Some people’s lives read like a recipe for disaster: a pinch of rebellion, a dash of bad luck, and a heavy pour of addiction. For Eric C., the ingredients were all there—an alcoholic father, an Al-Anon mother, a restless spirit, and an insatiable need to feel different. But what makes Eric’s story remarkable isn’t how far down the spiral he went, or how he clawed himself to the surface. It’s how, in the midst of chaos, he found a way to transform all that pain into something sustaining—for himself, and for others.
Eric was born in Queens, New York, into a family that could only be described as loud, loving, and complicated. “I’m Italian and Jewish. So yeah, it was a loud family.” If there is one throughline between those two cultures, it is the eccentrically boisterous family dynamics. That and the inability to leave the house with an empty stomach.
When he was five, his parents moved the family to Boca Raton—New York’s unofficial sixth borough. He hated it at first. The suburbs felt sterile compared to the city. “There wasn’t much to do as a teenager, but looking back, I realize how good my mom had it planned out. At the time, I never said thank you. Now I do.”
Eric was a bright kid—gifted program, well-behaved, always talking too much in class—but at twelve, something shifted. “That’s when I started questioning everything. When I learned the power of ‘why’ and ‘no.’” Rebellion mixed with hormones, and soon he was skateboarding the parking lots of pastel colored Florida strip malls—his playground. Cigarettes. Punk rock. Marilyn Manson. A sense of being on the outside looking in.
It wasn’t long before drugs entered the picture. “Alcohol was first—probably at bar mitzvahs,” he laughs. “Somebody’s uncle would sneak us a beer.” By thirteen or fourteen, he was raiding the dusty vodka bottle his mom kept hidden in a filing cabinet. “I filled up a green plastic cup halfway with vodka and knocked it back.” He didn’t drink to socialize. He drank for the effect.
From there, the list grew: weed and acid mostly. “There was acid everywhere in Florida in the ’90s. I was dropping five, six, seven hits at a time.” He would somehow ingest that much LSD and still participate in school, live a life, not melt into the neon shifting wavy sidewalk. When that dried up, he and a friend started driving into dangerous neighborhoods to buy cocaine. He was fifteen.
At sixteen, his parents split, and Eric moved out. On his own, bouncing between friends’ houses. He landed his first restaurant job at TGI Friday’s—not because of a dream, but because he’d racked up a $900 long-distance bill calling his girlfriend in Nevada. “I found out the cooks made more money than the dishwashers, so I applied in the kitchen. That’s how it started.”
While cooking gave him a newfound sense of pride, it also gave him access. “I collected drug dealers like people collect baseball cards. And the adults I worked with loved that. They loved the fact that I was 16.” Eric was holding down a full-time job, partying with older coworkers, and learning his craft. On the line, taking lines. Within a year, he’d moved from corporate casual to fine dining. He discovered he was good at it. Really good. But behind the stove, he was hiding a growing dependence on opiates.
By his late teens, he was stealing from his mom, getting arrested, and sitting on probation. Then came OxyContin. “That stuff doesn’t judge. You take it long enough, you’re physically dependent.” At first, he managed to keep up appearances. But once he crossed into intravenous use at twenty-six, everything changed. “It was St. Patrick’s Day, 2007. I shot up for the first time. After that, it was an obsession. I loved it. It hit instantly. And it consumed me.”
For the next decade, Eric repeated the same cycle: new city, new restaurant, short burst of success, followed by collapse. “I’d move, get a job, perform well, start screwing up, lose the job, burn the locals, and move again. Over and over.” He lived in D.C., Maryland, Virginia, Maine, and back to Florida. He was, in his own words, “forged in fire and chaos.”
The next chapter became one of recurring homelessness. He lived outside in 2009, again in 2018, and for two straight years between 2020 and 2022. “I was good at it. I’d rather be homeless and get high than ask for help. My therapist said I wasn’t living at the threshold of misery—I was in misery.”
His father had long disappeared from the picture, passing away in 2008. His mother, holding fast to her Al-Anon principles, refused to cosign his destruction. “At the time I hated her for it,” Eric said regretfully. “Now I see it was the only thing that saved her—and maybe me too.” When Eric’s dad left, he did too—leaving his mom to raise his little sister. His anger got the better of him, and when he speaks of his family, specifically his mom, his eyes fill with a wave of mixed love and sorrow. Love for what they have done for him and sorrow for what he has put them through.
Throughout the years, there were flashes of surrender. In 2012, he checked into treatment for the first time. “I didn’t even know why. I just didn’t want to look for another job.” He spent sixty days at the Drug Abuse Foundation in Del Ray, graduated in cap and gown (literally), and got a taste of the AA community. “I got a little bit of something there. I don’t know what I got, but it was a little bit of a break and a little bit of light.” But that light didn’t last. He went back out. More years slipped by.
By 2024, the wreckage was undeniable. Arrests, burned bridges, empty nights. In May, after yet another jail stay, he walked into an AA meeting with nothing left. “I said, ‘My name’s Eric. I just got out of jail last night. I got high this morning. I need help.’” Instead of rejection, he was met with love. People fed him, gave him money, and connected him to treatment centers in the area. For the first time, when honesty knocked on his door, he let it in.
That door led him to Beit T’Shuvah. On December 30th, 2024, Eric arrived in Los Angeles. “I was miserable for the first two months.” The size, the personalities, the constant anxiety about what came next—it all pressed down on him. When he looks back at that time, he can see that it wasn’t Beit T’Shuvah that made him feel that way, it wasn’t even his cravings—it was the knowledge that he was done and the ignorance of what would happen next. But slowly, things began to shift as the puzzle pieces of his future started to fit together. He found support in his counselor, Leah, and the rest of his treatment team. He connected with a sponsor and started actually doing the work instead of faking it. Crucially, he stepped back into the kitchen—the right way—when he was offered an internship working right here at Beit T’Shuvah.
This time, it wasn’t about hiding or hustling. “I get to feed people who are trying to stay alive,” Eric says with a puffed chest of dignity and pride. “If I can give them one moment of joy in a meal, maybe it carries into the next conversation. Maybe it ripples outward.” In that kitchen, Eric learned his talent was real. Not a byproduct of chaos, not fueled by cocaine or Oxy—but his own passion and creativity.
Today, Eric has a life he never thought possible. His mother and sister, once strained by years of neglect, are back in his corner, celebrating milestones and planning visits. His mom even came to Beit T’Shuvah earlier this year to participate in family immersion. “She is 100% supportive…I realize now that she was always in my corner.”
Here, at Beit T’Shuvah, Eric’s chosen another family as well—one he connects with, loves, and gives to him as much as he gives to it. He has recently been hired to work in our kitchen, a position he does not take lightly. Where he could have easily gone back to working in fine dining, he chose to stay here and use his talents to give back. He’s not just being of service—he’s being of food service.
Eric’s journey is proof that no matter how long the cycle runs, no matter how many tweaks the recipe takes, recovery is possible. His life today is made of three ingredients: passion, resilience, and hope. And when blended together, they create something far more nourishing than anything he could ever serve on a plate: a second chance at life. But not just a second chance for Eric, a second chance for everyone he serves. Because he knows one thing. One simple fact that he has held his entire life, but now recontextualized by his recovery:
When you feed your family, you feed your soul. And Eric, with you in our community, our souls are stuffed.
