The young man sitting in front of me started to pale immediately upon hearing my question. I did and said nothing. I knew what was coming. Beads of sweat started to form on his bleached white skin. Again I did nothing. He mumbled a little, tried to get anything out of his mouth. He couldn’t. He squirmed a little in his chair, noticeably uncomfortable. An extreme reaction, but unfortunately not an uncommon one.

He waited for me to say something, anything, to help him out of his pain. I just sat patiently. You might think that what I was doing to this young man was cruel. He would probably agree with you. This is what therapists call “holding space.” As parents, rebbeim, therapists, and friends, we have to let people go through pain in order to learn who they are. If there was an easier way to do it, I would. The only thing we can do is be there with them in their pain; something most of us avoid by talking to them or giving them something to eat.

It was a conversation that for this young man in particular was about ten years overdue. The question I asked him was, “If overnight you could be anything, or accomplish anything, what would you choose? Would you like to know all of Shas, all of Torah. Anything — what would it be?”

This young man had come to me because he basically spent his whole day in bed. He was not able, or not choosing, to do anything with his life. His biggest accomplishment over the last six months was that he had slept a bagel, or doughnut, or whatever they call it. If you have never heard of such a phenomenon then you are a woman. Ask your husband or male relative.

Take notice of what I asked him. “What would you like to be?” No obligation to take any action at all. All I wanted to do was to have him use his imagination and explore his dreams and fantasies. And that proposition absolutely flipped him out. Why?

Let’s first look at the situation from a therapeutic perspective. In my experience, a lot of young men have the feeling that their job in life is to produce — whether in learning or financially — with little attention paid to being able to express just how scary that is. And without having been given the tools to express any feelings, for that matter. They are given the impression that their accomplishments are of more value then who they are as a person. On top of that, they are also not given training in how to break down their big goals into doable tasks. They constantly obsess about what will be in the far-off future, and not on what they are doing in the moment. This leaves the poor young man feeling empty, lonely, lost, and paralyzed, with an overwhelming amount of fear that he is not allowed to express.

As a therapist, my job would be to teach him how to express his feelings in a safe way, recognize his self-worth, and practice self-nurturing habits. When people are healthy, emotionally and physically, they naturally want to be productive. After not being able to function for a long period of time, most young men take on too much too soon to compensate for all the lost time. So at that point in the therapy, my job is teach him how to take on goals in healthy manner.

All these points are applicable, but what if there is something else going on here that we are not thinking about? The Chafetz Chaim says that for every word of Torah that we learn, we get 613 mitzvos. Every second that we don’t have this young man learning, we have him missing out on a world of mitzvos. My job is to get him back in the game as soon as possible, not to stick to therapeutic doctrine. So that brings me to sugar. Yes, you heard correctly. Sugar.

In the year 1700, it is estimated that the average sugar consumption was about 7 and a half pounds a year. In the year 1900, the average rose to about 90 lbs. In the year 2008, that average jumped to about 180–200 lbs! Most of us know what sugar can do to us physically. Illnesses like type II diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and others have been connected to our indulgence in sugar.

But how aware are we of the effects sugar has on us emotionally? In recent studies, sugar has been connected to depression, moodiness, and hyperactivity (that was a no brainer to most mothers out there). In fact, right now the only linked cause to ADD is sugar.

Learning Gemora is difficult for most young men. The reasons vary as to why, but one big reason is because of multitasking. Men are not good at multitasking. Learning Gemora is extreme multitasking. Not only do we have to learn the actual text, we have to learn Rashi, and Tosafos as well. In order to pull of this feat, we should start off as relaxed as possible. Going through extreme emotional ups and downs and depression is quite literally the opposite of that healthy mindset that we need in order to learn.

The worst news about sugar, though, is that it is addictive. Dr. James Dinicolantoni did a study on rats, and found sugar more addictive then cocaine (a highly addictive illegal narcotic)! Another study showed sugar to be about seven time more addictive then cocaine.

I’m not sure if you people know what it’s like to be with a drug addict, but it is awful. I worked in a drug rehab clinic for two years. They are a very difficult population to work with. They can never be happy unless they are high on their drugs, and they will do anything to manipulate you into giving them their fix. Their drug is an escape from reality, which they need more and more. Torah teaches us how to embrace reality, and how every moment is an opportunity to do a mitzvah or learn Torah. Torah is itself an addiction to everything good. Drugs are the opposite.

Before WWII it was rumored that the average bochur could take the pin test. Someone would stick a pin in a Gemora, tell the bochur the first word the pin hit, and ask him what words the pin was touching on the next 100 or so pages. Very few of our kids could pass the pin test today. Where have we gone wrong?

But maybe we are not such bad parents, teachers, and educators after all? What if in our generation we are trying educate a child whose inner world is more comparable to a roller coaster than to a human being?

Now I’m not saying there is no use for emotional intervention — there most certainly is. What I am saying is that if we focus on therapy alone we are missing a big part of this puzzle.