You ADDICT you!!!

[Anonymous]

A degrading letter that is required by PFC/KHK staff to be read and discussed by clients in group:

"An Open Letter to My Counselors

I am a chemically dependent person. I need help.

Don't let me outsmart you. This only teaches me to avoid responsibility, and to lose respect for you at the same time.

Don't let me exploit you or take advantage of you. In so doing, you become an accomplice to my avoiding of responsibility.

Don't accept my promises. This is just my method of postponing pain. And don't keep switching agreements. If an agreement is made stick to it.

Don't lose your temper with me. It will destroy you and any possibility of helping me.

Don't allow your anxiety for us to compel you to do what I must do for myself.

Don't cover up or abort the consequences of my drug use. It reduces the crisis, but perpetuates the illness.

ABOVE ALL, don't run away from reality as I do.

Chemical dependency, my illness, gets worse as my use continues. Start now to learn, to understand, and to plan for recovery. I need help from a doctor, a counselor, a psychologist, or a recovered alcoholic or addict and from God. I cannot help myself.

I LOVE YOU! To do nothing is the worst choice you can make for us.

Please help me.

Your addicted person.
***********************************************

Any comments? I have to wonder why do they have to make the kids feel like so much shit and give them this warped sense of helplessness or whatever... it's quite disturbing. Even more-so, in a way since they have to read this letter, not just hear it from some peer-staffer...  

[Froderik]

Any comments? I have to wonder why do they have to make the kids feel like so much shit and give them this warped sense of helplessness or whatever... it's quite disturbing. Even more-so, in a way since they have to read this letter, not just hear it from some peer-staffer...

The whole idea of force-feeding kids the notion that they're "powerless" drug addicts is just so wrong... Essentially that whole thing there is saying to the parents, "It'd be better to practice 'tough love' and cut the 'druggie kid' off from the family than it would to continue to 'enable' them."

Degrading is right... Same shit, different century:

Chemical dependency, my illness, gets worse as my use continues. Start now to learn, to understand, and to plan for recovery. I need help from a doctor, a counselor, a psychologist, or a recovered alcoholic or addict and from God. I cannot help myself.

[Botched Programming]

I remember the endless days of mindless brainwashing dribble that staff would throw out on us. The morning would always start out with some staff trainee leading group for rules rap, then getting towards noon or so junior staff would take over and the intensity of the bullshit brain washing would increase as they would try to beat the "7 Steps" into us, then finally senior staff steps in for the the intense torture.

One rap in particular was when staff had us seperate into 3 different groups. (1) "BOPS" .... where these people were pretty much praised as they had accepted the brainwashing (2) "Stoners"... these people caught some shit but not the extreme amount as they were considered docile and would need a little work. (3) the "COOL crowd".... these people were stood up chastised, humiliated and degraded and basically had their shit blown away.

It was really amazing.... the levels of staff had come through the ranks of the phases and had no real training. It was simply kids who had mastered the art of abusing other kids.

Oh... Another rap I remember was where a junior staff member walked into the front to group with a balloon he had blown up and he let it go and once all the air had escaped, he said relate.

How in the hell was that theraputic???

[RTP2003]

Any comments? I have to wonder why do they have to make the kids feel like so much shit and give them this warped sense of helplessness or whatever... it's quite disturbing. Even more-so, in a way since they have to read this letter, not just hear it from some peer-staffer...

The whole idea of force-feeding kids the notion that they're "powerless" drug addicts is just so wrong...

Yeah, it creates a learned helplessness.  This is then exhibited by the 12-Step crowd as "evidence" of the person's "powerlessness over drugs".

Essentially that whole thing there is saying to the parents, "It'd be better to practice 'tough love' and cut the 'druggie kid' off from the family than it would to continue to 'enable' them."

Degrading is right... Same shit, different century:

Chemical dependency, my illness, gets worse as my use continues. Start now to learn, to understand, and to plan for recovery. I need help from a doctor, a counselor, a psychologist, or a recovered alcoholic or addict and from God. I cannot help myself.

Degrading as all Hell and again, the learned helplessness, plus a request for more abuse under the guise of "refraining from enabling" or "interfering with a 'therapeutic' process".  Really quite fucked-up.  The 'first step', so to speak, in creating a situation over which you have no control is to deny your ability to control it.  Then, like the good little Straightling you've become, repeat it over and over until you believe it to be true.  Then when you fuck yourself up real good, you can have a nice disease to blame it on.........

In the end, the Straightwashing process wasn't even about drugs and or drug use (except as a means of providing horror stories about those kids that went back to drugs..........), it was about learned helplessness, conformity, and a group mentality, letting the dictates of the group or the staff/stepcult override both individual choice and individual responsibility.  It was about denying the evidence of one's own senses and experiences and accepting the aproved reality edit that came down from on high, the one that told you that drinking the Kool-Aid won't hurt you.....

[Anonymous]

This might be a stretch, but it also might be plausible: In the haydays of straight, this type of degradation was mostly done on a verbal basis over and over. Nowadays it looks like it is both written and verbalized. The kids have to hear it and read it too... Not that it matters in the end so much, the results would be similar, it just seems more bold or brazen or something like that, or maybe if they write it, there's something that the programmies can show the insurance companies or something like that to get paid or whatever. How can this be construed as 'outpatient' therapy?

[MammaBird]

Don't let me outsmart you. This only teaches me to avoid responsibility, and to lose respect for you at the same time.

 Are they claiming "chemically dependent persons" are unique in this regard?  Sounds more like a fucking politician or corporate ceo to me...

  All the things listed are things most people do at some point or another and part of being fucking human.  The amount of guilt that has been installed in us for our very humanity is, on its own, criminal.

 Learned helplessness, indeed. Most kids in these programs are there because they're clear (or if not clear, they can feel it and are reacting to it) on how fucked-up the world we live in is and don't see a good reason to try and conform to it.  They were trying to beat the fight out of us and send us back 1984ed, not only clear on our guilt but loving and thanking the ones that had broken us.

[Froderik]

Learned helplessness, indeed. Most kids in these programs are there because they're clear (or if not clear, they can feel it and are reacting to it) on how fucked-up the world we live in is and don't see a good reason to try and conform to it.  They were trying to beat the fight out of us and send us back 1984ed, not only clear on our guilt but loving and thanking the ones that had broken us.

Of course, in their eyes we were getting the "help" we so desperately "needed."

[MammaBird]

Of course, in their eyes we were getting the "help" we so desperately "needed."

 I wonder how many of them really think that.  I mean, I know most of staff had been totally broken and did believe that.  But I think closer to the top, and in the cases of some parents, there was some pure fucking evil Nurse Ratchet shit going on, and they really were just enjoying crushing us.

  I watched Harry Potter 5 the other night, and the Dolores Umbridge character has me remembering a few sickeningly sweet smiles while people were in pain.

[Froderik]

Of course, in their eyes we were getting the "help" we so desperately "needed."

 I wonder how many of them really think that.  I mean, I know most of staff had been totally broken and did believe that.  But I think closer to the top, and in the cases of some parents, there was some pure fucking evil Nurse Ratchet shit going on, and they really were just enjoying crushing us.

  I watched Harry Potter 5 the other night, and the Dolores Umbridge character has me remembering a few sickeningly sweet smiles while people were in pain.

Yeah there was plenty of that...but what was that quote..? Something about the worst abuse coming from those fucktards who think that what they're doing is for the better of their victims.... that it will help them somehow.. or save their souls, etc... you know the one I mean, MB? (Antigen used to post it here a while back.)

[MammaBird]

I don't know the quote but I get what you're saying.

I think that's also due to the disconnect that has to happen to let someone get to that point, you have to stop recogonizing your own humanity, and then others'.  We stopped feeling the wrongness and the way it hurt, cut ourselves off entirely from it, and then we can cut off from it when other people suffer.  Isn't the point when that happened the point when we were truly broken?  It seems like it's where I lost the most.

[starry-eyed pirate]

...Most kids in these programs are there because they're clear (or if not clear, they can feel it and are reacting to it) on how fucked-up the world we live in is and don't see a good reason to try and conform to it.  They were trying to beat the fight out of us and send us back 1984ed...

I totally agree. Thanks for your post.