Cry when no one’s watching.
These are the words that many of us live by—especially in our addictions. But you don’t need to be an addict to feel like your pain has to be hidden away. But Ben M. was tightening the mask on his face for longer than he can remember.
Ben is the kind of guy who makes you feel like everything is going to be okay—sharp-witted, self-aware, and so emotionally articulate you half-forget he once thought happiness was a trap. You’d never guess how much of his life he spent hiding. And that’s not because he’s naturally dishonest. It’s because he was good at it. Ben mastered the art of high-functioning pain. He was the varsity quarterback, the All-State lacrosse player, the honor student, and loyal son (maybe to a fault). From the outside, he looked perfect. But that golden boy exterior masked a deep, unspoken, tortured soul—and the slow-motion collapse of a family caught in the rip current of addiction.
Ben grew up in a small mountain town—a vacation spot forgotten in the “mud seasons.” He refers to it as “a paradise paradox.” In reality, it was named Vail, Colorado—and what a thin vale it was. On the surface, it’s a postcard-perfect ski town. But underneath the vacation gloss, “it’s an isolating place where problems get shoved under the rug and emotional wellness is rarely part of the conversation. Everything has to look pristine. So the stuff that isn’t pristine? You hide it.” The nature of the town bred isolation and despair in its residents, while its visitors lived in bliss. “Even the stuff you do for fun there—snowboarding, kayaking—it’s just you, alone.” Not only were these activities lonesome, but they came with high risk. Ben grew up with injuries of his own, watching his friends get injured, and even killed.
Ben was twelve when his dad, once his superhero, started to unravel. A realtor, in the trenches of the housing market crash, the drinking worsened, and pain pills entered the picture. Every Christmas, Ben would defend his dad. He thought he wouldn’t put a damper on the event, but ultimately was let down. His dad’s first rehab stint came without warning. Ben didn’t get to say goodbye. No phone calls. No closure. Just a dad-shaped hole and a house that suddenly felt too quiet.
That same year, Ben got high for the first time. It wasn’t dramatic—just weed and a few drinks with some older kids—but something clicked. The D.A.R.E. program version of addiction didn’t match the reality of his father, a man he loved deeply. “He was still my hero. So if he was an addict, maybe addicts weren’t so bad. And if it wasn’t the booze, maybe it was just the pills. Maybe that wouldn’t happen to me.” But if that were true, I wouldn’t be writing this.
By freshman year, Ben was smoking weed every morning before school, drinking every weekend, and collecting minor possession charges like trading cards. Still, he kept the mask on. He excelled at school, charmed adults, and played every sport he could. He was a kid in pain, doing everything he could to make sure no one asked him if he was okay. Beit T’Shuvah’s founder, Harriett Rosetto, always used to say, “Fine stands for: Fucked up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional.” and Ben was doing as F.I.N.E. as anyone could ever be.
When his parents’ marriage began to collapse due to his father’s on-and-off addiction, Ben took it personally. He tried to fix it—played mediator, messenger, emotional go-between. “I was fighting a battle that wasn’t mine—trying to save a divorce I didn’t cause.” The weight of the world was on his shoulders and he couldn’t seem to shake it.
College brought a new chapter—heavy drinking, constant drug use, and mounting anxiety masked by a progressively clumsier song and dance. “I was always trying to prove I was enough. I didn’t believe it, but I needed other people to.” He excelled at work, launched a cannabis/kratom company with friends, and eventually landed a sales job he was great at. On the outside, he was still winning the game of life. On the inside, he was crumbling.
In 2019, thanks to his grandfather, his dad found his way to Beit T’Shuvah—finally getting the help he needed. Around when Ben came to visit him is when it first dawned on him that he may have a problem of his own. Enter COVID, and his greatest fear wasn’t dying of a pandemic, but instead of how to stock up and ration when the dispensaries and liquor stores closed.
In 2021, Ben was prescribed Xanax due to his mounting anxiety. That was the tipping point. The drinking escalated. Drinks plus Xanax equals blackout, which became a regular occurrence. He started hiding alcohol, drinking a handle a day, convincing himself that if no one saw it, it didn’t count. “It wasn’t social anymore. It was just me, drunk in my mom’s basement, trying not to feel anything.”
Eventually, even that failed. Friends staged an intervention. “They said, ‘We love you. But we don’t know who you are anymore.’” He agreed to go to rehab—thirty days, just a break. Within weeks, he was drinking again.
Christmas 2024: His mom was terrified. His sisters were heartbroken. And Ben, despite his promises, had followed in his followed in his father’s footsteps. “I always said I’d never do what he did to us…but I did.”
Then came the call.
His father, now sober and working as an addiction counselor, offered him a lifeline. “We have a bed. I have a ticket. You just have to say yes.” And for some reason, Ben did. He got on the plane, landed in L.A., walked into detox, and had a seizure on the first day.
Even then, he didn’t plan to stay. “I told everyone—30 days, max 60. Then I’m out.” He didn’t unpack for a week and a half. Not all at once. But little by little. He started to accept his new life, like someone looking at the notches on the door’s threshold, not realizing they’ve grown, until one day, the world feels smaller.
He didn’t bite at first, “If one more person said the word ‘community,’ I was going to puke. But it turns out… they were right. It is special.” Then something even more magical happened. He stopped hiding. And no one asked him to be anything other than who he was. “For the first time in a long time, it felt like… I was enough.”
Today, Ben’s sober. His father is, too. His grandfather—a board member at Beit T’Shuvah—helped save his dad’s life, which in turn, helped save his. “I’m beyond blessed for my family. My grandfather gave my dad his life back. And my dad gave me mine.” He has two loving sisters, an adoring mom, and they have never been closer. He sees his dad and grandfather (whom he lovingly refers to as Poppy) every Friday Night for Shabbat. The family he always wanted has been rebuilt in a new and beautiful way. “Learning to forgive my dad is how I learned to forgive myself. I have him to help show me how to pick up the pieces. I have my hero back.”
Ben has gone from a name I had heard whispered under his father’s breath during the misheberach prayer for years to a pillar of this community.
The road ahead is still unfolding. Ben doesn’t pretend to know where it leads. But he knows what matters. “I want to be a good husband. A great dad. That’s the success I care about,” he says. “Not the job or the car. Just the kind of man I want to be.”
Let them see you cry.
Ben is the kind of guy who makes you feel seen—because he’s finally learned to see himself. No longer hiding behind varsity jerseys, perfect grades, or a plastered-on smile, he walks through the world with a kind of quiet courage that can only come from surviving one’s own story. He doesn’t need the mask anymore. Raw, honest, funny, kind, and brave in the way that truly matters: willing to be vulnerable. And maybe that’s the most powerful thing of all—not just that Ben found recovery, but that he found himself—that he is genuine. And in doing so, he gives the rest of us permission to do the same.