On 2005-09-27 17:00:00, Anonymous wrote:
"It is so clear that the Fornits advocates are young adults who were so screwed up that no program could possibly help- there is probably serious brain damage or medical conditions. The parents must have given up, leaving these angry people to rage at parents who actually found good programs and were able to help their teens.
It is a shame that these poor people have to sit and rage from behind their computer screens. You must feel so powerless and unloved. It must be hard to hear about the way the reputable programs have healed many families and allowed the teens to work on some painful issues in a safe environment. It is so much easier for you to believe that they are all bad and that the leaders are only out to make a buck. I guess that makes the pain of your own pathetic lives easier to bear.
Sorry, but I attribute a lot of my current success and my good relationship with my parents and my friends to the program I attended. It wasn't perfect, and I hated a lot of things about it. I needed to be there- I was angry, unhappy and suicidal. I would not go to therapy at home, and if I did go, I lied to the therapist. I was stealing from people and selling drugs to make money. I was failing in school. My parents could not leave me alone in the house or I would steal prescription drugs or anything else I could get my hands on. My parents made mistakes, but they are not bad people. I was given a lot of privileges, and for many years I appreciated them. At a certain point I changed and decided to try drugs, started breaking every rule I could, and was seriously on the way to big trouble. I would not listen to anything my parents, counselors or teachers said. I was 16- my parents could not kick me out of the house.
What would you brilliant anti-program zealots suggest that my parents should have done? They were so upset that their own careers were in jeopardy. My younger brother was traumatized and scared that I would be dead. When the escorts came, I was pissed. I kicked a hole in the wall. Of course I wanted to stay home and keep using drugs, drinking and sleeping in my nice house. My parents stood there and cried as I was taken out of the house. It took me about 2 weeks in wilderness- and the drugs leaving my system- to understand what was going on. It took me about another week to understand that I had gotten myself there- it wasn't my parents' fault. They truly had no choice. I had used up all the other options. I think I would have been OK if I had come home after wilderness- most kids would not have been OK. Oh- I forgot to mention the total degenerates who I called my friends before I went away. I wish their parents could have done what mine did. It was too expensive for most of them. One of those kids is dead and one never finished high school. They were both great students before they turned 16. I had to go to a therapeutic boarding school so I would be away from the stuff at home for awhile longer and so I could fix the damage I had done to my transcript at school. I hated the school, but I made great friends and I learned some important things. I learned that it was OK to have problems and to talk about them. No one at home (friends) admitted having problems, being sad or worrying about the future. I learned how to have friends who really cared about me. The staff had some morons, but most of them were great. They worked really hard, lived in a shitty small town so that they could work at this school, and spent a lot of time with us on weekends and evenings. I still write to some of them. No one was ever abused. We got yelled at, we had consequences like writing assignments and some clean-up crews. Also, we weren't allowed to speak to certain other kids if we abused some privileges- like having relationships with girls. There were good reasons for these rules, which I didn't understand until much later. I never was good at following rules, and I had to learn by having consequences. I have been out for a few years, and I still challenge authority in many ways. I have good friends and don't do drugs. I am old enough to drink responsibly.
So-you should maybe get off your soapbox about these programs and find something to attack that you might actually know something about."
I have read so many accounts just like yours on this site that I question if the story is real or just made up. There are just too many cliches and it all sounds so canned and generic, like the testimonials on the infomercials on TV where people say how many pounds they lost or how much money they made. Meanwhile, those of us with experience and common sense are fully aware that for most people these programs (referring to the infomercials) are not effective. We don't buy them. Someone must or they would not exist.
For the sake of argument, however, I will treat the story as real and genuine. I will not take the bait of the inflammatory tone and anger and the attacks like "So you should maybe get off your soapbox about these programs and find something to attack that you might actually know something about." It is clear that many people at Fornits have been in programs. They do know about them.
I will not attempt to undermine your belief that the program helped turn your life around. Perhaps you would have grown up and changed on your own, perhaps you would have died of an overdose. No one can say. It is pointless to argue the case either way.
I do not dismiss the stories of abuse by others on this board, either. There are many stories of abuse and there are news articles to back them up.
I am still 100% against these programs. Even if there were zero deaths, I would still be against them. Even if they worked for 100% of the kids sent into them, I would still be against them. In fact, the more effective the program, the more I am alarmed. Do you see the danger here?
The danger is that the more effective these techniques become, the more potential there is for widespread abuse. If you can take a teen to a facility and completely unhinge and rearrange their world view this effectively, then what stops the government or others from using the same techniques on anyone that disagrees with them? The answer is, of course, nothing. They do. In the 1960s, China used these same techniques to re-educate large numbers of its population. The Unification Church and other cults depend on these techniques to keep their flocks full. The self-help gurus such as est, Lifespring, The Forum, et al, use these techniques to convince people that they have all the answers to all their problems.
I find it both scary and objectionable that a person or group of people feel they have the right to alter someone else's psychological make-up so completely and so against the subject's will. To abduct someone and by force take them to a facility where they will be isolated from family, friends, and community; to force them to renounce everything they know and believe in and accept only the program's way of thinking, to hold them against their will indefinitely until they finally succumb to the new way of thinking, is something out of an Orwellian nightmare. This form of so-called therapy is abuse in and of itself. I don't have to hear about the blatant physical abuse to be horrified that a child (or anyone) could be subjected to such treatment in what is supposed to be a fair and open society. It is a violation of basic human rights. Everyone has the right to their own thoughts, their own opinions, and their own ideas. Everyone has the right to self-determination.
I don't have the answers for solving the problems of troubled teens. I don't need to be an expert on adolescence. I don't need credentials, I don't need experience with programs, to know that treating someone in a cruel and inhumane way is just wrong. It just is. Like murder, it is just intrinsically wrong. To rape someone's mind is no less wrong than to rape their body. To send someone to a private prison without due process of law is no less wrong than chaining them to the radiator in their room.
