Talking behind backs!!! LOL

[Majiktrvls]

I just had this hysterical flashback of trying to have conversations with other people without talking behind backs, you know the number 2 rule!!!

"It was said by PEOPLE", "PEOPLE said", "PEOPLE are not in the room so we cant talk about them" oh shit, how funny that was, all the while talking behind backs, cause we all knew who "PEOPLE" were!!! I had some newcomer get all bent over this one nite, my mom and me talking about my host family!!! Anyone else remember that shit? I suppose that I should have been started over time and time again!! If only they had been in my mind, I would have been !! ROFLMGDAO!!!! :lol:

[JDavid]

by 1988, the rule had tightened up to where you couldn't say "someone said" or "people this or that".  We were saying "I was told..." when we wanted to repeat what someone not present said.

When someone would talk in group, they could not mention their host home at all unless the kid was in group at the time.  They would look around and find the kid before saying the host home name.

David
Kennesaw, GA

[85 Day Jerk]

I had a run-in with some oldcomers that were real assholes my second week of the program.  I had a heat rash really bad that had gotten to the point of what was known as "Crotch Rotch" in the Boy-
Scout troop I had been in as a druggie.  I had put in my request form for some Cruex or other form of relief, but we did not get packages from parents except on Tuessdays and Saturdays following Open Meeting.
   So here I am suffering, and I pleaded my case by talking about what a guy staff member had said about being a sucessful oldcomer and using Empathay and Sensitivity with newcomers and all these assholes could tell me was "No Bumming or Borrowing" and when I pressed the issue further, they start off on how I am "Talking Behind Someones Back."  I was so fucking pissed that I raised hell enough to bring the host Dad into the room and I told him point blank that if he did not get me some goddamn first aid, that he would be guilty of child abuse.  The fucking pussy had me removed from his home the very next day.  I bided my time and then during a rap about rules, I laid into both host brothers and the group as well about letting blind adhereance to stupid rules over-ride common sense and the damage that it can cause.  I told both of them to kiss my fucking ass, and that they would always be insensitive goons looking to please staff just so they could get out of the program and go back to being full of shit and they would be back on drugs within two weeks out of the program.  The whole time I was yelling this shit, I was being mauled by about 4 guys who were desperately trying to slam me back down in my seat.  I ended up being taken out of group for a One on One with my Primary Counselor, Chris Cassler, and after a long talk, I impressed him enough to get T & R that afternoon before Open Meeting.  The next morning when I got my 'care package' from my mom, there was an extra large squeeze bottle of Cruex
and 5 rolls of Butter Rum Life Savers, which I can say are the sole thing that kept me from beating a staff member to death with my chair!!
Also, through my efforts, the rule was changed to "No Gossiping or Spreading Rumors," but that did not last very long.

[marika708]

That was about the stupidest process.  I remember very distinctly listening to people talk like that the first time and thinking what a bunch of crap.  First of all, what the hell were they talking about,second of all who were they protecting by talking like that?  We all knew what they meant and if you didn't, what was the point anyway?  I had one oldcomer who wouldn't do it, she just said it was crap and refused to participate.  I hated that rule.

Marika

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
-- Benjamin Franklin

[ClayL]

It certainly insured that if you got a juicy piece of gosip that you couldn't check the source or you'd be in trouble. When I got set back for talking with one of my "druggie friends" the rumors got so bad that I was getting confronted for growing dope in exec rap. About the only time I told a staff member they were wrong. Even better, they believed me. One of my crowning moments.

In the long term though I have problems with this. I tend to take people's word for things that I shouldn't and I became entirely too trusting. Even when I knew I shouldn't be.

CL

[Antigen]

For some reason, this makes me think of the mother in the HBO miniseries, Six Feet Under. Whenever someone would cuss, she'd say "Language!"

The extreme, often distorted enforcement of the talking rules were more than just silliness. Here's an essay on that. This one happens to be about healthcare and how newspeak is being used to make it difficult to discuss certain truths. http://www.haciendapub.com/dunegan.html

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use

--Galileo Galilei

[marika708]

Where do you get this stuff?  I just finished reviewing the article, healthcare is a whole forum unto itself as far as I'm concerned, and I am really interested as to what you are doing to be in touch with these types of articles.  Please e-mail me the sites you go to or boards you frequent if you don't want to post them here.    Thanks,
Marika

Unless we put medical freedom into the Constitution, the time will come when medicine will organize an undercover dictatorship. To restrict the art of healing to one class of men, and deny equal privilege to others, will be to constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic, and have no place in a Republic. The Constitution of this Republic should make special privilege for medical freedom as well as religious freedom.
--Abridged quote-Benjamin Rush, M.D., a signer of the Declaration of Independence

[Anonymous]

I graduated from Pathway Family Center just a coulpe of years ago, and it's amazing the amount of similarities between the two places. The no talking behind backs rule. The stupid God damn songs, the motivating (waving hands in the air.) Pathway would always tell us how different they were from Straight, but from reading material on this site, they are the same place. EMSR

[Anonymous]

Please contact the survivors committee at isac@tampabay.rr.com if you haven't already done so. They are gathering info about Pathway.

[Antigen]

On 2003-02-19 10:19:00, marika708 wrote: Where do you get this stuff? I just finished reviewing the article, healthcare is a whole forum unto itself as far as I'm concerned, and I am really interested as to what you are doing to be in touch with these types of articles. Please e-mail me the sites you go to or boards you frequent if you don't want to post them here. Thanks, Marika

Well, first I remembered reading about the control of language, specifically the improper use of the active verb, in Nazi propaganda. That stuck because I've always been suspicios, on a gut level, of people when they say "... it was done..." instead of "we did..." or "they did..." That, along with all of the nonexistent words and phrases (like "intensive purposes") simultaniously drove me nuts and reminded me of the better, saner world outside.

So I just searched on "passive verb" and "nazi propaganda", learned a little and came up with a satisfactory example of what I was trying to say.

Short answer to your question is that I'm pathologically curious.

Moralizing, with the force of law or coercion, is a
far greater crime against the constitutional principles of our nation than unauthorized euphoria, regardless of the substance involved, be it chocolate or heroin.
--James