Bryan Schwartzman:
From my home studio, welcome to Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations. 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
93,000 people have died from overdoses this year alone, 93,000 reported. I've lost three friends in the past year and a half to overdose. I couldn't just remain silent. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
I'm your host, Bryan Schwartzman and our guest today is Rabbi Michael Perice. So this is a special episode, and earlier this year, Rabbi Perice took the courageous decision to share with his congregation, which is Temple Sinai in Cinnaminson, New Jersey, the fact that he was a recovering opioid addict. In April, Rabbi Perice celebrated 10 years in recovery or as he puts it, being liberated from opioids. 

He also shared his story with the press, particularly the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and the Philadelphia Inquirer, and both those stories got picked up and reprinted in outlets around the globe. Those pieces helped create a larger stir and really restart a conversation about addiction in the Jewish community and help serve to humanize a religious leader and the role of religious leader. 

So a couple of personal notes. First of all, Rabbi Michael's wife, Rachel, she was my on-air podcasting partner for close to three years on the previous show, Trending Jewish. It would be completely fair and accurate to say that I owe my start in podcasting to Rachel, who encouraged me to start actually build the studio, taught me a lot of what I know. So I want to acknowledge that on the air and thanks to Rachel Perice for your support and listening. 

I've known Michael for a number of years. I talk about this a little bit in the interview as well. I first met him even before I came to work at Reconstructing Judaism. I think I attended a lunchtime lecture, and Michael just saw a new person and sought me out to schmooze, which is actually a really good trait for a rabbi. I could tell off the bat he was sharp, extroverted, eager to connect. 

In pre-COVID times, he and Rachel were guests in my home for Thanksgiving. The point being, I knew him more than just as a passing acquaintance, and I had no idea, I mean, no idea that he had this past in his background. I knew he had suffered some physical ailments from an old car injury, but that was about it. So I had no idea of the pain he was carrying, the ordeals he endured, and the struggle it must have taken him to get to the point where he's a respected religious leader and beloved partner. 

So that really enforced for me. What did it enforce for me? I think the hidden struggles with addiction that we don't see, and just the hidden struggles behind everything and everyone. You really don't know what the person next to you is going through. That just seems really profound and part of the story. 

So before we get there, a reminder. Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations can be found at evolve.reconstructingjudaism.org, and you can find essays on a range of topics really important to Jewish life right now, the environment, racism, Israel-Palestine, gender, and everything there is to read for free. Until now, every episode of this show we've done has been based in one way or another on an Evolve essay, and we're taking a break from that approach just for this episode because Michael's story is out there. It's fresh. It's really being talked about, and I think it's really in line with our mission of promoting groundbreaking conversations within the Jewish community. Certainly, there aren't enough conversations being had about addiction and its repercussions. So that's why we're here. 

All right. So Rabbi Michael Perice serves as the rabbi of Temple Sinai of Cinnaminson, New Jersey. He's a 2020 graduate of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. Way back in 2015, Rabbi Perice was named one of the top 20 emerging religious leaders in Southern New Jersey, and he's delivered the opening invocation at the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, and the Philadelphia Mayors Centenarian Celebration. 

Rabbi Michael Perice, thank you. Welcome. Welcome to the show. It's good to have you. Good to check in. This is such an important topic. We know you've talked a lot about it. So really appreciate your willingness to have another conversation. 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
No. Thank you, Bryan. It's my honor to be here. It's an important conversation. I love what Evolve does as a podcast. I'm really excited to have this conversation and for people to hear it. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
Great. So earlier this year, you celebrated 10 years of sobriety after a four-year battle with opioid addiction, and then decided to share this part of your life with your relatively new congregation, and since then have become very outspoken about the issue of addiction. So I guess I want to start by asking, was there a moment that you realized you were addicted to Vicodin or was it just something that you realized over time? 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
So the way I like to frame this conversation, Bryan, is that my addiction began, like millions of Americans, innocently but tragically. It was about 2007, maybe 2006. I'm not exactly sure the exact date, but I was in a car accident. I was a Temple University student. I was driving home from school one day, and I was at the bottom of a hill at a red light. The person coming up from behind me probably wasn't aware that I was stopped in front of them. 

In my rear view mirror, I could literally see them texting. So I knew they were going to hit me. It was just one of those surreal moments where I was just bracing for the impact, and because I was bracing for the impact, I did the thing doctors say you should never do, which is tense up your whole body in an accident, and because I tensed up my body, it probably made the accident more severe than it would have been. 

So this car just came flying-
Bryan Schwartzman:
As if we're supposed to practice how to get into a terrible accident and just have that.
Rabbi Michael Perice:
Exactly. It's funny that they say that, "Oh, if you had only been loose." How was I going to be loose knowing somebody was going to crash into me at 40 miles an hour? I was hit from behind pretty hard. I had whiplash. I had shoulder issues, but my main issue was a dislocated disk in my lower right back. It would cause this horrible nerve pain down my right leg. 

So for weeks after this accident, I would have to get up at 2:00 in the morning every single night because it felt like my muscle was being ripped apart. I lived in an apartment building, so I would just walk up and down the steps every single night trying to get this pain to ease. I finally was like, "This is insanity. How can anybody live like this?" 

So I went to my doctor, and 10 years is a long time, and I think we know a lot more than we knew then. If I had gone to the doctor today, the first thing might not have been a prescription of opioids. It might have been, I don't know, physical therapy or injections, everything I did later on, but 10 years ago, doctors were operating under the [same] assumption that many of us were that these medications weren't addictive. That's what the pharmaceutical companies told them. 

So I was prescribed to a very low dose of Vicodin. What happens is - this is the dark irony of using pain medication - is that it doesn't solve your pain. It actually mess[es with] it. So what ended up happening was the more I took, the more my pain levels began to intensify. So over a couple of weeks I'm like, "This is crazy. I'm in more pain than when I started." 

So I go back to the doctor. I say, "I need more." So he raises the prescription up a little. Come back a few weeks later. It's not working. Raise up this prescription a little more. By the third time I go back and the doctor's like, "Whoa! We can't keep raising your prescription," at that point, I was firmly addicted to these medications, firmly. 

So at that point, I wouldn't have thought of it as an addiction. It wouldn't have been that clear in my mind because I was in pain. I was getting it from a doctor, but I knew I couldn't stop. I knew I had built the tolerance that I couldn't stop. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
I mean, I know you pointed out 10 years have passed. Awareness has increased. I mean, does some part of you blame this physician for what happened? 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
No. Absolutely not. There are doctors in that era that acted, I think, unethically, were very greedy, but I think my doctor represents most doctors in America; people who are doing a hard job, who just don't want to see their patients in pain. I think he's a really good guy, really just sympathetic, but was lied to the way many doctors were lied to by the pharmaceutical company. 

So if anybody was to blame, it's the pharmaceutical companies who purposely misled the consumers, if you want to call [us] that, and the doctors in saying these medications were nonaddictive when they knew that was a boldfaced lie. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
So you're in your latter part of college and I guess early career while this was going on. I believe you worked in political campaigns to some level. 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
Yeah, I was a political science major. I did small time political campaigns, worked mostly as a volunteer. Some paid stuff after, but during this time, I was a junior-senior in college and I was working part-time on different political campaigns. Yeah. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
So just to paint a picture, I mean, are you functioning well during this time with colleagues? 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
Yeah, highly functioning, highly functioning. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
Whoever you were working with, they wouldn't know this guy has got a big problem?
Rabbi Michael Perice:
Not a clue. Not a clue. Not in the beginning at least. The thing about addiction is it becomes pervasive in your life. The more you delve deep into that rabbit hole, the more you push people away. We could talk about that, but in the beginning, I would say I was highly functioning. Not only did it take away my pain, the anxiety I felt, the depression I felt all from being injured went away with it. So it made me the person I wanted to be, but there's a consequence of that of needing more and more. 

You get to a point where your tolerance becomes so unsustainable. I was taking between 80 mg and 100 mg of Oxycontin every day. At some point, you can't go to doctors anymore. Your prescription starts running out 10 days into a 30-day period. You've gone to every doctor you can think of, what they call Òdoctor shopping.Ó

Eventually, you have to go to people you know, friends, friends of friends, and it costs a lot of money. So to this day, I reflect on, "Wow! How did I come up with that amount of money every single day to feed this addiction?" but it becomes a survival technique because what you're trying to avoid at all costs is the withdrawal, which for anybody who doesn't know about opioid withdrawal, it is a torture that is really indescribable, and you make it your mission to never go through that. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
So you have this really powerful story of I guess either the moment where you hit bottom or you really realized what was happening and needed help. I want to hear you tell that, but I want to ask as part of that, I mean, you trained in the Reconstructionist Movement, I work for Reconstructing Judaism, and its founder and intellectual forbearer, Mordecai Kaplan, taught about how God is the power that makes for salvation, which sounds simple and I've never quite understood, but I really was wondering, was that a formation of God that was with you in the moment that-
Rabbi Michael Perice:
Let me back up and tell the story, and then we'll delve deep into the theological part, which I do connect to this moment, but let me back up and say that after a few years of being in the throes of addiction, I went into the early stages of withdrawal, and as I just said momentarily ago, it's a torture. It's horrible. 

As I described it, minutes seem to last for hours, hours seem to last for days, and days seem to last for an eternity. You're truly trapped in a prison of your own body. It's like time stops moving. I made it my mission to never go through that even long after I knew I had wanted to stop taking these medications. The fear of stopping kept me going. 

So everybody eventually, some people call it a bottom. I call it hitting a wall because I don't think it has to come at your worst moment, but you do hit this wall where you've told every lie you can tell, you've borrowed every dollar you could borrow, and you just can't get access to this thing that you need to survive. I know for many people listening they, I hope, never have gone to an opioid withdrawal. Some people have trouble wrapping their mind around it because they say, "Well, isn't three days of pain or hardship worth getting back your entire life?" 

I put it to people like this. What if I took your food? What if I took your water? How long could you go? Could you go 12 hours, 24, 36, 48? How long until you are doing literally anything in your power to get the thing you need to survive? Because that's what we're talking about when you form an addiction to these substances. Your biochemical, neurological, it's all embedded in you and you need it. If you don't have it, I've seen people die in withdrawal. It's that severe. 

So I want people to know that it's a very dangerous thing to go through withdrawal. I don't encourage people doing it on their own. If you have to do it, please by all means seek help. Get medical help. 

10 years ago, I would not have taken that advice because if you sought medical help 10 years ago, you would have had to omit what you're going through, and I was not prepared to do that. 

So I'm going into withdrawal. It's April 2011, 10 years ago. I'm going through my phone looking through every contact, every person, anybody who can help me get out of the situation. Nobody is picking up the phone. You're in a panic. You're just panicking. Like I said, you're not willing to risk going to tell anybody because you actually in your mind think that would be worse. 

Eventually I got a friend of mine on the phone who's no longer alive and I say, "I'm in a really bad way. I need help." 

"Don't worry. I got you. I'll be there in an hour." 
Three hours later, my friend shows up at the door. Knocked at the door. Go to the door. 

"Hey, buddy. Here you go. I got to run. Love you. Good luck." 

Hands me something. I shut the door thinking he's going to give me the thing that we've always done together, which was Oxycontin. I looked down and it wasn't Oxycontin. It was heroin. I had never done heroin before. It's a very intimidating moment because heroin was something that always seemed other to me than I what I did. 

Nowadays, we know that addiction, opioid addiction, heroin, it's all very similar, but even then I knew that was, "Ooh, this is not something I wanted to do," but when you're in this moment of a violent physical reaction, all options are on the table. All options have to be on the table because all you're thinking about is, "How do I make this pain stop and how do I make it stop immediately?" 

So I'm walking to my bathroom and I'm looking down at this bag of heroin, and it's got the Hulk on it, the Marvel character, the Hulk on it. It wasn't till many years later somebody was like, "Did you think that was some kind of symbolic moment of this monster inside of you coming out?"

I was like, "No."

You couldn't be that thoughtful about it in that moment. All I thought was staring at this bag and seeing the Hulk was how surreal my life had gotten. Why is the Hulk on this bag of heroin? What world am I operating in? 

So I walked to the bathroom, and I want people to understand as I just said, I was experiencing an intense physical reaction and I'm looking at this bag and I'm about to do it. This moment of calm washed over me in a way that in that moment felt like dramatically different. I had what I can only describe, and it's the hardest part of the story to talk about because I don't even know how I would have understood this if somebody had told me this, but I had this moment of clarity where I was able to see if I did this, I was going to die. I just knew it. I didn't know if I was going to die then and there on the spot. I just had this real instinctual feeling in my gut that, "You do this, there's no coming back. You're going to die." 

In a moment, in a moment, I took the drugs and I flushed them down the toilet. I called my parents five minutes later, and I just said, "I am in a situation that is really, really bad, and I need your help." 

My parents were shocked and they were upset, and they were dismayed, but more than anything, they just wanted to help their son. The next day started my recovery from these medications, which is a whole other topic. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
I have to ask, did your friend suffer an overdose? 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
Actually, no. This friend did not die of an overdose, but many friends, you surround yourself with the people who understand, right? So interesting. As a rabbi, we're always talking about community. There was this community of people all going through the same thing. It's tragic thinking back about how many people I knew who were in the throes of an opioid addiction, but in that, we provided support for one another, friendship. It was based around this horrible thing, but even within that was this deep connection of people trying to help each other out, trying to be a support when everybody else in your life was kept at a distance. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
There are different paths towards recovery. I think there's maybe the mistaken impression there's only one way to do it. Can you talk at all about whatever choices you faced and why you made them? 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
Yeah. Oh, and by the way, I totally forgot the second part of your question. We were talking about the Mordecai Kaplan piece and the theological piece. Sorry. When I tell this story-
Bryan Schwartzman:
No, you were right. You were right. I was out of order. I figured we'd get back there. 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
No, no, no, no. I apologize. Your mind goes in a lot of different directions, but the thing that I left out of that story, and I leave out almost intentionally at times is that when I was going through withdrawal, I was not really a religious person. I was a secular Jew. I remember being angry with God. I remember this moment of cursing at God like, "Why are you doing this to me? I'm not a bad person. What did I do to deserve this?" 

That moment of cursing at God, I traced that to that moment in the bathroom, in that moment, I connected those two things. Whether that's in my mind or whatever, that's not for me to try to unpack. It felt very real to me in that moment that I had the spiritual experience and it was later that I wanted to delve deeper into what was that? Did something happen? It connects more. I'm sure we'll talk about why I decided to share this, but it connects into that. Okay. I just wanted to make that point. 

So in terms of the question about recovery, so the next day, when I was faced with the reality that I might have to go to an inpatient rehab, I refused. I just flat out refused because I wanted to have a career, I wanted to have a life, and I was just so convinced I was not going to be able to do those things. 

So my parents have a lot of resources, and I always point that out. We're able to let me see an outpatient doctor the next day, an addictions specialist, who was a counselor, a doctor, an MD, who had this niche in treating addiction. So I recognized many people would not have been able to do what I did, and that's part of what we have to change, but, okay. 

So I went to the doctor and he said, "We're learning new things about addiction every day, specifically opioid addiction." He said, "80% of the time people who come off cold turkey on these medications reuse." He said, "If you do it like that, you're probably going to end up most likely back on these medications." He says, "There are new medications. This is called medically-assisted treatment, MAT." He said, "They're new, and you're going to be on these medications for years, years, but I want you to know if you follow my regimen, I think it will save your life." He's like, "I firmly believe that." 

I wanted that. I wanted that. I was not willing to deviate. The truth is it did work for me. Now, this is controversial in recovery spaces. There's always a big divide in 12-step and MAT. I'll say this, there is not one path to recovery. I believe that everybody has different situations that lead to different types of recovery. Because I was in an injury, because I was still dealing with the pain after going through the withdrawal, I needed something to get me back to where I could be to operate. These medications did that for me. 

So I saw them as a saving grace, if you want to call it that. Many people do abuse these medications that's why it's controversial. Some people just use them to get them through the withdrawal and then they go back on the opioids. I didn't want that. I just wanted to get my life back. So I am a big advocate of these medications, though I will say they're not for everybody. They're definitely not for everybody. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
Okay. If you're enjoying this interview, please take a moment to give us a five-star rating or review. Positive ratings really help others find out about this show, and if you're a new listeners, welcome. Check out our back catalog for lots of other groundbreaking conversations. Okay. Now back to our interview with Rabbi Michael Perice.

So there's so many strands in your story that we're trying to pull together here to get us to the present day, but it's all fascinating, although heart-wrenching to live through. You did point out that you were certainly in your early adulthood, by and large as secular Jew. So how did you become not only a religious Jew but somebody who-
Rabbi Michael Perice:
Becomes a rabbi?
Bryan Schwartzman:
... wanted to become a rabbi and is a rabbi? 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
No. It's a great question. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
I'm sure a short answer, right? 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
Yeah, it's very short. It's all connected. The thing about battling an addiction, it brings you down. I don't want to call it the lowest level, but it's such a humbling experience. You get knocked off of every peg you've ever stand on, and you have to rebuild your life. My family owns Jewish funeral homes. A lot of people know that. I never wanted to be a funeral director. It was something I never wanted to do, but because I was in this phase where I was rebuilding my life, I couldn't get a different type of job. I needed to work in a situation where I was able to work around a lot of the issues I was having. 

Having a family business wasn't the worst thing, but it was a blessing in disguise because working at the funeral home allowed me to see rabbis doing this amazing pastoral work with families in their time of need. Now, the thing we didn't talk about in this interview that also people know about my story is that-
Bryan Schwartzman:
We're going back to the early 1990s, I guess, right? 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
Yeah, was that my rabbi growing up had his wife murdered, and that was a very tragic experience for, obviously, our Jewish community. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
This is Rabbi Fred Neulander. 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
Neulander. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
The temple was? 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
M'Kor Shalom. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
Right. He was convicted of? 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
He was convicted of hiring two people to stage a home invasion in an attempt to have his wife killed, not an attempt, they did it. That was one of these moments where I'm 10-11 years old thinking, "Whoa! These guys, these rabbis are fakes and phonies. I don't even know if I believe in this God thing. I don't want anything to do with this Judaism thing." 

Now, you can't shed being Jewish, but I wasn't a practicing Jew for about 10 years from the ages of 14 to 24. I had my bar mitzvah because it was important to my family. I went to the high holidays with my grandmother because it meant a lot to her. We observe Passover, but I didn't really have a very enmeshed Jewish upbringing from that age to the present in our story. 

So working at the funeral home was revelatory because it was the first time in my life that I stopped and thought about all the baggage, all the hatred that I have had towards my rabbi and all the baggage I was carrying about my Judaism and what it meant. So if it hadn't been for this stage in my life, I don't know if I would ever have gone down this path. 

So I'm working at the funeral home, and at no point do I think I'm going to be a rabbi. If there's a list of things that I never thought I'd be, the NFL player followed by a rabbi. It was as far from possible as could be, but I thought I could be a Jew again. It was through rabbis like Linda Holtzman and Jacob Staub, and all these people who were really enmeshed in the Reconstructionist Community of Philadelphia that opened up my eyes to a type of Judaism that I had never been exposed to. 

So Jacob Staub and Rebecca Alpert's book was one of the first pieces of literature that I received from someone when I was exploring my Judaism because all I knew of Judaism is from what I experienced as a kid, and a lot of that didn't make sense because it was from my childlike mind. This was the first time that I was thoughtfully and intellectually delving deep into Jewish thought. 

This idea that Judaism is an evolving civilization that Jews have to evolve with the times, that made a lot of sense to me. I really love that. A lot of the Mordecai Kaplan stuff, about the importance of community and living in two civilizations, that really made a lot of sense to me. 

Mordecai Kaplan's theology about God being the salvation, that made no sense to me at the time. So I have to be very clear. I don't think I quite understood that. I say to this day that that's an ongoing process of what does that mean to me, though I do think finding the spirituality in ourselves to save ourselves, the salvation to make our lives fuller and meaningful, I do connect that to my story. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
As a plug, I want to say the book is called Exploring Judaism: A Reconstructionist Approach.
Rabbi Michael Perice:
Great book. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
It is very readable and accessible. 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
Very accessible. For somebody like me who knew nothing about the minutia of the Jewish world, it was my intro. So this helped me to become a Jew again, basically. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
So I wanted to ask what it was like as somebody who is vulnerable, as somebody really who, for lack of a better phrase, you saw your life flash before your eyes. What was it like to be with people or around people at their most vulnerable moments? I mean, were you identified, able to identify more with the bereaved in some way because of what you've been through? 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
I wasn't thinking about it like that. I think that what that experience had taught me was a lesson in humility and judgment. From that day on, I swear I was never going to judge anybody for what they were going through, that I always wanted to learn what was the story behind the experience I would watch. I think I was just so open to the world. I was so open to learning about people in a way that I wasn't before. 

We talked about how does one become a rabbi in this story. I'll never forget the moment that changed my life if you want to hear the story. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
We love stories here. 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
Yeah. So it's about a year after now when I first went into recovery and I'm working at the funeral home. It's about December-January 2012. It just had snowed in the Philadelphia area a foot or two. All the funerals that weekend were canceled except for one. There was a gentleman who died. He was in his 90s and he had only one living sibling, and she was in her late 80s. 

Now, people have to understand the older cemeteries in Philadelphia, the monuments are so close together you could barely walk through them. Now, if you add snow to the mix, it's almost like impossible to get through. The sister of the deceased was in a wheelchair. So we're there. Everybody's like, "How do we get the sister to the graveside?" The decision's made, she can't. She has to sit in the car. 

I'm thinking, I'm self-righteous, I'm like, "What a tragedy." I'm so self-righteous that the only living sibling of this person has to sit in the car for her brother's funeral. I'm really angered by it. In retrospect as a rabbi now, sometimes there are no good prospects. You have to do what's best in the moment, but at the time I was really upset. So the funeral is going on and I see her in the car. I decided to walk over and I knocked on the window and I said, "Ma'am, my name is Michael. I'm from the funeral home. Would you mind if I sat with you?" 

She motioned me into the car. We're both sitting in the backseat of the car and she's gazing out of the window towards the funeral, and we're not talking. I was just like, "Ma'am, would you mind telling me a little bit about your brother?" 

She shifted her whole body towards me and it was like she was waiting for that opportunity. She started telling me all these stories about their childhood, amazing stories how they escaped the Nazis and walked across Europe and how he saved her life, the most amazing stories. I had this moment where I realized I had never listened in a conversation. Imagine that. I'm 25 years old and I have this moment where I realized this is the first time I've actually listened to a person, I mean, really listened where I'm not constantly talking. 

It was such a weird revelatory moment for me. So I could hear the service wrapping up and truthfully, I wasn't much of a practicing Jew, but I said to her, I said, "Would you like to say a prayer with me?" 

I only knew one prayer. I knew the Mourner's Kaddish because I worked at the funeral home. It was the prayer that was said at every service. So we said the Mourner's Kaddish together and when it was over, the look on her face was like I had just given her the greatest gift. She had this moment of peace. I remember walking out of the car in a daze like, "What just happened? What was that and how do I always do that?" 

So I was telling this to somebody a week later. I was like, "I had this amazing experience where I helped this woman and I was so taken with it." 

They're like, "You should be a rabbi. You could be a rabbi. That's exactly what rabbis do."

I go, "Are you nuts? I can't be a rabbi." 

They're like, "You could be a rabbi. Who knows?" They're like, "Why don't you go to the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College? Go talk to somebody and see what it's all about." 

So I was like, "All right. I'll see what it's about." 

So I went down the college and they're like, "You could be a rabbi, but you really need to get your Hebrew proficiency a lot higher than it is." 

So I spent the next year of my life in Israel learning about Judaism in a deeper way, learning Hebrew, and it was enough to get accepted into RRC. A year after that, I was accepted. That was about seven years ago. I've been on this crazy journey ever since. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
Now in 2021 or 5782, where coming out of the high holy day season, not quite yet, and seven years ago, you're really immersing yourself in Judaism living in Israel. Are you thinking back to those four years of addiction? Are you thinking you need to make amends to Shiva? Are you living with guilt for whatever harm you may have caused?
Rabbi Michael Perice:
That's a great question. So let me state this very, very clearly for everyone out there, for anybody going through an addiction or for anybody who knows someone in addiction. I feel no guilt. I feel no shame, no embarrassment. I did not choose that addiction in any way whatsoever. 

Now, just because I say that, though, and just because I believe addictions are predisposed disorders does not mean they don't cause people pain. They cause everyone pain. They cause everyone around them pain and more than anybody, the person bearing the addiction pain. 

So the question I've been grappling with over the last year is how to share this thing. How do I do this? Because the truth is I've known for a long time I wanted to share this story. In fact, I remember going on a walk with one of my rabbinic mentors, Linda Holtzman, who we were having this conversation and I had this in my mind. I knew that she was one of the first LGBTQ rabbis to come out in a congregation and shared that. 

So I remember asking her, "How did you know what the right time was?" I was telling her a little bit about my story. I just remember her giving me this advice to wait, wait until you're in a community where you feel loved and secure and supported. 

So I always remember her telling me that advice, but as I celebrated this 10-year anniversary, I started thinking maybe this is the time. It's been 10 years. I'm in a community that I love and I feel supported by, but then you start really doubting yourself. What if I ruin everything I've worked so hard to achieve? What if I lose the trust of my congregation that I've worked so hard to earn? All these things run through your mind and you go, "Oh, I'll wait," and then you go, "Oh, well, maybe I shouldn't do it." 

Then I started thinking. 93,000 people have died from overdoses this year alone, 93,000 reported. I've lost three friends in the past year and a half to overdose. I couldn't just remain silent. I felt like I had a responsibility. I felt like I was given this blessed life, this opportunity to live a life of meaning and blessing. You know what? I do connect that to my personal page. I do feel like I was given this chance. I do feel like I owe everyone something. If sharing my story could save just one person's life, how could I not do it? 

More than that, as a rabbi, people come to you every day and share the most vulnerable parts of their lives. As rabbis, we think a lot about boundaries, and boundaries are really important, but I didn't see this as a boundary. I saw this as something that was core and fundamental to who I am as a person. I can't change it. 

So I wanted to honor the trust that people have put into me and say, "I trust you as much as you trust me. I don't think that you're going to hate me or not trust me for this. I think quite the opposite." I think when I share this people are going to affirm it and want to know more, and that's exactly what happened. 

So I feel like the response has just been so positive. I don't feel any guilt, any shame. If anything, I feel like so amazingly grateful that I've had all these experiences that have led to this moment where I could share this immensely personal but very important story with the Jewish community, but with the wider world as well. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
I mean, since it is such a huge thing, had you considered sharing it as part of the interview process? Was part of you just like, "Hey, let me get the gig first"? Can you talk about that at all? 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
Yeah. There was a few people who thought, "Should the rabbi disclose this?" Let me say very clearly that had anybody asked this in an interview, first off, it's illegal to ask anybody in an interview process about their medical history. This is their medical history. So had I disclosed this and not gotten the job, that congregation could have been liable. 

So I always tells people, don't ask people these in an interview process. It's not appropriate, but there is a question as a rabbi. Should I have shared this? I think the answer is we should only share these things when we feel safe and secure to do so. This was nobody's business. This is very personal. I've decided that I could share this when the time was right. 

Why would I share this with people who didn't know me, knew nothing about me? To hear that is the first thing. That leads into the stigma of addiction. We have not come nearly far enough in raising the stigma of addiction to be able to share something like this the first time meeting people in a job interview. So I knew right away that was absolutely not the right time. 

I wanted to wait. I felt like I could have rightfully never have shared this, but I believe that I owed it to everyone around me, everyone going through this addiction process, everybody who's lost family members to it, and my community once they had gotten to know me. 

One of the questions I got, Bryan, was like, "Why not just tell the congregation? Why go to the media? Why share this with the media?" I thought was a really good question, and I had an answer for it because I had deeply reflected on that question. I had felt like how could I share this with 80 people, 100 people, whatever it is, and expect those people then to keep it a secret. I knew right away that that wasn't the reality that people would tell other people and it would be something like, "Oh, have you heard the rabbi of Temple Sinai is an ...?" I didn't want the story to keep snowballing into something. I wanted to control my story, my narrative. I wanted it to be told in a way that was life-affirming and powerful. 

So I thought going to the media was important just so I could control the narrative and tell my story at one time for everybody to hear it, and then, hopefully, that would open the door to this impact where now other people are sharing. I shared in the beginning when we were in our pre-interview that I receive emails from what we would call white collar professionals, people who've said, "Your story inspired me."

I've shared my story with my friends, my family, my professional colleagues, and I think those type of dominoes falling is how we change the narrative around addiction when people realize anybody, I mean, anyone can get addicted to these types of drugs. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
Right. I guess that brings me back to the idea, I mean, you're not a total stranger to me. We've known each other for a couple of years. 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
I've been to your home. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
You've been to my home more than once. 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
I know your kids. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
More than once, I think. You've entertained my kids with magic tricks. They loved you, by the way. 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
I love your kids. They're great. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
So I mean, I think I heard about a car accident. I knew you had some physical residual effects of that, but, generally, you seem like this extrovert, really just well-rounded person. You're on track to being or are a respected religious leader, and I had no idea, zero idea that-
Rabbi Michael Perice:
Doesn't that speak volumes about the world we live in? 
Bryan Schwartzman:
Yeah. What does that speak to? I'm trying to put into words what that means. 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
I think it speaks to two things. I think it speaks to two things. One, as I just said, anybody could be going through an addiction, but more likely, anybody could be in recovery, and you shouldn't judge people based on their gender or their race or their financial status or their job title, anybody. This is such a pervasive issue. It could affect anybody, but more than that, I think it speaks to a society where we treat addiction as the silent epidemic, where it's known that it's something that you don't talk about. It's done behind closed doors for good reason. 

When we talk about NA or AA or 12-step or support groups, these are very private communities because we know the stigma of addiction has not changed enough where people can come out and feel like safe enough to share this. I want that to change. I very much, Bryan, understood that my story of addiction no different than millions of Americans, not different in any way, but you put rabbi before the story, people pay attention, and I knew that. 

I knew, because I was a rabbi, this story would get people's attention, and I was banking on that because I knew that if a rabbi could come out and say, "I've dealt with this issue," specifically in a Jewish community that thinks addiction doesn't happen inside our walls, then I knew I was creating the positive change I wanted to see in the world because one of the first things I realized in my job as rabbi at Temple Sinai in Cinnaminson, was several of my congregants had children or grandchildren going through the same thing, but they didn't feel comfortable sharing that with anybody but the rabbi. That was a real big wakeup call that things have to change. Maybe I'm in a position to start that change. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
Well, I have just another couple seconds of your time. Please consider supporting these groundbreaking conversations that Evolve is having on the podcast, the website, web conversations, and the curriculum we're producing. There's a donate link in our show notes. Every gift matters. Thanks for listening and your support. All right. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. 

Probably a little less than 10 years ago but within that range, I wrote several stories looking at addiction to opioids, addiction in the Jewish community, and there were and remains some addresses devoted to this. There are local and national organizations. There are a few rabbis who've made a name writing about this. There are books about Judaism and the 12-step process. 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
Yeah. One is by Rabbi Steinberg. I highly recommend it, The Jewish 12-Step. Now, 12-step is not for everybody. Rabbi Paul Steinberg was a recovering alcoholic, so he was immersed in that world, but it's a great book if you want to delve in deeper into Jewish thinking and recovery. I highly recommend it. 

In terms of national organizations, I have to give the Jewish Addiction Awareness Network a plug. They do great work. It's led by somebody, a friend now. Her name is Marla Kaufman. She dealt with addiction in her family, and she devoted her life to spreading the word about resources in the Jewish community. On her website, she goes state-by-state. Who are the organizations dealing with this? Who are the rabbis dealing with this? It's not nearly enough, but it's enough to get people pointed in the right direction for those that they care about to finding help. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
That's great. I really appreciate you lifting up some of the work that's being done out there to save lives and lift stigmas, but my sense is, and I think it's more than a sense, that this still occupies a somewhat nominal space addiction in the Jewish communal agenda and in synagogue life. I mean, it would be hard for us to find a major church without an addiction recovery group, but it is not proforma in synagogues at all. I'm wondering why that is and specifically if it has anything to do with the closed ties and people's minds between the 12-step program and Christianity, Jesus. Is this-
Rabbi Michael Perice:
Yeah. Christian churches tend to be ahead of the curve on a lot of this stuff. They do a lot of good work. Unfortunately, the tragedy of that is that people who are non-Christians don't always feel comfortable in those space rightfully so because it's very immersed in Christianity, in Christian thought. That's what makes the tragedy of the fact that there's such an absence in the Jewish world to discuss this issue. 

Now, I've always traced it to the fact of Jews have always had the position that ÒJews don't get addicted, that just doesn't happen in our communities,Ó and that's a lie. It's a hurtful lie. It harms the people in our communities. So what needs to change is it does need to become a Jewish communal agenda. The large organizations need to step up and they need to realize that this issue is way more pervasive than they think it is. They need devote time, energy, and resources to tackling the issue. 

I will say federations, specifically Jewish Family and Children Services, have been doing better in recent years, but that's really it in terms of Federation. I would like to see Hillels diving in deeper into this work because as you heard my story, college is a lot of the time when these addictions form. So we do need to change our mindsets. 

There is a lot of good work happening in the Jewish world, but it's definitely on the micro level. It's definitely not on the macro for all the issues we're constantly talking about. I'm hoping that changes. I don't know what will cause that change. Maybe more rabbis sharing their stories, maybe more communal leaders sharing their stories. Hopefully, what won't cause that change is more death. That's the tragedy. We can't live in a world where we only become reactionary to the problem when people die or lose their lives or their livelihoods. That is a tragedy we can't allow to happen. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
I understand that you introduced a resolution related to this topic to your professional association, the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Association. Are you able to say anything about what that resolution is or where that's at in the process? 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
Yeah. Absolutely. No. That resolution passed. I passed that. I was one of the main group of signatories of several rabbis who put together this resolution on behalf of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical Assembly saying that we as a rabbinic movement commit ourselves to fighting the opiate crisis, to really saying that we're going to encourage synagogues to take a more proactive role, to take a more educational role. We're going to do more advocacy. 

The other important thing that I thought this resolution really got right that a lot of people don't get right when we're talking about addiction or opioid addiction is that we can't be opiate abolitionists. Let me say why because I know a lot of people who believe that these medicines, these drugs are things that need to totally be abolished. I am a caregiver to two family members who have chronic pain disorders. There are people who legitimately need these medications. I think one of the rabbis in that process was someone who is advocating that there are people who deal with chronic pain disorders who need these medications. 

So we can't be so extreme as to say just because someone like myself got into deep or someone else mis-uses it for recreational purposes that there aren't people who actually need it. We just need to encourage doctors to be more cognizant of how prescriptions work, about what is the process of how do you treat acute pain versus chronic and long-term pain. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a scientist. There's a lot of thinking around addiction, but we need to start encouraging people to be a little more thorough in their thinking about how addiction works, but also recognizing that people still need these medications. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
Big picture. Do you have any sense how the last year and a half and the onset of COVID-19 has impacted local and national efforts to combat opioid addiction? 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
It's sad. The pandemic has pushed everything behind it. I don't know how else to put it other than the pandemic, COVID-19, maybe rightfully in some ways has taken up our national consciousness. What's sad about that is that there's still all these underlying issues that are connected to the pandemic. I think that there's a lot of research. It's new, but there's a lot of research saying that opioid addiction is spiking. We know overdose have risen to some of their highest levels. 

So this is something we're not talking about. It's really a mystery to me why culturally outside of the Jewish community that this is such a sensitive topic for people to delve in deep. I see the media doesn't really want to talk about it unless it's in a specific light, which I don't think is always the most positive light. The media doesn't really cover a lot of recovery stories. They'll cover a lot of addiction stories, overdose stories, drug-related crime stories. They don't like recovery stories for some reason, but we need to change the mentality. We need to start having a national conversation. 

So reach out to your public servants. Reach out to your elected representatives. Encourage them to start talking about this issue. Encourage people to start bringing this issue to the forefront because it's only going to get worse. It's only going to get worse. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
I mean, you used the word liberated from opioids, which I thought was a really interesting, profound word choice. I imagine you still see yourself as in recovery and maybe it's still a struggle. I guess I'm wondering just what gets you through the tough days. Is it Judaism? Is it your role as a rabbi? Is it your family and children? 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
Yeah. I think it's a great question, but I want to answer it in a couple ways. One, I don't use the word clean because there is nothing dirty about substance abuse disorder, what we call SUD. There's nothing dirty about it. I reject words like clean. I'm even rejecting words like sober because that doesn't really encapsulate the way recovery works for many people. 

My recovery from opioid addiction was very trying for many years. There are still to this day repercussions of prolonged opioid use. I feel heightened level of pain from injuries, but the truth is I no longer feel that day-to-day battle of wanting. I have way surpassed needing these medications in fact, and this is one of the first things I told my congregation. I said, "The scariest thing for me in recovery from these medications is the day that will come when I don't have a choice in the matter, when I get in an accident or if I get in a serious injury again. When I'm in a situation where I can't control it, that scares me." 

This is maybe TMI, but earlier this year, I had kidney stones. You hear a lot about how people go to the emergency rooms and they can't get opiates anymore. It's so hard. Well, I was in there and they were trying to push it on me within the first minute. I was like, "You don't understand. I'm not doing it. Come back with a different solution because I won't take these medications. I'll bear the pain that I'm in," and the pain was severe. They came back with some other options, which really were helpful. 

So I've really had to deal with some horrible situations pain-wise, but I've luckily been able to get through it. If the day comes when one day I have to do it, if one day I'm forced to do it, well, you know what? We can't stigmatize that either. I know what I know now. I know the resources. I know the help. If that day, God forbid, ever comes, I'll know how to handle myself in a way that I didn't before. 

With that said, a lot of people do have the recovery journey that is an ongoing day-to-day struggle for the rest of their lives. That's why I say addiction is different for everybody. That's why sharing these stories about treatment and recovery are so important so people know that. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
Wow! This has been such a powerful conversation. Again, really appreciate your sharing here and elsewhere. I do think it makes a difference in lifting the stigma and reaching people with whatever point in this struggle they're at or whoever they know and love who maybe going through it. 

I think I want to close by asking, as a rabbi, you're a meaning-maker. That's part of what you do is help people make meaning out of their lives, out of the discordance of the world, out of all the messiness that's in our own tradition and stories. You've probably said this already, but I'm wondering, what's the meaning you take from your own story? What's the dÕvar torah you give based on everything you've been through?
Rabbi Michael Perice:
That we're on a journey, we're on this masa, this journey, and to be human is to be flawed, is to be hurt, and broken in so many ways. It's so clichŽ to say in the Jewish world, but that we see ourselves in this divine, that we are made in the image of God, and that at our base level is this pure goodness that sometimes just gets obstructed or get obscured with a level of the messiness of the world. 

I believe that the healing process, the recovery process, the speaking process wipes away a lot of that gook, a lot of that obstruction to that essential goodness. It allows you to tap back into that, but like many things, it also allows you to elevate yourself. My addiction was so hard, it was so trying, but when I overcame it, I felt like there was endless possibilities. I felt like the possibilities were endless. So if I was to tell anybody going through this today, I would say, "This isn't your fault. You're not to blame. You're just a person in a very bad situation." We all need the help we deserve. 

I'll close with this rabbinic piece that many people heard because it's so often quoted from the Talmud. The Talmud says, "A life is like a universe. You save one life, it's like you saved the universe." 

Well, some people read that as like there's ripples to these things that if you save a life, who knows where that person will go and who knows what that person will do, but I see it differently. I see it as the core essential dignity of saving one life, one person that we all have this dignity, this respect as humans, and we all deserve to be treated with kavod, with respect, but also with love and kindness and compassion.

So please treat yourself with that love, that compassion, but treat others. If you know someone going through addiction, by all means, show them that kindness, show them that compassion, and help them get the help they need. Reach out to me. Reach out to the people in your community, your rabbi. There's so many people who want to help. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
Rabbi Michael Perice, thank you. Thank you so much for sharing your story. 
Rabbi Michael Perice:
Thank you for having me. 
Bryan Schwartzman:
Thanks so much for listening to the conversation with Rabbi Michael Perice. So what did you think of today's show? We want to hear from you. Evolve is about meaningful conversations and you're part of that. Send me your questions, comments, feedback. You can reach me at bschwartzman@reconstructingjudaism.org. We'll be back next month with an all new episode. 

Evolve: Groundbreaking Jewish Conversations is executive produced by Rabbi Jacob Staub, and edited by Sam Watts. Our theme song, Ilu Finu is by Rabbi Miriam Margles. This show is a production of Reconstructing Judaism. I'm your host, Bryan Schwartzman, and myself and our team will see you next time.