The nights are tough for Jesse Malin. Since suffering a rare spinal stroke in May that left him unable to walk, the New York singer-songwriter regularly awakens, alone, in the pre-dawn hours and asks himself if this is all really happening. He reaches for his legs, which still lack feeling, and struggles to turn himself over. And then the fear comes.

“I have a lot of anxiety and insomnia. Your mind goes into some dark places,” Malin tells Rolling Stone, checking in seven months after he was rushed to the hospital,...