I just read your post from a few years back. It may be too late to respond but I will anyway. I was in Straight Orlando from around april 89 to december 90 a total of 20 months or so. My name is Jeremy. Description of the building: A big warehouse of course. There were two main rooms that the kids were in. In the morning there was the smaller multi colored carpet room where our bags got searched and where we sat on the floor before our rap sessions started. The other main room was huge and mostly white. There were 12 large signs at the front of the roon hanging from the rafters of the ceiling, that each had one of the 12 steps on them. I feel about because was posted on another wall. The serenity prayer was in front on white plywood, behind where the staff member would usually sit. There were like 2-3 rooms on the side of this big open space. This was used for sick people. A boys and girls bathroom and a small kitchen area, where we stashed our lunches. There were two time out rooms or intake rooms that were a hallway that separated the main open white room from the front reception office. These 2 intake rooms were small and covered with some sort of fabric board that were stained. The floors were covered in loose white tile and concrete.
Every day in Straight was anguish. A min. of 14 hours on monday, 12 hours tues-thursday, a min. of 16 hours on friday. Cant remember how long we were there on sat and sundays. Every other weekend we went to an out of town host home, so we didn't have to go there on those weekends. Kids were separated into groups- girls on one side boys on the other. Every hour there were rap sessions. Confronting our pasts and hoping not to get yelled at. Trying to say the right things, show remorse, show change, show regret. Most of the time though, the raps were about having done something wrong or having bad thoughts or looking at something that was against the rules. It was constant paranoia and mind games. You had to put up with it, not knowing you were destroying your conscience, your sense of right and wrong, etc. Essentially you believed the shit that was thought up or made to believe. I digress. If you didn't comply you were physically abused, constantly picked on, sleep deprived, made to write thousands of wortd essays in a day, encouraged to be a rat, nutritionally deprived, no privacy allowed unless an upper phaser. Watch and be watched using the restroom and or shower. The list goes on and on.
If you want to know more, contact me anytime. I will help if I can.
