STEVEN J. YOHAY

Steven J. Yohay was born in 1950 in the Bronx, the son of a longshoreman and a bookkeeper. He graduated valedictorian from Clinton-DeWitt High School at age 16. Turning down Harvard, he spent his scholarship on a new Mustang and attended the City College of New York. There he met a woman that he became engaged to, when at seventeen, a fateful automobile accident changed the course of his life. Losing his wife-to-be was bad enough, but witnessing her decapitated form led the young Yohay to seek solace of an unusually potent nature. He became addicted to heroin, and by age 21 had a hundred-dollar-a-day habit.

At around this time, Yohay's grandmother read an article by Dan Casriel, a New York psychiatrist who had extended his private practice to include a dozen beds for the rehabilitation of drug addicts. Through special arrangement with Mr. Casriel, who was moved by Steven's mother's plea, "am I not as entitled as a rich person to see my son live?", the Yohays got their son admitted, though the treatment still ate up the family's life savings

His resolve to find a cure for his condition manifested early and was rewarded with successful completion of his treatment within one year. Steven had so impressed the staff with his precocious grasp of substance abuse theory as well as an infectiously personable nature that he became Casriel's personal protege as a counselor trainee. Through hard work and devoted attention to the clients he was serving, Steven rose to become clinical director by 1975.

Casriel was tragically struck down by Lou Gherig's disease in 1983. Steven, by this time the proprietor of the company, envisioned a significant expansion of the scope of the treatment center, and moved it to a larger building at its current home on 57th Street.

Having assembled a cast of talented managers, Yohay built ACI into the premier facility for substance abuse treatment in the New York area, currently standing as the oldest private facility for such treatment in the country. As president and principal shareholder of ACI, Steven now oversees treatment of four thousand patients per year. He expresses gratitude at his fortune in having been able to transform such adverse youthful circumstances into a thriving healthcare facility giving a second chance to so many worthy clients
(Steven J. Yohay Wiki Link)