Sony sits down with Eli Erenthal a colleague and friend who has been in the trenches helping young adults struggling with addiction and other mental health issues. Eli is one of the founders of the Minyan Shelanu Drop-in Center in Lakewood NJ and is currently the Director of Operations at Our Village Sober Living home in Pomona NY. They discuss how they got involved in this field. They get real on the challenges and successes that people in the helping world live with on a daily basis.
Sony Perlman LMSW, has been working in the field of addiction for over two decades. For the past sixteen years he has been the Clinical Director of Boys Our Place, a full-service drop-in center for young men struggling with addiction, mental health issues and many other difficult life situations.
Sony has a wide range of professional experience across the mental health and addiction spectrum; he has worked in the fields of teen mentoring, foster care, and inpatient drug rehabilitation. Recently, Sony served as the Clinical Director of Arena Sober Living, a high-end sober living facility in Rockland County that boasted a long-term success rate that was second to none. In 2019, Sony opened Our Place’s first sober living home, Our Village Sober Living, a 12-bed facility, where he continues to serve as the Clinical Director. It is Sony’s dream to expand the Our Village concept to include additional homes for those underserved in our community.
Sony was educated in The New School of Social Research and has his graduate degree from Wurzweiler School of Social Work. In having worked with thousands of young people, Sony has not met a single individual that was not capable of healing themselves.