Jewish Contributions to Humanity

#8 in a series

Because Jade was a minor, the
treatment center said that if she ever
threatened suicide, they would have
to send her home. After the first week,
that is exactly what Jade did. “I was
scared and angry because this was
her one opportunity and she was
blowing it,” she says.
After Jade was sent home, she spent
two nights in jail for violating her
probation. She never returned to FJA,
instead enrolling in an online school
to earn her high school diploma.
Meanwhile, her drug use continued.
“She was a heroin user, an anything
user,” Marx says. “She has no fear for
herself. She’s suffered severe infec-
tions, lost the use of her hand on two
occasions, and overdosed and sur-
vived several times.”
She and Darrell have learned that
they can’t bail Jade out. “In the earlier
years,” says Darrell Marx, “your par-
enting instincts kick in and you want
to do whatever you can to help. But
we learned that the more we bailed
her out, the worse she would get; but
it’s still not easy.”
He recalls a time that Jade was liv-
ing with him and broke the rules. “I
told her she had to go. I sent her out
in wintertime to fend for herself,” he
says. “I didn’t want to, but I knew I
needed to.”
Jade has been to at least six differ-
ent facilities and hospitals so far, try-
ing to beat her addiction. Her longest
sobriety has lasted six months.
“It’s usually when I’m feeling super
lonely and fed up with life — just
feeling miserable — that I decide to
get clean for a while,” says Jade, who
works at a factory in New Baltimore, a
job she enjoys.
Although her mother considers her
to be “homeless,” Jade disagrees. She
is not sleeping in the street or in a car,
she says, but at a motel in Roseville
with a friend.
The spiral of addiction is hard to
explain, she says. The same reasons
she cites for wanting to get clean
are similar to the ones she cites for
relapsing. “Boredom and depression,”
she says. “That first time taking drugs
makes it go away, but by the next
day, I’m miserable again and feeling
trapped.”
Jade says she’s been sober from
street drugs for a few weeks. She quit
on her own, cold turkey, and is not
working any 12-step program at the
time. She does continue to see a psy-
chiatrist though. “I’m doing OK,” she
says. “I work a lot, which helps.”
She and her parents maintain a
good relationship, talking to each
other almost every day. “I think
they’ve done their best by me,” Jade
says. “I’m glad they go to Al-Anon
(a 12-step program for families of
addicts). It seems to help.”
Darrell Marx says he supports Jade

when she does anything positive in
her life. “I want to fix things for her,
but I can’t. I can only support her. I
have to let her figure it out. But when
she’s ready, she knows I’m here for
her.”
Jill Sherman Marx says she’s not giv-
ing up on her daughter. “I’m hopeful
because she’s alive. Where there’s life,
there’s hope.”
She encourages anyone in the com-
munity struggling with addiction in
their family to reach out to her at
ainjill@aol.com if they want to talk.
Jade has high hopes for beating
addiction as well. “I have to take it day
by day and just stay in the moment,”
she says. “Looking into the future
and saying, ‘I’m going to be clean and
sober for the rest of my life’ stresses
me out too much.”

ELIMINATING THE STIGMA

“Jamie’s story, Adam’s and Jade’s are
just a few of many stories that need
to be told to make a change,” Daniels
says. “The Jewish community needs
to open up and forget the stigma of
what you think an addict is. It is not
a weakness. It’s a disease.
“We can’t be afraid to speak up
anymore. Even Jamie recognized the
more your family and close friends
are aware of your struggles, the more
they can contribute to supporting
your efforts to overcome them.”
Marx adds, “Addiction is a crisis in
our world. I do need to talk about it,
and I hope other people are listening.
There’s no shame. No stigma.”
According to Lisa Edelson, a thera-
pist at Birmingham Maple Clinic,
“The stigma is going away very slow-
ly, but it takes an educated public for
it to go away completely. The more
people feel ashamed and don’t seek
treatment, the longer it will take.”
Edelson defines an addict as a per-
son who feels compelled to engage
in behavior regardless of the damage
it creates and in spite of knowing it
is unhealthy and dysfunctional —
someone who has tried to stop the
behavior and can’t and feels power-
less to control themselves. “When
they go untreated, they get worse,”
Edelson says. “It’s not the fault of the
patients.”
Now is the time to talk about the
crisis of addiction and where families
can seek treatment, according to
Daniels.
“People all around us are strug-
gling and need help from our com-
munity. That is the first step,” she
says. “Let’s rally together to help
our kids, mothers, fathers, grand-
parents — addiction doesn’t dis-
criminate, and everyone is vulner-
able. Until we step up as a Jewish
community, we’re going to lose
more people like Jamie.” •

“My son, the Nobel
prize winner!”
The Jewish scientists
who found the keys to
our body’s defenses.

ELIE METCHNIKOFF (1845-1916). b. Panasovka, Russia. Nobel Prize in Physi-
ology or Medicine 1908. White blood cells — our first line of defense.
After obtaining his four-year natural sciences degree in only
two years at Kharkiv University, Elie Metchnikoff began work in a
private lab in Messina, Italy in 1882. There, he noticed a reaction
in starfishes when he stuck small thorns into them—white cells
would inflame the affected area and then surround, attack, and
literally devour the invader. These defensive cells were named
“phagocytes,” and although Metchnikoff’s findings were initially
met with skepticism, he was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1908 for
his discovery of this key element of organisms’ innate immune
system—the body’s first line of defense. Metchnikoff’s research
into lactic acid also began the widely popular probiotics move-
ment. He theorized that ingestion of certain bacteria—often
found in types of yogurt and milk—could prolong life.

OTTO LOEWI (1873-1961).
b. Frankfurt, Germany. Nobel Prize in Physiology or
Medicine 1936. Identifying how our brain communi-
cates with our body.
Initially an aspiring clinician, Otto Loewi switched to re-
search after he arrived at the painful conclusion that mod-
ern medicine had no treatment for people with advanced
tuberculosis and pneumonia. That shift revolutionized human
medicine. Loewi, bucking the conventional scientific wisdom
of his time, discovered that neurons can communicate with
each other through chemical reactions—not only electrical
signals. This discovery of neurochemical transmission was
instrumental in pharmacology, pathology, psychiatry, and countless other medical fields. Sus-
pecting that chemicals played an intimate role in neuro-communication, Loewi took two beat-
ing frog hearts and covered them both in saline solution. He stimulated the vagus nerve of one
of the hearts, thus slowing down its heart rate. He then transferred some of the saline from that
heart on to the other heart, which in turn slowed down that heart’s rate, proving that there was
a chemical—not only an electric impulse—released by the vagus nerve that impacted cell and
neuron behavior. That chemical, or neurotransmitter, is now known as acetylcholine.

JOSHUA LEDERBERG (1925-2008). b. Montclair,
New Jersey. Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1958.
Explaining bacterial resistance. Graduating high school at
15 and receiving his Nobel Prize only 18 years later, Joshua Led-
erberg’s genetic research made him one of molecular biology’s
foundational scientists. A zoologist and doctor by training, Leder-
berg bucked most scientists of his time, who believed that bacteria
pass down exact genetic copies to their offspring. In the late 1940s
Lederberg showed that bacteria transfer and share DNA among
themselves, creating offspring with different genes that are better
adapted for that specific environment. The discovery had massive implications for biotechnol-
ogy, genetics, and pharmacology, particularly in understanding how bacteria develop resis-
tance to drugs. Lederberg went on to chair the genetics department at Stanford, write regular
science columns for the Washington Post, and advise several U.S. presidents and NASA.

Original Research by Walter L. Field Sponsored by Irwin S. Field Written by Jared Sichel

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March 1 • 2018

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