Where to start with this one....
So let me get this straight, because this is incredible!!!!
You AARC bashers, who went through Straight or Newton or had a "girlfriend" that did...were the epitome of healthy, law abiding, beacons of CLEAN children of high morality and values...and you were for NO reason (?) put into these facilities by your vicious parents (god love them) for no reason?
Well, I had smoked pot 10 times, used LSD 4 times and never drank. I fought with my mother (not too much, but enough to upset her evidently). My mother had me taken to a psychiatrist, who lucky for me was related to someone on staff at AARC. She (the psych.) took one look at my haircut and clothing and decided
I must be addicted to drugs. On my intake drug test, I was clean, as I did not use drugs even more than once in a month at the most frequent of times. Over a month before AARC, I had smoked pot for the last time, and two weeks before I used LSD for the last time. I decided not to do drugs ever again, because I had learned what I'd wanted to learn and I had no intention of becoming a habitual user. (I haven't used drugs since by the way, and all it took was me making the choice not to.) But of course, I had a mohawk (even though it was short, and had been my
mother's idea, in fact she'd been the one to do it for me), and I dressed strangely. Also, another of my mother's reasons for putting me in AARC was that I refused to take Dexedrine and Zoloft that had been prescribed to me by a pediatrician I'd never met before after she had a ten minute conversation with my mother -- I didn't want drugs messing up my mind.
And you know what? I was a good "CLEAN" child of
extremely high morality and values. That in fact was the main source of conflict between my mother and myself. I refused to use or eat animal products or anything that had been created using sweatshop labour. I was relentless in my morality. As I've gotten older, I've toned down a bit as I've come to be more compassionate towards people who
don't see much beyond their own sphere. Also, before AARC, I had not (contrary to the popular myth about "clients") dropped out of school. In fact, I loved school and I'd skipped no more than a handful of times. I was in the Gifted and Talented program and taking classes well above my grade. I studied Latin, and was fluent in French as well. I adored math, chemistry, and physics and stayed long after school many days (those same days I was later accused of doing drugs) to work on extra projects. I studied extra subjects - filled up all of my spares - including advanced psychiatry and legal studies. My grades weren't stellar (nothing compared to after I ran from AARC) but I had steady 80s-90s, with the occasional barely passing mark when I really couldn't get along with a teacher. I never failed a class. Outside of school was where I was really successful. I was a member of the Mayor's Youth Advisory Council and regularly met with the Mayor and City Council to discuss issues affecting the youth of Calgary. I was a member of the Calgary Youth for Human Rights group, where among other things I worked to bring attention to child victims of anti-personal landmines (in association with the Red Cross), and represented our organisation as a stakeholder in a case in court. I volunteered with the Youth Volunteer Corps many, many hours a week. I was also on the steering committee for the YVC as well as the YVC clubs in schools programs organizing the volunteer projects we worked on. Also, I volunteered independantly at a local elementary school working one on one with children who weren't thriving in the classroom (ie. children with learning disabilities, language difficulties or social interaction issues). Again, all of the times I was doing these things, I was later accused of having spent it doing drugs - although my volunteer hour log book can prove I was where I said I was. Every Saturday morning, I got up especially early to go downtown to prepare a vegan meal for the homeless people around CUPS (with a group called Food Not Bombs).
Again, my mother claimed that there was no way any teenager would get up early on a Saturday to help someone, so I must be using drugs. I worked with Amnesty International and Greenpeace. I was on a board of stakeholders that presented the interests of the Canadian youth to the G8 Ministers of the Environment, and for that I spent much time on national (and international) television and radio. And finally (although I am certain I'm forgetting something), I worked for a very high-profile lawyer in Calgary. The case we were working on just before I was thrown into AARC, was regarding legislation on the rights of children in protective care.
I was a good kid! I tried so hard to do only what I thought was right. All I ever wanted was for everyone (but especially my mother) to be proud of me. That's why it hurt so much when they put me there. When I cried in AARC, I was crying because I could not figure out what I had done wrong. I didn't understand why they had put me there. I waited for weeks for AARC staff to realize the horrible mistake that had been made and let me go. But they never did. They just told me over and over that "you don't have to use drugs to be a druggie" and "druggies don't have rights". They did there best to break me and make me come to terms with "my disease" and "powerlessness". They told me over and over that "intellectualism", being a vegan, not shaving my legs, fighting against unjust laws (like the one I'd been working against in court), and fighting with my mother were "my disease" and "keeping me sick". Everything I'd ever done right, everything that I believed in they told me was wrong. Not only that, they tried (and in a lot of ways succeeded) to make me believe that all I'd ever done had only ever been calculated to hurt those around me. This could not have been further from the truth.
I did not need "help". I was exactly where I needed to be, doing what I needed to do. And I helped a lot of people in the process.
So, in conclusion, I was 1. healthy, 2. law abiding, 3. clean, 4. of high morality and values; and I was for NO reason (at least nothing even close to a valid reason) put into AARC.
