as young as you could. And in addition, you had a lot of challenges that then sort of befell you as you navigated your way through the school system and dipped into crime a bit and eventually ended up in a mental hospital. And this is, again, you're still not even 16 yet. I don't even know if I'm 15 yet at this point in this story.

This is about that's the mental hospital I think is about the halfway point of the book. Yeah. So can you just tell us a little bit kind of in your own words, you know, what you see is sort of the environment you were brought into and what that kind of, you know, who did that produce? Like who was young Moshe? Well, you know, it's funny, this nature versus nurture question, I like, I think about all the time, like, I try to get to the root cause of what some of the insanity in my life was when I, I was pathologized from an extremely young age. I was in therapy when I was, I think I entered when I was four.

My mother saw something in me that was, I guess, wrong or needed to be healed. And I was in therapy from the time I was four. without any cessation until I was 16 and I was out of my third at that point rehab. And that's when I finally stopped going. And at a certain point, I was in therapy eight times a week. That's more times than there are days of the week. I was in, I remember family therapy, group therapy, individual therapy, and then I had a rehab group five nights a week. So the question for me has always been like, What happened was I so fucked up that I needed therapy at, I mean, not that anybody that is in therapy is fucked up, but I just mean as a kid, was I, did I display behaviors that were so abnormal

that they necessitated therapy, or was being sort of force fed into being diagnosed and clinician to death, what created this feedback loop of rebellion and, you know, and, you know, And I'm not going to do that, which then eventually led to me proving everybody correct. All of the people that were pathologizing me became eventually correct because I became so out of control that the pathology was clear. And I honestly don't know the answer. The more I think about it, the less clear the answer is to me. Was I really a kid that needed therapy at four?

Or was it going to therapy at four that made me a kid that needed therapy at 14? Mm-hmm. And, you know, it also begs the question. and, you know, as a person who grew up with a sibling, and specifically an older brother, you know, you can also take two people and put them in virtually the same environment, but there are going to be individual differences

in personality and in experience, and even you get that with twins, because, I mean, I just want to, like, I need to say it again. You know, you grew up in a home where the only people who effectively spoke fluently were you and your brother. And this, I mean, I cried so many times reading your book and probably will cry many times, you know, while talking to you today, you know, you

know, you describe this image of fingers flashing in front of your, oh, God, you know, and just like to think, you know, that your earliest experience was, you know, essentially not communicating the way that you could, right, which is, of course, always sort of the degree that a baby exists in, but mean, I mean, just this image of like, you know, you and your brother being this kind of island in this home, you know, it also sets up a whole different relationship for you as siblings, which also impacts, you know, kind of your development. That's interesting. It's like I have had, I have fielded the question, not that you asked it. I have fielded the question an infinite amount of times, more times that I could possibly count. What was it like growing up with deaf parents? I don't blame anybody for the question, but it's always been a question born out of, I don't know what it's born out of. It's just, it's a question that doesn't, it's a question that doesn't, it's not as interesting to receive it as it is to ask it because you, like every set of circumstances,

I have no context for any other kind of parent. I don't know what it's like to grow up with two parents that were speaking in perfect verbal English to you and you were mirroring it back. Some people say, what was it like growing up with two deaf parents? I don't know. It was life. It was the only life that I've ever experienced

and the only one that was available to me. I don't remember it. I don't feel it as, a memory of trauma or the closest to trauma with deaf parenting that isn't about linguistics. It's not about, and by the way, just like you said, two people have the same set of circumstances and have a different reaction. It is true that for a lot of people with deaf parents, it's a great self-consciousness and an identity splitter. For a lot of people that I know, they grew up with two deaf parents, say there's a category of people. They call us CODAs, children of deaf adults.

And a lot of people take on that Coda identity as a gigantic part of their self-identity. I'm very proud to have deaf parents. I'm very happy that I'm fluent sign language, and I'm very proud to be a part of the deaf community. But the identity of Coda isn't a large part of who I think I am in the world. But for some people, it really is. And for some people, a lot of Codas really feel split into worlds

where they just can't ever fully identify in the hearing world, and they can never fully, fully be integrated into the deaf world. I always describe being a coda as kind of like if you were born white into a black activist family. You know, it's this very bizarre experience of you are born into the category of the oppressor. You are, but you're a part of the family. And it's a natural part of the thing that we have hearing people in the family, and they're like a special category of hearing person.

So it's possible that I do experience that identity trauma and just don't really know that I experience it. But what I was trying to get to was linguistically, my brother and I are gifted, both of us. We're both speakers for a living. We're both, he's a rabbi, I'm a comedian. It's like the seesaw of the Jewish experience. So a lot of codas do have linguistic issues. I'm talking about concrete ones, not even like spiritual or psychological ones. like there are linguistic delays because the language is being modeled to them from ages,

one until they get into school is sign language. So then they have to transition into English and their delays in that way. My brother and I, I think for whatever reason got lucky. Maybe it was my grandma. Maybe it was that we're just particularly gifted verbally. I don't know what it is. But at least with that part, that wasn't an experience of difficulty for me, at least not consciously. Some of the really, really powerful moments in the book, especially as your describing sort of what it was like just to be you come from the kind of conversations that you had to have with your mother meaning you know i mean there's obviously some really sweet anecdotal stuff that you could listen to the filthiest music you wanted to and she would just you know like feel the base and she loved it and

you know but i'm also thinking you you had a you had a you had a you had a lot of rage and you had a lot of you know pent up stuff that we are wired to express that in a very specific way and you know you know, as a mother and especially a mother of two boys, like, you know, your book touched me very, very deeply. And ironically, I read your book while recovering from vocal cord surgery, and I couldn't speak for three months. So I literally read your book in isolation, even away from my children, because I couldn't speak. So this notion also of you trying to communicate, you know, some of your deepest troubles and just the things that come up, especially you were raised without your dad in the house. So there was a lot, you know, kind of, there was a lot brewing for you around

masculinity and kind of the messages you got from your mom tended to be more negative towards men. So this kind of all adds up to this, like, there was this tremendous amount that needed to be communicated. And I wonder, it could be the same kind of answer where it's like, well, you communicated what you had to when you had to and how you had to. But do you remember any of that particularly being challenging? You know, it's funny, in talking to you right now, I mean, this is like I mean, I guess this is what you want out of this podcast. I don't know what I want, Moshe. I want to talk to you forever.

Literally, as I'm talking to you about this stuff, I'm thinking like, this doesn't feel like the answer of a person who's fully integrated all of these experiences. Like, I'm thinking to myself like, you know, wait, could it possibly be that I truly in my 41st year am still like, you know, I didn't really have an experience of feeling any different when it came to having deaf parents.

It was primarily just an experience of this is what it is. Like there's got to be some kind of at least ambient or residual trauma from that stuff. And now literally in talking to you, I'm like, well, maybe I need to go back to therapy and work through this. That's Myam's goal is to get everyone back to therapy. Miami-Bialx breakdown is supported by superpower. We all know the feeling of leaving a doctor's office and kind of feeling like we didn't get anything out of the experience that was useful. Maybe they're like, you're fine, drink more water. There's no real data.

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But I do remember, I can tell you that I remember feeling embarrassed of my mother and embarrassed that I was embarrassed of my mother, you know, simultaneously. Like, her voice was a source of shame and also an electric third rail of defense. Like, no one in my school unless they wanted to fight me or if they were a bully, if they wanted to torment me, would make fun of my mother's, voice. That was kind of an understood kind of that's the place you don't go unless you want to fight the cashier boys. That was like and I remember shrinking when she would speak out loud. So simultaneously having this like fierce pride for my mother and for her deafness and this

feeling of being like a lion of defense and also feeling like I just wish she didn't sound like that. I wish she wouldn't come to my classroom. I wish she wouldn't speak to me in public because both of those spheres were operating simultaneously. It's like I'm this warrior prince for my mom, and I'm also this kid that's just embarrassed that my mom talks funny. So that was something. And then the experience of every death person, every coda, of every kid with deaf parents, but especially one like me who was increasingly sidelined into clinical situations, is that you found yourself translating for your parent for situations. that were unbelievably inappropriate that you would even be involved in.

That's a default position for a kid with deaf parents. But the unique position for me as a kid with deaf parents is I would often find myself interpreting and translating for my mother in an inappropriate situation about which I was the subject. So it wasn't just that I was telling, oh, my mom, you know, I was having to translate to my mom some embarrassing medical detail. Every Cota has gone through that about her own life or, you know, her, her, her, her, breasts are doing this, says the doctor. You know, that's a very common experience of this, like, shameful, hilarious situation that Codas find themselves in. But I was eventually, and increasingly,

it would be like, no, your kid is fucked up. And then I'm the kid. I'm the person that's telling my mother, this is the behavioral issue that this kid is having, or here's what we think is wrong with this person. And you're translating that information. And of course, you're translating it to yourself, too, very slowly. You're taking on some of that information. Although, I will say, there are advantages. I would also shave a bit. You know, I would do some creative rejiggering of the translation. You know, I would, I wouldn't, you couldn't outright lie because your mom would kind of,

my mom is an intelligent woman. You know, she would kind of sense if the teacher's face looked furrowed and angry, and I'm giving her information like, best kid, best student we've ever had, she'd be like, uh-uh, smells fishy. But I could like, I could shave some stuff off, you know what I mean? Like, he threw a microwave into the window could become like he's very athletic. You know, there's different kind of things you could do. That's also a lot of power to have as a kid, which can be almost out of control in a sense.

For sure, absolutely it is. Yeah. And I don't know that I ever, I mean, I can give you an example of the ways we would, the funnier ways that we would take advantage. I mean, one of the things about having a deaf parent is that, um, we couldn't at the time. I mean, a lot of attention is given to how the digital age and the internet is making our connections drift further apart and people becoming less connected. And my experience with technology generally was the exact opposite. Every new triumph of technology was an increased amount of communication I would have with my mom and with my family. But when I

was growing up, if my mom, there was a lot of different things that came apart and parcel of having deaf parents, but if my mother wanted to call me or I wanted to call my mother, we couldn't. We would have to use a service. We would have to use a third-party operator. Basically, my mother had a machine, which they don't exist anymore because they don't need to exist anymore, called a TTIP machine. And you'd literally put the telephone into the machine, and it was a keyboard that would use like that whatever old school, like hacker technology, you know, the sound of the frequencies of the computer of the phone to, you know, the beeping in the keyboard would become letters. Anyway, whatever.

Those letters would be transmitted to another TTI on the other end. So my mom to call me would have to put the phone in the TTI. Call the phone number of the, what was called the California Relay Service. The California Relay Service would get the message in text and then would call me and I would get a phone call at my friend's house or whatever. And it would be some operator calling me, the joke in my story. stand up is that I would pick up the phone and be like, hello, and then the voice on the other end would go like, hello, my son.

I'm like, God? No, no. It's your mama calling. How are you, my beautiful boy? And I'd be like, mom, are you a black dude? And she was. My mom was a black dude. Anyway, whatever, no more stand up.

The point is, the way that I could take advantage of that in reverse is that because there was a third party person, I could call the operator from my friend's house. and anybody who wanted to could say, oh, hey, it's Mrs. Johnson. I'm with your son. Everything's fine. We're here just because there was no ability to know that the voice on the other end was a 13-year-old boy and not a 40-year-old mom calling and saying he's going to spend the night so I could go out and party. But I did get busted once.

I remember I got busted once. The operator said to my mom sounds like a child. It was in the text. That was the message that they got sounds like a child. And then my mom responds to that. Wait, the operator is saying it sounds like a child. And I would start screaming. I would get on the phone and be like,

you, opera, you need to mind your own fucking business. It's not your job to analyze the vocal patterns of how old the person. This is my friend's mom. Anyway, it didn't always work out. But that was a thing that happened in general, by the way, is that because I had deaf parents, I would take advantage in such a dramatic and aggressive way. that I would actually, rather than get away with murder,

I would get busted so much more than my hearing friends because I was violating every night. I would sneak out every night because my mom couldn't hear me. There was no sneaking. It was we would just, you know, throw on a boom box and walk out the front door. So as a result of doing that much violation, every time my mother woke up and I wasn't in the house, I was busted.

And so I was just constantly taking advantage and constantly getting caught because I was so out of control, so much. much of the time. Mime says that there's a lot of my story in your story, which is one of the reasons that she wanted. It's called a fantasy, fantasy, Jonathan. It's a healthy fantasy life. Yes, that too. I could just relate so much to the feeling of protection that you described when you were talking about your mother's voice. My brother, my older brother, three and a half years older, was severely injured in a car accident and he was left with a brain injury. And part of that was

physical disability, but it was also affected his speech patterns and his vocal patterns. And so as a 17, you know, catch me up to when I'm about 16, 17, and I'm taking him out places to socialize, every time he would open his mouth, no one understood a word he said. And, you know, he couldn't his, the way he articulates himself is also challenging. And so, well, I can just so relate to that, like, protection and interpreting. And then from the sneaking out standpoint, like, my parents were just totally consumed with his rehab and injury. And so I changed the wiring on our alarm system with a speaker cable and I could open the window without setting off the alarm and I would just hop out through the window and no one would ever know. But I guess where I'm going with this is,

one, is I had way too much freedom, which it sounds like, you know, when you can have that absence of parental guidance, especially at that age, it kind of is all bets off. But then I'm curious, like I sort of never got caught until it was many years later, but I'm curious about like when you did get caught, it didn't seem from your book. It doesn't seem like it changed much for you. It sort of increased your desire to rebel. Like how did that sort of feedback work? Can we also note that Jonathan grew up in a home with an alarm system? I was going to say the same thing.

In Jewish Toronto, while we were holding our windows up with literally a two by four was our security system. Right. Oh, so it was a security system. See, this is how fucked up my childhood was. I assumed that the alarm system was designed to keep you, was installed to keep people from sneaking out, not to keep criminals from sneaking in. Because that's what it was like in my house.

I just think I describe in the book, like, the physical trauma of living with a teenage, drug addict, alcoholic, out-of-control kid, if you'd walked into my home, you could have taken a tour of my rage physically on the walls, walls punched in, windows that were broken from me throwing something, padlocks on the windows so that I couldn't sneak out, every door locked. That's a memory that I have towards the end of my journey of being out of control was my house. I grew up in a San Francisco flat, the classic like San Francisco house, which is, you know, two bay windows and a long hallway with rooms on either side of the hallway.

And towards the end of my insanity, every room, every one of the tertiary rooms off of the hallway, except for my bedroom and the bathroom and the kitchen had been locked and padlocked and every window was locked down. You can't go into your mother's room because you'll steal that. You can't go into your stepfather's office because you'll pilfer books and CDs to go sell them for drugs. You can't go into your brother. Like every room was locked. And that is like a physical. physical manifestation of what it's like to live with somebody that's out of control like that.

What was, I forgot your original question, though. You didn't seem to get deterred by getting caught, obviously. It sort of just continued. So we're, you know, in the arc, it's, I'm curious about sort of that reaction that either bolstered more aggression or desire to rebel and sort of where that led. I remember feeling so much anger all the time, but I didn't ever really get caught. So I was sort of left to my own devices, but it sounds like you had more feedback. conflict in that progression of acting out, getting feedback and getting caught and them trying

to punish you, but sort of not working. My experience was that it felt like a endless tsunami of clinicians entering my life, trying to find out what was wrong with me, trying to tell me, that if I was this, I had this, this was my problem, and if I did this, this, this, or this, I could maybe adjust course. Like the primary interaction that I had with adults in my life was that they would come into my life. I wouldn't know who they were. And I'm talking, it feels like hundreds of people, hundreds of strangers sitting across a table from me, giving me a psychological diagnostic test or a learning disability analysis or a drug rehab intake or a law enforcement interaction or a special education teacher just like adult after adult after

telling me that there was something wrong with me and maybe this is a product of ego in a way that is really good i always just thought that every one of them was like a stupid piece of shit that needed to leave me alone and that they were all wrong and they were all just idiots and just if everybody got off my back and left me the fuck alone, I could just be okay. And maybe, like I said, I certainly looking back on myself was not okay. But maybe to the extent that I didn't take on that messaging and come to believe about myself every single thing that they were telling me, I maybe was able to escape from some of that that stuff unscathed in the long term. But yeah, my, my anger grew the more I was pathologized because I just felt like I was a victim of this insane. And I still, to some degree, do think,

the degree to which I was poked and prodded and laboritized was anything but therapeutic. Therapy, therapy for me had, I would say, a detrimental effect on my mental health for a long, portion of my life. I felt crazier the more I was in therapy. The more psychological, psychiatric medication I was on, the worse I felt, the crazier I felt, the more angry I felt, the more misunderstood I felt. And it grew. And then I had my crew of friends that were all as fucked up as me or close to it. And they felt like solace. They felt like escape. They didn't feel destructive. They felt like the only way out until I had a moment, a bird's eye moment, which is probably what changed my whole life and trajectory. So, yeah, I do want to get to that. If I were to ask you

right now, what was wrong? That's such a complicated question that I can't, that it becomes more complicated the older I get. You know, if you had asked me 15 years ago, I would have said I was, I had a very pat answer because I spent a lot of time in 12-step groups and a lot of time in AA, and I was kind of like a king of A.A. of young people's A.A. for a long time. And I really was almost a, I was close to a fundamentalist in that program. But I was just like, you know, I was really a deeply abiding member of that 12-step group. I had a piece of rhetoric for that. I would say all of these things were undiagnosed alcoholism. And all of these things, all of these mental health disorders and learning disabilities and, you know, attention deficit disorder,

oppositional defiant disorder, conduct disorder, depression, all of these things. that I was diagnosed with. They righted themselves the moment that I went to AA, got out of rehab for the last time, worked through the steps, they became non-existent, which is evidence and proof that all that I had was undiagnosed alcoholism and drug addiction. That's what I would have said 15 years ago or 20 years ago. I don't even know how long it's been since I've been to a meeting. Now I'm older and I'm looking back and I don't think that the answers are as binding.

as they were presented to me. And I don't think this is AA's fault. I think that this was my inner interaction with AA. The way that I needed it to be, the way that a lot of people use religion, an immediate and full binary answer to all of life's problems. That's the way that I took to 12 steps. Now I look back and I go, I don't know what alcoholism or drug addiction truly means in the context I used to mean it in.

and, you know, is that what it was? It was it undiagnosed alcoholism? Or was it something that's more complicated? Probably it's something that was more complicated. And it's probably the kind of question that you started this whole conversation with. It's like, was therapy what fucked me up? Or was it that I was so fucked up I needed therapy?

Again, sorry to anybody that goes to therapy. But, you know, I go, I go currently. But is that the dynamic? Or is it, in fact, as it always is, Is it both? Did I need something at four years old that actually got exacerbated by being sent someplace at four years old that then careened me off into this reactive kind of like running away from the therapy that made my mental health problems more acute? I think it's all of those things. Is it that my mom was deaf and I haven't resolved that feeling? Yeah, I'm sure. Is it that my parents got split and then they were at war with each other? For sure. Is it that I was a drug that had drug dependency problems? Definitely. Did I have some version of oppositional defiant disorder? Without question, it's all of these things and it's this sticky thing that I can't get to the root of because I always described talking about my family and my past like, like you remember in the hob,

and I think it's the Hobbit. Is it? It's the Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings where they go into the, there's like the spider, the big spider layer and they're just getting caught in more than, more cobwebs, these like, and they're trying to make it through. That's how I feel when I try to go back into my childhood. And not in a bad way. I mean, I enjoy the process, but it definitely is like every question, every story strand leads into a further sticky, bizarre hole that I can't quite figure the answer out. So the answer is, what was wrong? I don't know. Fair. That's very fair. Do you talk about if you are a sober person, even though you don't go to meetings, or do you not want to talk about it? Because I know people will ask. What does that mean? He hasn't been to meetings. Do you want to talk about it?

You know, it's funny. I'm still working through, I mean, it's been a long time since I've been to a meeting and I'm still working through my thoughts. I'm writing another book right now. You'll be pleased to know. And part of it is, it's another memoir, but it's a book in segments. It's essentially my story through the, the, the, lens of the different kind of subcultures I've been a part of. And so each, each segment is a comedic history of that subculture. And then at a certain point, I intersect with the comedic history and it becomes my story. So the segments are roughly, I'm not finished with the manuscript yet, but the segments are AA drug rehab, young people's AA, 12-step, the history that there in the rave scene, which I was like a big rave promoter and DJ in the early 90s in San Francisco and ecstasy dealer, sober, by the way.

So the best way to deal ecstasy is sober. Yeah, yeah. Don't get high on your own supply. That's right. And then Burning Man, which is something that I've been going to for the past 21 years and I've worked there and I've been involved in the infrastructure of that. And then Hasidic Judaism and then disability, deafness and sign language interpreting. and then probably like probably comedy.

At any rate, these are the segments. So I'm going through that process right now, because I'm writing the segment on AA and 12 Step, of really figuring out what it is that happened. I have a lot of thoughts about my relationship with AA. My primary feeling towards 12 steps in AA is one of a lot of love and positivity. I haven't turned on it mentally.

I feel a fondness and a pretty, clear awareness that without the 12 steps, regardless of what it was healing me from, whether it was undiagnosed alcoholism and addiction, or whether it was this cluster cell of traumas and psychological aboricians, it is unquestionably the way that I turned, I pivoted in my downward trajectory and got my life back together. It saved my life. No question about it. And still to this day, having not been to a meeting in a long time. Yeah, I'm still sober. Though sometimes I'm not exactly sure why. It's unquestionably still to this day the foundation of a lot of the way that I conduct

myself in the world. I mean, a lot of my like default ethical position in the world, how I conduct myself when I get in a fight with my wife. I am married. You can Google it. I'll still Google it after this interview just to make sure it's still holding. is through my understanding of how to deal with conflict that I learned in AA. And a lot of my relationship with spirituality, a lot of my relationship with self-reflection and self-analysis and pragmatism and spiritual discipline and helping other people, it's all in this 12-step kind of milieu. But I started to have what I kind of described as a crisis of faith at about 15 years sober.

and I was unable to reconcile it enough to make meetings continue to feel therapeutic for me. And you got sober at 16? At 15. I was almost 16 years old when I got sober. I think that's a huge part of it. Sure. I think that's a really big part of it. I think AA is really a phenomenal program.

And I think that it's a lot easier mentally. to not have to grapple with existential questions of what you're doing in AA if you get sober as an adult. Sure. I feel bad saying that because for such a long time, my experience in 12-step groups was like jostling to defend my authentic position in the meeting and that I wasn't a special case. And I didn't have a special kind of alcoholism. I was just like everyone else and I belonged there. And I still believed that to some extent. But part of the process of growing up was me having to turn around, look back at my life, go how much of that was really what I thought it was. Right. Well, and if you don't mind me sticking my,

you know, my big mouth into this part of the conversation. I mean, you know, I think about this as a neuroscientist and, you know, I thought of like holding this and talking about it when you're not here, but I think it's important to talk about it when you are. You know, as someone who has been in the rooms for quite some time and some of the people closest to me are in the rooms and some are in and out of the rooms, kind of the way that I've decided to describe it. And I've talked here openly about having an eating disorder also and taking on a program around that for the past two years, which is just a real hoot. You know, they say if you're only in one program, you're in denial. They also say recovery from eating disorders is a real hoot. That's a common saying as well.

That's up. Anyway, what I was going to say is what I've discovered just from my vast life experience, I'm a couple years older than you, is that almost everyone has, I mean, what they call in program, the God-shaped hole. But we don't have to call it the God-shaped hole. We could just call it the whole, right? Everyone's got something. And depending on your genetics, depending on your circumstances, depending on all these things, you're going to fill it with something to make being human more bearable. And it depends what kind of hole it is, meaning some people want to numb it out. And there's a really, there's a variety of ways to numb it out. Some people want to stuff it down. Some people want to get it out. Some people want to have sex it away. These are all just different ways that we try and

exist as humans. If it's have sex it away, the whole metaphor becomes a little bit more infantile and the double entendre becomes single. So many. But I hear what you're saying. No, but but in all honesty, like to me, it's it's a little bit like I don't really care anymore what we call it. What I care is about how I wake up every morning, how I live my life. And I live my life. in the day and what I do before I go to bed. And like, for me, the way that I get there is by following some sort of rigorous program of honesty and self-searching. I want to go back to what you talked about regarding education. And this is a really very painful. And of course, you write about it so beautifully. A really painful aspect of your story is the misclassification of you. And honestly,

the misclassification of so many, in particular teenage boys. But a lot of people talk about either having learning challenges, learning disability, learning differently, you know. And when we were growing up in the 70s and the 80s, there was no concept of different learning, meaning there's one way we teach things. If it doesn't work for you, you must be stupid or there's something wrong with you. And that really was just kind of how men, especially I grew up going to public school and, you know, a not great neighborhood in Hollywood. And I was part of the busing program to take us to wealthy neighborhoods where people

people had security systems so that we could then be put with a bunch of rich kids and see how that felt didn't feel good. But can you talk a little bit about sort of that impact on your, you know, when you think about your mental health and you think about all the things that are important to kids and especially to boys in this culture, you know, ego and confidence and all those things. What was that like and what impact do you think that it had kind of on everything going on around you. Well, it's similar to what we were talking about earlier. It's like everything that was ever offered to me was theoretically being offered to me as a

bridge into an opportunity for me to succeed. And it always had the opposite effect on my life. Like finding learning differences ostensibly for kids is to find a way to help them thrive. But to me, what happened, and maybe this is because it was Oakland Public Schools, and maybe this is because it was the 80s and things weren't as developed, or maybe it's because of me and my reaction to it, every time I got diagnosed or given a moniker of this new learning disability or mental health issue that I had,

I could almost feel myself physically plinking down into this lower expectation of success strata where I was. Like, I'm under no illusions, and it's very clear to me that if I was not a Jewish kid and my mother wasn't, as ardently worshipful of therapy and that modality of how to heal, that what would have happened to me in the trajectory that I was on, if I was a black kid or a Latino kid, is I would have gotten lost in the school-to-prison pipeline.

And I instead took this, like, bizarre detour through a combination of, like, privilege and just circumstance into the school to special education to institutionalization pipeline. That's how I felt. I felt like I trap doors kept getting opened up beneath me and I would find myself in a special ed classroom which like that's supposed to help kids. But for me, it never felt like help. It always felt like, oh my God, look at these kids that I'm around. What am I?

What's wrong with me? And because my mom was so desperate to find the answer and I was so resistant to it, every time I would go to and plink down and the trap door would open and I'd go to this lower layer of. accessibility and quote unquote help, I would rebel so hard against that help that they would reassess, re-diagnose. I would have what's called an IEP and individualized education plan meeting where they would say he's not thriving in this environment. And so therefore, let's, let's diagnose him again. And it would be like, oh, it's worse than we thought. Plink. And I would find myself on this lower level and this lower level and this lower level until I found myself in these places that were truly traumatic and terrifying. I ended up eventually, as you know, in the book I

talked about of ending up in this place called the Seneca Center for the severely emotionally disturbed youngster. And it's called an SED school, a severely emotionally disturbed school. And I don't know if they have that categorization anymore, but it was, it was horrifying. It was, there were padded cells in the classroom. There was physical violence and stabbings happening in the classroom. There was almost. militaristic punishment systems and rigid, rigid behavioral systems, whether that's appropriate or not, I have no real opinion because the kids that I was in the school with were, some of them were, no one was quite like me, but some of them were, to varying degrees, people that had gotten lost

in the special education system, who I can think back and go, oh, that kid, if he had been given five different opportunities to do a different path, would have been thriving in this way. But some of them were, yeah, this kid belongs here, and they're probably in prison right now for killing someone. Well, and you know, you're a dad, and Jonathan's a dad, and I'm a mom. You know, the notion that also there's a child that needs to be held and seen in every child, you know, and the notion that it can get that far without that child being held and seen is so painful. Something that keeps coming up for me as you tell your story, especially when you talk about therapy, which I'm a huge advocate. I'm sorry of making you go through therapy. You're doing great.

No, I like it. Hey, I'm good. I have thoughts about therapy too. No, no. Oh, we'll get to it. Um, no, but something that keeps coming up for me. I can't, this concept of trust and a lack of trust keeps coming up for me. I'm going to cry. Sorry. We did it. We did it. Jonathan, we did it. It's a drinking game we play with the audience at home. How many times an episode does she cry? No, but I think about you know, I think about your mother. You know, I think about your mother trying so desperately to help you because she doesn't know what to do.

She's literally out of her league. And I think a lot of moms would probably feel that way. And so she does kind of, you know, she's got limited tools. She's giving you the best tools. But you keep getting, in some way or another, betrayed. You know, betrayed by the kind of the therapeutic system, the psychopathology system, the educational system and even eventually the mental health system. And what I think about is I think about your wife, you know, and I think about, I kind of feel like I should ask her, how do you trust people? Like, what is that like? Where did you build that from? What's that like? Well, the answer's really, you know, this, this I can say, I don't think the answer has changed since my journey away from 12-step.

the answer what was wrong with you in the first place has changed. The answer, what happened is pretty steady. What happened is through a lot of different sets of circumstances. I had a moment where I realized that I couldn't possibly be the only person that was right in the whole world. That was my kind of battle cry. It was like if the cops would leave me alone, if my mom would leave me alone. If the mental health system would leave me alone. If my rehab counselor would leave me alone, if my therapist would leave me alone, if everybody would leave, if local public schools would leave me alone, if every adult I've ever met would leave me alone. If they would just get off my back, everything would be okay. And I had this, I don't know why I was gifted that maybe it's my, that I'm intelligent,

maybe it's that I got granted some kind of spiritual lightning bolt reprieve. I just had this thought, is it truly possible that every person you've ever known who said there was something wrong with you is wrong and you are the only one who's right. Or is the simplest solution that the problem, at least partially, is inside of you and that if you don't change yourself, nothing is ever going to change. And it was with that kind, I'm sure that I couldn't have articulated it like that, because I was, you know, 15 and fresh out of rehab for the third time. But I, with that information, I just realized, oh, my God, nothing's ever going to change. And I had my brother, my brother, I'm very grateful that my brother didn't have the same reaction to his circumstances as I did because my brother

excelled his entire life. He was a straight A student. He was well behaved. He got full scholarships to like the best private school in Oakland. Then he went to a great college, a great university. He was like this brilliant person who had his shit together and everything was good. And I could look at that and go, that's, I'm supposed to be that. I'm supposed to be successful. I'm so I know I'm intelligent. I know this isn't the way I'm supposed to be living. So it wasn't like there's no such thing as success in this world. It was like there's something fucked up. So with all that information, I took all of that and I took it to 12-step groups. And I asked for help. And I received it. And I went through the transformative process of the 12 steps. And I emerged through that process.

And to be honest with you, as I go through my story in this new book, not only was the 12- step by far the most transformative spiritual and psychological experience I've ever had. That is definitely the reason that I am able to be a father and a good husband and a person who's at least slightly well-adjusted today. But honestly, slightly, this is not as significant, but it is significant. The rave scene had this also this crazy, as I'm writing about it, it had this crazy psychologically healing effect on my life. Once I went through the 12 steps and emerged this kind of like new consciousness having person, I almost immediately started going to raves as a 16 year old. And that also had this almost physical trauma healing thing. Because I was raised in Oakland

around a bunch of other kids that were just like me, like sort of poor white kids that were trying to be like hard and gangsters. And we emulated gangster rappers. We emulated criminals. And And we, you know, our sexuality was based on all the messaging that we'd been, we'd received from gangster rappers. And so we thought sex was something that was supposed to be like, you know, triumph for the man and kick the woman out. And it was all these, like, horrifying messages, all these traumas, my sexuality, my style, my relationship with violence, my relationship with masculinity, my relationship with everything was like informed from a thousand layers of trauma and bullshit. I got through the 12 steps. I emerged kind of like in this new consciousness state, feeling like a vibrating kind of hippie.

And then I went to the rave scene, and it was like this scene of kids that were like, they were all into being like sweet and into being like, I don't know if you ever went to raves, either of you. But like... You haven't, Jonathan? Oh. Oh.

I missed that whole scene. Yeah, they didn't do that in the nice neighborhood in Toronto where you grew up. All my friends got into it. And I just sort of, I never did. Well, you're a deadhead, though. That's a different category. Deadheads would count in this same way. But there was something particular about the rave scene that was exactly what I needed, which

is this is the early 90s rave scene, which is different than like the music festival scene now. There was a lot of infantilized grown-ups dressing like little kids. There was, you put glitter in your hair and barrettes in your hair and literally pacifiers. And stuffed animals. And you would have like, you know, glow. bracelets and it's absurd right a normal person looks at that and goes like look at these fucking dorks what are they doing for me having come from this like trauma field of like you know gangsterism and that you know alpachino and scarface was like my ultimate like role model to go to this

scene where all these young cool people were like were having this second i got this second chance at a childhood in that scene even though it was filled with sex and they were all on drugs and it was like it wasn't innocent it wasn't innocent in the same way It really was like this rebirth of innocence and sweetness and kindness and love and love and like hooking up with girls in that scene. I relearned sexuality in that scene. Like it was not like my sexuality was perfect because I was still a teenage boy and filled with the kind of like idiocy that all teenage boys have when it comes to dating. But I had this new relationship with girls and how you hook up with a girl. It's like through being sweet and kind and fun and connecting and having a nice time and like as opposed to like,

Like, you know, whatever, like, message from like the doggy style LP that I got before, it was like, everything was transformative and transformative until I physically looked different and that was important. I didn't dress the same. I was dressed in these wild clothes with literally barrettes in my hair and glitter. And I bleached my hair blonde. I mean, the metaphor on it is very obvious to me. It's like I needed this. I needed a clean break from my childhood scene. I needed a new, a second chance at a childhood.

I needed a second chance at learning what masculinity meant because I was very effeminate at that time in my life too. I took on this almost performative effemianism, effeminism, effeminity, whatever it was, I suddenly became this like sort of fop character. I don't think it was over the top, but it was like, it was therapeutic for me. And I didn't even realize it was therapeutic for me. I was just, I remember so clearly this dude for my childhood, Joey, who died. tragically of alcoholism,

came up to me after I was in the rave scene for like a year, and that meant I'd worked through the steps, and I was in the rave scene for a long time, and I was glittered and blah, blah, blah, and he came up to me, and he's like, hey, man, fools are saying you gay, blood. They're saying you gay, you want me to beat their ass for you? And I was just like, I was like, wow, what a sweet,

thank you, Joey, thank you, yes. What a kind offer to offer to visit physical violence on people for thinking that I'm gay now. But like, no, no, I don't want you to beat their asses. Like, I don't care that people think I'm gay. I'm not, it's, it's, and this is by the way in 1995. So, you know, I think there was there were more, there was more, I don't know,

toxic masculinity was, was alive and well now, but it was just slightly different. It was like this thing where I was just like, I'm in a different universe now. Like, I love that people think I'm, what do I care that people think of my masculinity, that it's not what it's supposed to be? I felt this like snap like I'm not that person anymore. I'm a different human being. I know I've gone on for a long time. I love that.

And I'm not even going to. Yeah, that was your answer to how do you trust? How did you learn to trust? It's a beautiful answer. And another time you'll let me talk to Natasha. Never, never. You know what they say? You know what they say?

Don't let the woman who wanted to marry you talk to the woman you married. No, no, this is different. But that's good advice as well. they say the trust bucket fills up one drop at a time, but it only takes one kick to knock the whole thing over. Wow. And there's truth to that. I mean, the way that I learned to trust and the way that I learned to heal

was one day at a time, one drop at a time, one action at a time. It was this process. It was no lightning bolt. It was a tectonic plate shift. It's a beautiful answer. He's a beautiful person. Do you see why I'm obsessed with him? Just let me come over, guys.

So I know there's so many things. Okay, do you want to tell us about kind of that moment that you got that kind of bird's eye view that sort of changed your life forever? I believe that the notion, again, this is not a stone thrown at your question, and I don't think you think this either, but I think that the notion of the moment of clarity is pretty actually pretty uncommon.

A moment of angels singing and the sky's parting and you go in like, whoa, this is the moment, is less common and was not as common for me as like a very slow, like hitting rock bottom for most people is you've been at rock bottom for a long time and you've been dragging along and then one day you'll kind of go like, oh shit, yeah, I've been on this rock bottom thing

for like a mile and a half now and I don't even have any skin left like whoa I should so I slowly came to this realization and part of it was very binary part of it was I had a mini realization like I said before that could it be that all of the people I've ever known were wrong and I'm right and maybe the problem is my drinking and my drug use and then I went into the process of quitting and that was months of oh I'm just going to get give myself an opportunity to stop long enough to get my shit together and then I'll heal and then I would just find myself doing the same thing again and then I would say oh yikes let me start over and I'll okay let me get I'll just stop doing drugs for like long enough to kind of get my shit and it just was this cycle this like cycle that felt like it couldn't end the sky's parting moment didn't feel like a sky's parting moment until I looked back I went into a meeting and I asked for help and I stayed sober for one day and it felt very insignificant The one day feels very insignificant until you turn around seven, eight days in. I'm writing about this in the book right now.

Like being sober, I'm sober now. I don't even know anymore. Since 1994, I've been sober. So 25 years or something like that, I guess, or something like. It's been a long time. I'm not impressed with my sobriety at all. In fact, there's a part of me that's a little embarrassed by the amount of time it's been. But years two to 25 are the least interesting thing in the world.

They're not interesting. They're not significant. there's nothing uniquely powerful about them to me in retrospect. The only thing that's powerful to me is like, how the fuck do you get from zero to 90 days? That's where the miracle stuff happens. And the miracle occurs through these tiny little movements. And the movement that I remember and that I talk about in the end of the book

is being, it's very mundane on purpose. People have complained. There's been one complaint about the book is that the final moment ends without like an arc of like oh and here's what happened here's how i got better it was but it was by design it was setting me up for a second book but also it i didn't want to tell that story i wanted to tell the story of chaos and how you the moment that you get out and the moment that i got out was very insignificant it was another day hanging out at a bart station in the bay area and hanging out with all of my old friends, the people who were the only people that understood me, and my only

solution to this sort of whirlwind of chaos in my life was, was these other kids whose lives were as chaotic as me, these gangsters and criminals and ne'er-do-wells and taggers and just fucked up kids that I'd been arrested with so many times. And they were looking for something to do, and they decided that they were going to go get drunk, which is all we ever did. Nothing was significant about this. And they were going to go up the street. They were going to go west on the street. They were going to go up the street to go to this bar that we knew that we could get, for some reason, this is a bizarre memory, but we were 15 years old.

We could order drinks from this bar. At any rate, they turned all of them, and they said, let's go to this bar. And I said that day, I don't think I can do it today. I think I'm going to go. I just am not going to come. And they all, all of my friends physically turned and walked away from me. and I, by myself, alone, turned the other way and walked, walked to the other direction. You know, the metaphor is not even a metaphor.

It's what actually happened. And that little moment of like, let me, you know, walking away, healing is that direction and more of the same as the other direction was the beginning. And now it's 25 years later. And, you know, a lot has happened since. And that's the moment the camera slowly pansy, up and the crane shot goes higher and higher. That's right.

There's another moment in the book where you end up starting to be a translator with your sign language skills for others who are in the system. Can you talk about the moment when it kind of turned around and you became that guy? Well, it's interesting. I'll give you the quickest cliff's notes of what happened after I turned. right and walked away alone. I started going to 12-step meetings very religiously. It became my entire life. I went to the rave scene and had this transformative experience there. I flunked out of school, I think four, I can't really remember, I think it was four times, but I ended up, I just

kept flunking. I never got past a grade. I never got past seventh grade, was the last grade that I got. I successfully matriculated out of. Eighth grade, flunk. Then I went to this severely emotionally disturbed school after that, I wiggled my way into a good private school that I got a scholarship from from this like sob story essay that I wrote because I was a good writer even then, but got kicked out of that in like three months because I got kicked out of a rehab

and I started doing drugs and I couldn't maintain both school and drugs, so I got kicked out of the rehab and then a month later got kicked out of the school. And then I went to another school that was like, it was such a low level, I don't want to say low level, but such a chaotic educational environment that the hardest schoolwork they had for me,

I finished in 30 minutes in the morning, and then they would send me downstairs to tutor the autistic kids because they knew sign language and I knew sign language, and there was literally nothing for me to do at that school. Then I dropped out of that. That was another dropout

that I went back to Oakland Public Schools to Tech and Oakland Tech, and I dropped out of that. So I'm like, things are a mess. I took my high school proficiency exam at 16, and I got out of high school, and it was this gigantic, like, weight off my shoulder. I was six months sober, out of high school, and I went to the rave scene. I did that for a couple of years.

And then at 18, what's interesting about this all to me is that I was three or four years behind educationally, and I entered community college at Lainey in Oakland, six months after I was supposed to have started college, had everything gone correctly. Like I, so the timeline's all very bizarre. But I, you know, I started working. I went to Lainey Community College, and I wanted to go to college. I wanted to get through school because I knew that was what I was supposed to. to be doing, even though, you know, because I had my brother who'd done everything correctly.

And I went back to school. I struggled a lot with the kinds of things that you can't pick up from just ambient intelligence. You know, like math was a gigantic challenge for me, but everything else was like, I was functioning well. And I was working at the time in a bear costume on UC Berkeley campus passing out flyers. I was already, already had my eyes set on the entertainment industry. And I got let go. Somehow I lost that job. And my mother said that there are positions open at your school because my mother worked there too. She headed up what was called the Deaf Can program. It was a deaf education program in, because my mom, by the way, the whole time that she was like sending me to rehab and sending me to therapy, she was also in night school trying to

get her master's degree and trying to get her teaching credential, which is part of why I was so unbelievably proud of her because she was this deaf woman that was like fighting against all this institutionalized discrimination and difficulty to get this teaching credential she eventually did she started she headed up this program called deaf can and i got a job there uh i didn't had no interest in being a sign language interpreter but my mom said well you're a coda and you're a fluent signer and you can get a job sign language interpreting the only experience i had with sign language interpreters my whole life was of people that were translating for me at rehab, and the people that were translated for me at these IEP meetings,

and I hated them, not quite as much as I hated cops, but I hated them. And I was like, I have no interest in being a sign language interpreter. That's not my life. That's not for me. And she said they're paying $15.67 an hour. I was getting paid $6.50 an hour as the bear. And I was like, I've always wanted to be a sign language interpreter.

Sign me up. Let's do this. So I started sign language interpreting there. And that was, by the way, the ultimate, it's the ultimate job for what I eventually would figure out I wanted to do, which is become a stand-up comedian because it's this make-your-own-scheduled, high hourly rate. I know 15, we're actually literally fighting for the dignity of $15 an hour, but in 1994, it was like really good. And it went up from there, you know, my next job, I think I was getting 30 bucks an hour as a freelance interpreter, which is a lot of money. You know, I had this gift given to me from my mother and from my experience.

of whatever this trauma may or may not have been. And I became a freelance interpreter eventually. I was still in college, but the money was better if I was a freelance interpreter, going from place to place interpreting a doctor's appointment or a DMV appointment, whatever it was, I would show up. I was that guy that would show up and be like, hey, I'm the interpreter. And one day I got a call from the agency that they wanted to have an interpreter go to this place called Kaiser CDRP, the chemical dependency.

rehabilitation program for teens. And they were like, do you know the way? I was like, yeah, I know the way. I was a patient. And I didn't say that. I just said, sounds good. And I showed up at the job. And it was the most surreal experience.

I mean, I couldn't appreciate the surrealness of being the interpreter for my mom while I was the subject of the meeting because I was too in the midst of the chaos. But as an adult, close to an adult anyway, I was probably 22, 23. interpreting for a family in a rehab that I went to, and the kid is the hearing kid, and the parents are the deaf parents, and I am the interpreter, is truly the most bizarre experience.

I'm like, I was here, I was you, I was sitting here, but the job of the interpreter is really interesting and the perfect job for this experience for me is to just, you are merely to sit back and be a vessel for the communication. You're not there. So I could just sit back and experience what I was experiencing. And the surrealness hit a fever pitch when they said, okay, that's the end of the meeting for the kids.

Goodbye kids. And I was like, right, that used to be me. They would always say goodbye kids. And we'd always go back into our meeting. And then, oh, shit, this is family group. This is the meeting after the meeting that we never got to sit in. We didn't, the great mystery was occurring. And I'm still here.

Like, I don't have to leave. I get to find out what was going on. And they started the family group. And I was like, oh, my God, these parents are fucking crazy. Like, they are fucked up. It is a family disease. I was just the identified patient. Like, this is deeper than I realized.

Like, I got to sit in the meeting and have this almost physical moment of, like, forgiveness of myself, of being this centrifuge of chaos in my family and realized, like, I truly was only the person that they were looking at. I was not the only place that the chaos was coming from. And that was like a totally healing moment. And also the healing moment was getting in my car and driving away and going like, I don't go there anymore. I have one more question for you. I want to say one thing to you. Yes. Just for your listeners and for you. I because I think you'll like this. A quick thing. I know I'm long-winded, but I'll just tell you. At 16,

the state funding for my therapy ran out. I was getting, the state was because I was in the special education system. There was like all this money, you know, state education money for me to go to therapy. And I went to this therapist. And actually, that therapist was the only one, and I was sober at that time. I just had gotten sober. That therapist was the only one I ever remembered having anything like a therapeutic experience with. That guy, I actually contacted him recently and was like, I just realized you're the only therapist that ever actually had any kind of effect on my life. And I sent him a copy of my book and was just like, I got better. But my state funding ran out. And I was 16 years old and I was newly sober. I'd worked through

the 12 steps. I was feeling myself. And when the state funding ran out, I said to myself, I will never go to therapy again in my life. Never. I will never subject myself to that again. That is the end. And I did. I stopped. I never went back until I was about 28 or maybe 30.

I was having issues with finding a long-term relationship, honestly. I was having a hard time figuring that part of my life out. And I was like, it just seemed. like something that a therapist could help you with. But I was like, but I don't do that. I won't do that. That's not me. I don't do that. And then I had this other little bird's eye moment, another one where I realized, wait a minute, you're living your life as a 30-year-old man based on a decision that you made as a 16-year-old newcomer to AA. Like, that doesn't make any sense. Why would you withhold even a possibility of healing because of some trauma? So with that realization in mind, I went back to that.

therapy and I've been in therapy to some degree on and off over the years, not ever since, but I've gone back even since then, but I worked with that therapist for a long time and I made some progress and I'm married now. So that particular part of my, that worked out. I don't know if it directly worked out because of the therapy, but it certainly worked out because of the decision to go back to therapy. And I'm going, I have somebody in my life right. now that's a therapist. I mean, that sounds weird like I'm fucking a therapist. I am seeing a therapist now is what I think, how they say it. I think a lot of people probably are inadvertently living their life based on decisions that they made not only many, many years ago, but like out of this reactive

trauma that they have no idea that it even came from that. They just remember, oh, that's something I don't do. No, Jonathan, Mayam, that is, if anything, the answer to the question you asked along time ago, Ma'am, which is what happened. I really have come to believe, as I have gotten older, that everyone, it's just what you said, every single person who doesn't do really heavy work to turn around and face themselves, has these experiences of trauma where they build walls around the trauma and they build pathways in their brain so that they don't have to approach the trauma head on. We can all take one or two of those. But when enough of those, you know, gets built up, your brain, I mean, you know more about the brain than me, my own, but your brain becomes

this like weird, labyrinthian landmine of like, I can't go there and I can't go there and I can't go there. And because you're avoiding all these tender spots, your life becomes a trajectory. You're almost on a ride. Your life is not in your own control. You're like being fueled by trauma that you don't even fully remember what the trauma is. I really think more and more, most of the dysfunction in people's lives and in my life is about running away from trauma that's never been faced. And in the way that like PTSD, classic PTSD is, you know, like veteran PTSD is like there's a horrible thing that happened. I built a thing around that and I'll never go there again. And the only way, the ironic twist is the only way to heal is to go back. And that's why like, you know, Rick Doblin at maps the

psychedelic, the multidisciplinary association for psychedelic studies, Like, their work with MDMA and trauma is so powerful to me because it's a, it's a, it's a, it's literally a almost physical going back. Like, you take a drug. Moshe, we had him on the podcast. Did you not hear this episode? You're not listening? We had him on. He's not subscribed yet.

When it's going on? Clearly not subscribed. We talked to him for like two and a half hours. We're obsessed with him. He's the best, the best, sweetest man in the world. But isn't it? It's like, I feel like there's not only. is it a literal thing that the veterans are doing. It's also a metaphor for everybody. And it doesn't

always have to be MDMA. It's just, it happens that MDMA allows you to break a wall down enough that you can go back there. And most of us don't have walls as thick as a combat traumatized veteran. Some of us do. Some of us don't. But yes, I just think so many of us are just victims of our own trauma. You've literally synthesized and repitched the entire premise of all the episodes today. I'm done. I quit. I'm done. Okay. I have, well, I have one small question and then one larger question, then we'll let you go. You talk so much about anger and you essentially destroyed the home that you lived in. You were violent with the women in particular who loved you most and who were trying to do as right as they could by you.

I mean, you were a very violent person. I am curious, did that go away? Where did it go? Was that part of your development? When you got sober, did it go away? Does it come back? Do you have a, like, I'm a person who's a violent, person like I break things like I mean it's it's been a minute but I used to I mean I broke computers and

phones and I've bloodied my knuckles and like you know I'm a violent person so I know it's in there but I wonder where did yours go I wonder the same thing I mean it would be a terrible answer if I was like you know it did not go away it's an active part of my life and everyone that's why you can't talk to Natasha that's right you know thank God it went away but it went away to such a degree that I don't I don't feel like I relate to the being that was afflicted with those, you know, compulsive ejaculations of rage, if you'll pardon the phrase. Like, I don't relate to that person anymore, to that behavior. It's not a part of how I get angry.

It's not even, there's not even a kissing cousin. I don't have a physical representation of my anger anymore. It's not connected. It's like I just feel, you know, as I said in the beginning, maybe I haven't fully integrated my experiences of growing up with deaf parents. Whatever the violence was from, that's been integrated and gone. It feels like some sort of succubus that's no longer on my body. It was a parasite that isn't there anymore.

That said, I have gotten into a... Street Fighter 2. We'll save that for your next episode. I would like to say I'm going to link some of my most favorite things that I've seen is you signing and talking with your mom. Yeah, on my show, sure. Yeah, on your show. And my sons and I have watched them because, well, we've also seen your mother in synagogue and, like, that's a whole amazing thing to get to see her, you know, listen to a sermon while it's being signed and it's just amazing. But really to see you communicate, you're a beautiful speaker. You're very fluent in your sign language. It's beautiful to watch the two of you. So I'm going to link to that so people can see.

You know that you are absolutely one of my most favorite people that I have gotten to know. And you're just, I mean, you touch so many people with your words. And we so appreciate you hanging out with us and talking today. Oh, it was absolutely my pleasure. Hey, what good is a mental health podcast if you don't give a guest a breakthrough? I had a break. Come on. What more do you want?

I had a personal therapeutic breakthrough. I haven't done this yet. Do it. If you want to hear my wife talk a lot, Endless Honeymoon podcast. We do live relationship counseling. It's much, much less. You could have me and Jonathan on.

You could have me and Jonathan on. Would it kill you? We'll do it. It would heal me. I would like to have you on. Moshe Cash, thank you so much. We will link to all of your good things. Send my love to Natasha.

Tell her I'm gunning for her. I want to talk to her deeply. Take care. Bye you guys. Thank you. He's a very special person. You mentioned. Oh, you don't think he's that special.

you're not that impressed with Moshe Kashar? I mean, I'm very impressed. I don't want him to listen to this and think I'm not impressed. I very much enjoyed his interview. Don't put me on the blast like that. I thought we did a great job teeing him up. And he just like, off he went. He was a great speaker.

He loved speaking. I never thought about when he said that his brother's a rabbi. I thought about that. But that he said that being a comedian and a rabbi are like the seesaw of kind of like the Jewish experience. I thought that was very interesting. Is his brother funny? His brother is very funny. A different kind of funny, but they've done some things, Kasher versus Kasher, together, talking about things and very interesting kind of like, I mean, look, he didn't talk a lot about his, it's in his book, but his experience of Judaism was so different from most people's experience of Judaism because his father and mother split and his father was like off in a whole other universe of Jewish observance.

I know. We listen to the book together. Well, Jonathan, the people who are listening to our podcast don't know. So I'm trying to explain. This just got weird. I mean, if everything that I said that I've told you, you wouldn't let me say, I don't think we'd have a podcast. I've told you everything. This is the problem. I was actually going to say that we, that's the thing that we didn't get into at all was, you know, painting that existence, the world that his father lived in, which was so well articulated in the book.

Yes. And his father passed. His father passed when he was, yeah, I guess in his early 20s. But he has siblings, half siblings, who are also deaf. And so that's also in his book. I really cannot recommend this book or the audio book because he, I mean, I happen to love his voice. So like hearing him tell these stories and also another component of the book, which is very, very powerful, is the brotherhood that he found, you know, in this group of, you know, essentially misfits. and some of them made it out and some of them didn't.

And he also has one of the most articulate descriptions of what it feels like to numb out, without it feeling like he's talking about being stoned is amazing. I recommend it so highly. He talks about how like the cloud of heaviness and darkness that had surrounded him all of a sudden, like, poof. And like he, I remember, I think he said, like, why would I ever not? want to feel this. Like, it's such a beautiful description. He's so articulate. I am so impressed that he's writing another book. I mean, also, his first book has really beautiful street art and like every chapter's a different kind of concept. He's really, he's beyond. Like, that, his story,

I just, also the story of how he spent all of his bar mitzvah money on phone sex is also a fantastic story. He talks about that he does that in some of his stand-up. So I don't know, you might need help if you haven't read Moshe Cashar's book. You know, I have two things. Number one, you're my favorite misfit. And two, I really connected with when he said, I can't be the only person right in the world. I mean, I can be the only person right. I was literally thinking Jonathan literally thinks. He's the only, like, we have conversations where everyone's saying something and Jonathan's like, well, you all must be out of your mind. And like, this is not... A lot of... Well, there is a collective delusion. And sometimes you do have to be the one person who sees things differently. But in that circumstance, I can see how that would not be true. But it is a very powerful realization that he had to say, and also like, whoa, was that moment, you know, to say, what if?

What if? What if all the things people have told me, you know? Oh, so powerful. And the power of those diagnoses and just crippling. Well, the way he talked about it being kind of like brought down to a new level of lowered expectations, like again, again, again, you know. I had a very different experience, but just really could relate, which was I also got diagnosed with learning disabilities. I also got told, but, you know, they would diagnose me with things and then say, oh, wait, but it doesn't mean that you're not smart or you're not capable.

So it was a different experience, but I rejected all of those. I hated them. I said I would hide them. I would rebel against them. They made me feel angry. Any type of difference made me feel angry. And I can relate to him so much in terms of just everyone is wrong. Like it cannot be that.

Also, and this is a way that you do remind me of him, you are incredibly intelligent, incredibly articulate and incredibly insightful. So the notion that there was a young version of you, of him, of anyone, where you were made to think, is this not like? I thought I'm being myself and I'm okay, like, because this is me. I was put in classes with developmentally delayed kids, kids who are like, I'm like looking around and I'm like, these are not my peers, not like that I had anything against them. Some of them I could be friends with and I was connected with. But like when I saw their challenges, I was like, my challenges, whatever those are, which I didn't truly understand.

And their challenges, like, we weren't the same challenge. Well, the system, the system didn't really know. and especially in underserved populations that we still haven't figured out how to deal with these individuals. And it's really powerful that, you know, he grew up on food stamps and it's a very interesting story of growing up,

you know, white in Oakland at that time. But he still did. He had white privilege. He had Jewish privilege. And he had privilege because his mother had access to all of these services because she was deaf. So he had access to these things

that almost all the other kids in his system did not have access to. And they did. They just ended up. getting caught in a different terrible loop. I also think that the therapy and the diagnostic process and system were extremely different back then. I would hope. You know, I don't know what it's like in the public system now, but I would imagine we've come a long way. Absolutely. Well, this was really a special episode

for me. I've been wanting to have Mosha on really since we started. And I just find him so fascinating. And yes, I also do love his comedy and his style of humor. I mean, I've I've also done some stuff at what's it called at UCB with him and I just I adore him so thank you so much Jonathan for for being along on this ride thank you my name that's a good one from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have we'll see you next time it's my and be all next down she's going to break it down for you she's got a neuroscience phd or two one fiction one and now she's going to break down