Tell us more about this place. I've heard about this sort of thing, but it has always had quasi mythical orgins akin to Camelot surrounding it.
:rofl:
Well I was in and out of this in patient psych hospital, doing their outpatient, but then Id fail the drug test and theyd throw me back in inpatient. That kind of cycle. So then the next step was to try something more structured or long term because the home thing wasn't working and so this place was right outside the city in a more rural area about an hour away from the city. I am in southern california, this place was in a city called ramona, which is a small ruralish kind of town in the mountains east of san diego.
The place was okay, I wouldn't call it 'nice'. It wasnt vacation or anything. But looking back on it now after seeing teach laces I'd say they do a pretty good job. Since it was run by the state, it had a different class of kid than at wwasps, it was mostly kids from broken families going through the system and all that. So this was a place to stay while your parents got their shit together and you to get therapy to help you with your issues. And then family therapy to bring it all together hopefully.
Like i said, there was two of us per room. We could keep a radio and CD's (even pink floyd and moody blues, the doors) a clock, a watch, our regular clothes. The bathroom had a door and there was no strict limit on how long you could take to get ready or shower. We didnt have to line up everytime we left a building for 30 mins standing there doing nothing. They let us play football and volleyball for a couple hours every afternoon on their courts they had. We attended a charter school across the street, so it was still the same school district and a public school and credits were transferable. It helped us make up classes faster than normal school. They also taught helpful classes about basic stuff that parents would normally teach you like how to open a bank account, and fill out a job application, and apply for an apartment and deal with frustration without using drugs and violence. I found it basic, but still helpful in its simplicity of advice.. none of the 'magical child' rebuilding type of crap.
You hit the nail on the head. This place was not a program. It was a residential facility for teens with therapy, or an RTC. It was regulated by the state of California, had well qualified and really cool staff. These were people who went to college, and obviously could get a higher paying job probably or get into a profitable industry with their educational background but they choose to be there. unlike in Thompson Falls, MT, where the employees do it out of convenience a lot of times and do not have any education or experience or qualification.
We had access to payphones 24/7. So we could have calling cards and call home or our friends or whoever. Free access to mail. We had access to our psychiatrist and therapist at all times, visited with the therapist daily to voice our concerns, fears, pains, etc.
So why did I leave? Well when I left the psych hospital, the psychiatrist had me on so many meds (seriously like a dozen different pills, several times a day), it had me all whacked out. I was coming off smoking tweek and yayo, and that mixed mixed with the various pharmaceuticals caused me to start hallucinating and hearing voices. So they weren't equipped to deal with that, they didn't have an isolation room, or anything to deal with mental illness. So they called the hospital and an ambulance came and got me and dropped me off back at the psych hospital.
Spent three weeks in the hospital until all that craziness came to an end, and then they wouldn't take me back at that RTC because they said they weren't equipped to deal with serious mental illness. :roll:
So the psychiatrist then took a brochure from his desk (this was the head adolescent psychiatrist in san diego at the time) and its for none other than Provo Canyon School in Utah. So a few days later I am in a car with my dad driving to Utah. We get to Provo and the intake people take me and start processing me, and my dad leaves. Then, not five minutes later, they bring me back out front and my dad says we are leaving.
We get in the car, and he said that they said they were going to keep me in an isolation room for 7 days for observation right off the bat. He thought that was stupid, and so we drove home. It was snowing hard that day, Utah is an ugly state.
So then I am back at home and I start the day treatment program again and all that since seeing provo first hand scared my dad out of that idea. I fail another drug test and say the wrong things to my psychotherapist and then I am back inpatient again. Fast forward another week or two and then my dad comes in with some brochures from SCL, WWASPS program. In a family session with the psychiatrist, he agrees it looks okay. I agree it looks okay. My dad agrees. He puts me on even more meds. I am pretty much a vegetable by this point.
Fly to Spokane, rent a car and drive out to MT. I actually had fun on these road trips, we had time to talk and all that. We agreed, and I promised I would give this place a try until I turned 18, and never went back on that agreement. So after spending a night in a motel in the isolated western montana area, we drive up the road to SCL and get out nervously. We walk into the office together and they separate us. And that was it. They took me, and the office people took him. He was driving away within 15 minutes.
So now you know the pre-story, that my dad isn't an asshole. He pulled me from Provo because they were more upfront about the abusive conditions. SCL lied to him. But, he also changed during my stay there. I told him what was going on in my letters, and since I had been through so many other places I don't know why he wouldn't believe me. After a month or two of hoping that my letters would make an impact and I would be pulled, I gave up hope. Then I started acting out within the program, and then started spending a lot of time in isolation and getting restrained and all that good stuff.
When he sent me a letter saying that since I was doing so poorly could not leave at 18 as previously agreed, I had a nervous breakdown. My dad's a loser but he had powerful friends and so he wrote me a letter saying his friend of his who is a powerful judge, was going to get a conservitiveship and that they were going to hold me indefinitely, as I was going to be judged insane. (which they had already done, so this was not outlandish threat at all at the time). Then the family rep lays down all the 'secret' plans I had told my 'outside' therapist I had begun seeing a month prior after my dad started paying extra.
I told that therapist I was going to leave at 18, take my exit plan, get a job in the next town over and wait for my friend who was getting out 5 months later. From there, we would be roomates and help each other move on. I thought with my headstart of 5 months I could do a lot to help him. I was excited, it gave me a purpose, a reason to have hope.
When my family rep told me she knew about this, in that sly, sadistic way she did, then immediately brought out the fax from my dad (this was a carefully orchestrated psychological deconstruction on her part) saying I couldn't leave because of the judge, I lost it. This was maybe two weeks before I turned 18. I was so close to leaving it all behind, and they put up this brick wall in front of me I couldn't get over. I lost it, total breakdown at that point, walking around the facility screaming with rage, crying, I have never felt emotion like that. They didn't even try to restrain me because I was raging on a level they didn't want to mess with. They just followed me around, saying , let him go, let him go.. supervising my public mental breakdown.
So in a way, you could say everything that happened to me was of my own making.
That's what they spent all those months trying to convince me of, anyways.
:-?
