So I just decided to look into Straight on the internet 2 days ago. I had blocked my experiences out from consciousness for many years. I hope in telling my story it benefits me and others. I also hope it allows me to come in contact with people that I may have liked and despised during this period of my life. Although, I'm sure those that I despise are no where near a site or group like this today. I'd like to prequalify my story by saying, I think that I had it far better than many other stories I've read. At the same time, my experience of only 4 or 5 months in Straight in 1990, significantly altered my personality and my way of looking at the world and people.
I lived in Harrisburg PA with my mother, father, and younger sister. We had been a close knit family until adolescence. My parents were fundamentalist Christians and hence were strict disciplinarians, although I went to public schools and most of my friends were non christian. At 16, I started to rebel, which mainly consisted of arguing, yelling and screaming at my parents, and punching walls several times. On one occasion, I told my mother to "Eat shit and Die" after I was grounded for 1 week after being 2 minutes late for curfew which was 10:00pm on a summer weekend. I was a normal kid that played sports worked 2 part time jobs, had a summer landscaping business, and had a girlfriend that I was best friends with. The only drug I had ever tried was nitros oxide one time with some friends of mine that worked at a Dairy Queen, unfortunately for me I admitted this to my parents once during a family discussion. I wanted to be honest with them because they were searching for reasons why we didn't get along anymore.
I didn't know that my parents were going to tough love meetings at that time because they were convinced that I was out of control and needed help. One Saturday morning June 30, 1990, I had gotten up early to go out and mow some of my customers grass and my parents told me that I would have to reschedule because we were going to an all day family counseling program in the Washington D.C. area that was endorsed by the President. When riding down in the car we were accompanied by a parent of a client in the program who sat next to me. The back door's had their child locks enabled and I rembered telling my father "that his door's were broken in the back he would need to get them fixed."
I remember pulling up to the building and seeing several girls getting out of a car/minivan holding on to each other like a human train. Then we entered and I sat down with an intake counselor and my parents and then knew something was not right. The counselor asked me questions for it seemed like an hour. the questions were mostly related to drugs and my drug use and I had no idea what they were talking about. After a while, I told the counselor that I would really like to discuss what is going on with my family still thinking this was family counseling and this nut head was focused in the wrong place and at that time I was told that not to be manipulative and led into an intake room. I believe the intake counselor was a staffer named Craig. He was tall 6-1 with blonde hair a big nose and was a graduate of the program. I found out later he had been on the Oprah Winfrey program with his mother as a "shining example" of what Straight did for families. I really hated this mother fucker for a long time and believe that I could have killed him on site with little remorse for many years. I understand why you don't see many staffers on sites like this.
Being led into group with people motivating was one of the scariest moments of my life. I remember several people standing up saying something to me and sitting down onto a plastic blue chair while falling into deep into my psyche. A part of me died that day the part that was innocent and the part that was good. That was the first day I began to hate and I shook off forever the wide eyed optimism of boyhood. The first piece of burning repressed anger that I felt was directed towards the person next to me and behind me that punched me in the back repeatedly to keep my back off the chair while motioning my eyes forward toward some Latino staffer leading a group session that mean't nothing to me while I wanted to wallow in my sadness. The kid that puched me was named Joe and had hang ups because everyone always thought he was gay.....I would think so too supported by his manorisms.
I believe I was in shell shock for the first 5 or 6 days. In fact upon waking up in the host home my first morning I was so happy becuase I had realized that I had just endured the worst but most descriptive dream of my life. What a crushing experience to open my eyes. I also was not able to shit for 10 days and was in major pain. I no longer had control of my body, my actions, my environment around me, or the people who surrounded me. The lock down and control was absolute. Sure you could fight all of those things directly some people did when they "went off", I was a skinny blonde haired blue eyed kid with glasses from middle class suburbia. There was no way I could win at 150lbs of me. I would win eventually by using my mind...........this was the one thing Straight could not take from me.....
Before Straight, I was under the impression that people who messed with drugs would always end up as junkies. Sort of like someone who smoked a cigarette would end up instantly addicted. One of the only things I can thank Straight for is quickly diminishing this notion. I enjoy smoking marijuana very much today and the occasional use of hallucinogens. If I would never had been to Straight, it is likely that I would have missed out on the joys of recreational drug use......
By the second week I had not admitted to doing any drugs or any of the behavior necessary that the program needed to justify to my parents that I was in need of this aggressive treatment and that without this program I would surely end up in jail....a mental institution or death.....(On a side note I ended up graduating from a top tier Northeastern college with honors moved to London directly after undergraduate school to work for a global powerhouse consulting company while attending graduate school there and at times I have made more money than 92% of the rest of the country based on annual tax return studies....never once did I go to jail, a mental institution, or die.....and my parents helped me accomplish none of it as I would not take any of their help for some time).
I believe at this time staff members (the Gestapo) directed the 4th and 5th phaser's(Nazis) to torture me into a confession. One night after our open meeting we arrived back to my host home and the 2 old comers took me into the bedroom drew a horrible picture of me and put unflaterring words(that I have blocked out) all around the paper. They then had me stand 1 foot away from the picture forced me to stare directly at it for three and a half hours while they yelled at me and spit in my face. The worst part wasn't the sleep deprevation nor was it the public humiliation....as funny as it may sound it was their violation of justice and my integrity that hurt the most. I remember wondering why one of the parents didn't came in to stop it and I know that the 4th and 5th phasers enjoyed what they were doing. The one 5th phaser was named Mike and he was about 5'9-5'10 had dark black hair and was hairy like a troll. The 4th phaser I think was named Jake and he left the program by his own choice soon after he was fucking huge a bodybuilder and in phenominal shape. He was one of the reasons I decided initially that Physical resistence was futile.
I know that many Straightlings had serious problems with drugs and alcohol. I am sometimes glad that both of those individuals had these addictions and other times I hope they don't take the Suicide way out that many other Straightlings did by committing suicide but rather live a life of slow torture. Sometimes I've wished I could fight them and physically hurt them. I wish I could have a conversation today with them and forgive them. As long as I stay angry at people like them and people that have hurt me......I find that I hurt other people and perpetuate the sicknesses of the Straight Philosophy. I have a little girl and I want to heal myself and this world as much as I can..... for her sake not for mine, I'm already jaded.
That therapeutic experience and others equally as diabolical had still not taken effect. I hadn't been broken. I still had a hope that my parents would wake the fuck up and pull me out. Despair had not completely set in yet. Despair-Loneliness-Embarassment-Humiliation-Subjugation-Manipulation- these were the tools of Straight. They were administered freely by Straight to Perpetuate their income stream....to perpetuate power for former collosal fuck ups the Gestapo.......and to facilitate a sense of unity and communion for Parents that were hurting(many of them due to their own faults and failures).
But the slow tick tock of time did take it's toll on me. I remember there were 2 brothers a 15 year old and 17 year old brought to straight about 3 weeks after me. One of the kid's name was Lance. Lance's friends and girlfriend found out where Straight was and many mornings they would stand at the entrance with sign's of Support for Lance and his brother. I will never forget that!!! It hurt terribly to think of the people whom I loved and loved me and made selfishly long for the same support. Within 1 or 2 weeks the brothers were let out off the program and declared not to be drug addicts. I think they were let out while I wasn't for 2 reasons. #1 my parents had money and assets where Lance's mom was divorced and lower middle class. #2 the signs of support in the mornings had the potential to bring unwanted attention to Springfield Straight at a time when the VA Dept of Health was monitoring the program (motivating was stopped that summer). Sadly the fact that neither of them were drug addicts probably had little to do with their release.
With Lance's release I give up personal hope. The torture and mocking therapy continued. I started to spend much of my time thinking about death. Wishing and trying to build up the courage to get out of my blue seat and charge head first into the wall in front of me hoping that I might break my neck. The only thing I had to look forward to were my twice a day rides around the greater DC area. Prior to straight I had never been farther south than Baltimore, MD. But I began to memorize all of the various ways to get to straight from DC, or Fairfax, Franconia or Harrisonburg, from Columbia or Wheaton or Mclean. I also comitted the street signs and highway sign's to memory. This would serve me well in the future.
At my lowest point, in the early days of August I decided that the best way to fight would be to beat Straight at Straight's own game and then make an escape. I admitted to being a drug addict and admitted to being molested and excessive masterbation. Straight cared so much about my rehibilation no one ever probed me about my drug use. They would've found out I knew nothing about drugs and only recycled stories that I heard others tell well interweaving them into real things that happened in my life. For instance I would have thought that Acid was something you smoked in a joint if probed. Slowly the communal perception was that I was working the program.
The molestaion was the real kicker it felt great to release that built up pain and it bought me second phase. Because it was proof that I was getting honesrt. I then had credible reasons as to why I fit the Straight Profile. Within another 3 weeks I made 3rd phase......wow what a relief. When my mother came down to visit at my host home the Quamruddin's for a week in late September/early October. I could sense that there was jealosy at my rapid ascent in the program I could tell that my loving supportive pers were about to get me busted down to first phase again. One evening at my host home I wanted so badly to communicate to my mother what was happening, to ask her to save me from it but if family communication was strained before straight it was now severly fucked up..............all or most of my communication with my family was sham.....I had deep seeded and justifiable hatred towards them......but yet saw how they were beng manipulated and taken and could do nothing about any of it. So I stole my mother's keys and $10 from her purse. Jumped out a 2nd story window while I was supposed to be reading Moral Inventories (what a fucking joke....as if someone really is going to be coerced into a true moral accounting) and flawlessly navigated myself from Franconia to Springfield and from Springfield to Baltimore and from Baltimore home. Never to return there again. What a complete rush that ride was. what I sense of freedom. I was certain that if the cops tried to pull me over I would crash the car and die rather than be taken alive. I wish that everyone that is reading this may also experience at least one time in their life the dual sense of joy and focus I had while driving my parents stolen car for 2 and 1/2 hours.
When I got home I had friends that protected me from my parents and provided me with love shelter and legal representation.
There are people who harmed me and people who I saw harmed while in Straight. I wish to speak with all of them or any of them. I am proud to say on my ascent up and out of Straight....I never fucked over any of the people I was responsible for. I never abused in the same way I was abused. I never maliciously hurt the hurting that were in the program. And most of all that my conformity was a sham and my spit therapy back at the Hitler's, Gestapo, NAzi's, and polish Fucks who abused all of us. At the same time, I feel guilty for not bringing the 1st phaser's with me that were at my host house when I escaped particularly Kenny Smith my friend. It was not practical and would have jeopardized my operation and my freedom...I'm sorry I let them down.
I plan to follow up this message with a much more condensed message that details how I've been changed and what the evils of straight were.
