Straight is Straight - Life is Straight Lite- Step is LIFE Lite -
Prison is Step Lite
the fundamental "therapy" among these programs are identical - same processes - same steps - same rules- confrontations - varying degrees of the amount of physical abuse accepted to enforce those rules - or in some cases whether you had to break a rule at all in order to get physically abused. At Straight, from the testimonies i have read --anything went. At LIFE I don't know you guys know better than me i only visited one time, while visiting I remember people getting restrained,gettting slapped in the head for not looking straight ahead or on the girls side I can not attest to other instances AT Step,there was not alot of restraining or physical abuse going on at STEP like I heard/witnessed at LIFE - I can only remember a couple of times where a kid "acted out" enough a staff member at STEP felt it necessary - I remember one of those times vividly cause it was right around Christmas and this girl went after someone with one of those foot long real thick candy canes -
the old "Lifers" at Step used to talk about the "misbehaviors" - there seemed to be three classification of 1st phasers at LIFE -
1.ones that just sat there,quiet, kept to themselves, didn't participate -
2 ones that were not afraid to cause a little trouble by various means
3. ones that participated who were trying to get to 2nd phase
At step, all the intakes for the most part fell into category 1 or 3 and there was no need to the staff to restrain people for just sitting there, actually during my time, i remember the people who got restrained were never original intakes they were people who had been started over, getting started over sucked, thinking you were on your way and then bam- 1st phase again -
I know for me I just sat there- i felt like tearing up the place - but I was always too chicken - I know when we went to LIFE for a weekend - I remember STEP staff being worried of allowing us 1st phasers to witness the misbeviors at LIFE thinking we would "learn" how to disrupt group- personally, that weekend I always was kind of rooting for them - bolting to the doors, throwing stuff - made group a little more exciting less predictable- I stayed in that place called the "rez" but I can;t remember much about it. THere are two things I will never forget about my visit to LIFE.
1. The site of 150 kids waving their arms all at the same time and the noise of the pews lifting off the floor and back down- that alone would freak anyone out- 15 kids at STEP just didn;t have the same effect
2. There was a big guy - a 1st phaser - he actually had a beard - looked very strong - had to be over 18 - when he walked around no one would belt loop him - anyway - he got called out of group by ms. pete - and as he was walking out the double doors he yells out "FUCK ME with a COURT ORDER BITCH" I thought that was so funny - then I had a 5th phaser come over to me telling me not to laugh, slapping me on the head -
PEACE
