On 2003-05-29 14:56:00, Anonymous wrote:
"I find it hard to justify that mental damage occurs from Pathway Family Center.
I find it hard, impossible in fact, to justify the damage these people do too. That's how people who don't know the lingo would interpret your statement all by itself.
But I know what you mean and I also note that, your very next sentence, demonstrates the opposite.
I was addicted to many substances prior to entering treatment at Pathway, which was my fourth treatment center.
Here's the common clinical definition of addiction:
"compulsive need for and use of
a habit-forming substance (as heroin, nicotine, or alcohol) characterized by tolerance and by
well-defined physiological symptoms upon withdrawalIt's almost impossible for someone to become seriously clinically addicted to even one substance in the short period of time a teenager has to accomplish that feat.
While I do think you're FOS, I have no intention of setting you back, starting you over, calling in your days or even blowing you away. I know you believe it because that's what you have been required to believe. But I doubt very seriously that you actually have been addicted to many substances.
My relapses after each prior center were detrimental to me becuase I returned to more severe use after the treatment centers. Since Pathway, I have not used anything but cigarettes. By looking at my life in individual, group, and family sessions, I was able to find the core issue that contributed to my drug abuse. I was not forced to call myself an addict. I didn't call myself an addict until I started going to meetings on 4th level. I admitted that I had abused drugs, but hadn't seen my addiction as an addiction, and I was still able to move up the levels. I was never physically abused, and never forced to admit anything. I sat on first level becuase I didn't want to get honest. I got sick and tired of lying and sitting in my shit, so I told the truth about my past. This is when I started moving. I have been out of the program for a while, and don't see mental damage stemming from taking a sober honest look at myself.
"
If there's one thing about the Program I hope you'll carefully examin and totally reject, it is the idea that, without the Program, you're doomed to be some kind of skidrow junkie or something. That is such bunk. I know a lot of people, though, who believed it so strongly that, when they finally came around to the fact that, no matter how hard you try, you will never meet the Program's expectations, they acted asif the only other alternative was total immersion in hard drug use. It never was that way, but because they believed it, it may as well have been.
When you start having difficulty reconciling your need to live and act like a full fledged adult with the Program world view, please consider other options than the horrifying one they pretend is the only other.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach him to use the Net and he won't bother you for weeks.
--Anonymous
