Straight Inc. was structured to reform my thoughts. In assuming that addiction was my primary diagnosis at the time, Straight Inc. labeled me as a compulsive human being unable to control myself without a specific system of faith. The structure of the program was designed to take a compulsive person and give them a new compulsion. Since I was not compulsive prior to my enrollment, I had to learn to become compulsive first. Only then did I acquire the approved compulsion. I think this proved true for many of the children admitted at the age of 12-13, who were marijuana experimentors. They would typically cop-out after becoming an oldcomer at least once, and generally would use more drugs than they did prior to enrollment. This was what they were conditioned to believe would happen, and therefore it did. Thought reform as practiced by the Chinese and North Korean armies has worked effectively in the same fashion for generations.
It has been nearly 19 years since I was enrolled in Straight Inc. During that time I have been unable or unwilling to think at this level of detail about the structure of what I went through. Yesterday, I gave four hours of video testimony to a young man working on a documentary about these kinds of abusive treatment programs. It was exhausting and intense, much like writing this first section of my story. But throughout both of these events, as well as attending the conference in July of 2001, I have grown.
In my opinion, there are four fundamental flaws with Straight Inc. as I experienced it. These flaws are shared by some programs in operation today.
- "Para-professionals"- People who graduate a from a treatment program do not become "doctors of addiction". My intake was done by phasers, my primary therapy was from oldcomers, and then from graduates. The few times that I had one-on-one access to a clinician was when I was exiting the program.
- Inclusion of the "higher power" spirituality aspect of the AA recovery model.- I understand that there are plenty of people out there who feel sure of their spiritual beliefs, and I am one of them. However, it is clear to me now, I was coerced into adopting a system of faith that included a code of morality that infected me with internalized homophobia. I was taught how to hate myself for being gay, in addition to being a special kind of fag-devil-addict that seduced a priest. The generic nature of the imposed faith system does not provide haven outside of the constitutional guarantee of Freedom of Religion. Coercion in twelve step programs violates this most fundamental principle of our culture.
- Use of so called "host homes" or other forms of semi-residential or foster housing.- These unlicensed foster homes, by any name, are inherently unsafe and completely unpredictable. No matter how many rules are in place, I can not be convinced that there are unannounced inspections at 3 AM to see if the children are sleeping in locked rooms, have been denied access to a bathroom or forced to perform sexual acts. How can we possibly do an adequate job of regulating hundreds of separate housing facilities like this ? If a program is residential, then it must house clients onsite, in a group housing facility that is open for inspection to state regulators without advance notice. If a program is not residential then the child-client must be housed in their own home. Taking children away from their families and housing them in private prisons goes against the most basic knowlege we have about the value of maintaining family structure. Rearranging families in this manner is a hallmark of religious cults throughout history, and it is just as dangerous in treatment cults as well.
- Making Primary Diagnosis of Adolescents- Many in the world of Therapuetic Clincians have confirmed for me that such diagnosis are generally considered to be extremely difficult to make. Professional ethics in the field generally discourage such actions. The convential wisdom in the field is that the psyche of an adolescent is in such a state of flux, there is no reliable method for making these diagnosis. Any diagnosis made prior to the age of 18 is considered temporary at best. It is thought that more damage can be done by making such diagnosis rather than patience and observation along with harm reduction until the process of maturing out is completed. Only then can a reasonable assesment of the psyche be made in the majority of cases. Labeling adolescents with diagnosis seems to as often as not become a self fulfilling prophecy. Especially with diagnosis as flaky and unclear as addiction, for which there is still no scientific basis.
Today, I am learning how happy I am that I did leave the program early. Recently, I tried to imagine what I would be like if I had gradutated and continued to be a staff member. I suspect I would have risen to upper ranks and become a heavy advocate for Straight Inc. I was well on my way to being one of the best little fascist in the new army of drug free kids that Straight was building. . It was a close call with closed minded loony's who intended to save me from myself.
The overwhelming questions that many of us live with- what happened to all the rest of us ? Where are we now ? I could list a hundred names right now of people whom I would just like to see once, to say how are you, where are you ? what happened to you ? How many are dead ? Too many I think. It is my hope of course to move us all to come forward and make our personal experiences public. Right now, we are risking an entire generation on these "Therapeutic Community" modalities. There are no hard numbers on success because the company is out of business. All records of clients are most likely destroyed by now. Only those of us who were there can any longer say what really happened, and only if we all speak out can we gain any insight into the real long term efficacy realities involved.
It is my opinion that Straight Inc. existed in a Newtonian world, a world before Einstein, before everything became relative. In this world life is at best understood via a set of absolute beliefs. The core absolute beliefs are:
- "In adolescence, all drug use is abuse, and requires immediate, long term, aggressive tough-love & treatment."
- "Recovery is only possible if the subject believes they were insane, and that a higher power is required to restore their sanity."
- "Any adolescent who uses drugs is doomed to a life of self destruction immorality and evil, unless they find our TRUTH and come to hold it as a system of faith."
- "Any behavior that is undesirable, based on our beliefs, can be directly attributed to the adolescent's drug use, regardless of when the behavior started, before or after drug use was initiated."
- "Most doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, therapists, counselors, parents, educators and clergy fail to understand the nature of the problem (as we define it) and therefore are unlikely to be of any help to an adolescent who has used drugs."
- "Society is well on the way to a total collapse as a direct result of adolescent drug use, our culture is falling apart and will soon be in ruins if we do not take drastic and aggressive action."
- "Guilt and shame are vital emotional components of life, and provide the impetus for all rational decision making in society. If people do not feel guilty or ashamed, they will not know how to make good choices."
All of these things combined (there are more I am sure) are the core values of the cult. The cult is based very much on the life experiences of old, bigoted, stuck up, anal retentive, sexually repressed, religious zealots who feel that they have a superior manner of living, and that it is vital to spread, through any means, the absolutist faiths that guide that lifestyle. These people thought that it was morally wrong to "feel too good". They lived through their own horrific tortures and, as is often the case, went on to torture others. They consider spiritual dependence to be the only acceptable dependence.
It is human nature to desire an alteration of ones conscious. Throughout history < href="http://www.csp.org/society/docs/csp951010.html">mystics, saints and others have sought out these altered states. Children spin for just this reason. They get dizzy, the world looks funny and they get giddy -all fall down. People snowboard down large mountains, sometimes putting themselves at risk of life and limb, for the rush it provides- again an alteration of their conscious. People go to church, have sex, run marathons, create artwork, eat chocolate & ice-cream and do myriad other things for the same reasons. Have you ever tried prayer in the Muslim style? You touch your head to the ground that many times, at that speed and see if you don?t get dizzy.
In the end we all have to ask ourselves, not a higher power, what we believe. I believe that the risks of damaging my body in marathon running are too high, so I do not run the marathon. It is a decision, like any other in life, based on risk vs. reward. My perception of the reward is simply not worth my perceived risk.
In my opinion there are three kinds of people in the world. Those who feel it is necessary to determine risk/reward decisions for others. Those who feel it remains exclusively the job of individuals. And then there is the majority of people, who think there is room in this debate for relativity.
This is the overwhelming silent majority who think some behaviors may be wrong and self destructive, but not necessarily deserving of criminal status. The first group, by their very nature, tend to end up in positions of authority and power, for they seek it out. They see their actions as altruistic in all cases and refuse to accept that they could be deceived or mistaken in their convictions. The second group, by their very nature, fail to aquire the power or influence necessary to affect opinion. The rest of us, the majority, tend to behave like church mice. We think that if we just eat around the edge of the cheese, the trap might not get us.
The advancement of socialistic ideals, for instance the ideal that you can go to a hospital and get treatment for a emergent condition no matter what your ability to pay, leads to a belief that drug use puts the community at risk financially. We have all heard it, the cost of drug use in the workplace and so forth. This same argument was made for prohibition of alcohol last century. Sensationalists spread rampant fear with reports of the dangers of not just extreme but even moderate alcohol use. The risks incurred during prohibiton proved far greater, bathtub gin was effective and deadly; as likely to blind you as get you drunk. Science today is discovering that in fact the French paradox of high fat diets and low rates in heart diease can be directly attributed to the daily consumption of red wine.
This altrustic-for-your-own-good-risk-limitation school of thought does not apply to snowboarding, water skiing, or backpacking all of which clearly put the paticipants at risk of harm, potentially death. These behaviors add costs to society as well, through rescue operations and cost of insured injuries.
Another example is insurance, we all want it, we all pay for it. Thus we create a situation where anyone who participates in a behavior that raises "risks" in life may cause everyone to pay more in rates. This is often the argument for drug testing, coerced treatment etc. By that logic, we should outlaw the automobile immediately. It creates an undue level of risk in our society, but we accept it for the reward of getting there faster than walking. I would think the solution is not prohibiting the behavior that raises risks, but accurately raising the cost to join the pool relative to the risk behaviors. Certainly it is unreasonable to expect to successfully cut the undesirable's out of society. this strategy always ends up in class warfare and has never succeeded in the long term. The vision of a world where there is no crime and no unemployment is only possible when half the people are prisoners and the other half are prison guards.
People who don't use drugs see little reward for doing so. People who use drugs see little risk in doing so. Both camps argue the point endlessly.
In my opinion, the founding fathers were well aware of this situation. They felt that the answer was states rights. Their ideal solution was that the states and the local communities would be able to make their own judgments about risk/reward situations and pass laws on a local basis that fit the community ethos. You can see this today with the definition of obscene with regard to porn. One city has it and the next one doesn't, even in Alabama. The decisions are made locally. However, this does not apply with risk/reward decisions about drug use- that is something that the federal government ought to force down the throats of the states. And so we have situations like Gen. Ashcroft breaking up the medical marijuana clinics in LA based on the concept that the federal supreme court makes that decision rather than the people in a local or state community. Even more egregious in this situation is the idea that the DEA should be making medical decisions instead of your doctor. Do you want them doing your surgery too? Do you want the most restrictive or the most liberal standards that exist in any one locality to govern all localities ?
The first casualty of war is the truth. The war on drugs is no different. People who drank alcohol were once labeled as "feeble minded". Masturbation was once believed to lead to premature development of the genitals and again 'feeblemindedness". In our country there was once a movement to sterilize all "feeble minded" people to protect the gene pool. How many of us would not be here today had our grandparents been sterilized for jacking off? How many beautiful creative people won't be born because of the minimum mandatory sentences of non violent users of medical but unpatented drugs?
How long before someone advances the idea of sterilizing all convicted drug users, to protect the gene pool? Indeed some women have already been put in this position with regard to crack use.
I am not an advocate for drug use; I think that is a choice that people have to make for themselves. I am an advocate for their right, and the rights of local communities to make these decisions without heavy-handed federal manipulation and intervention.I would really prefer that the Federal Government work on job-one, protecting me from enemies of the state. As much as I want all junkies to get help and see them brought back into the fold of social engagement, I find it impossible to see them as such a threat to national security as to warrant incarceration. Obviously if a junkie breaks and enters there should be a punishment, but should it really be more severe if he is high when he does it? And how does it provide true deterrance, except for the fear of a gang-rape or victimization within an overburdened criminal justice system.
I can not accept the concept that all the junkies on the street are really terrorist sympathizers with poor grooming or language skills; who will drop their needles in a mass patriotic rejection of their "white angel".
When I woke up last year I had to make a risk reward decision. Were the risks of being jailed or sued for my statements about what happened in my life greater than the reward of making it public information? I think you can all guess my choice. Treatment for addiction is a thing that will not go away. I don't even think it should go away, but what happened at Straight Inc. did not fit the conventions for good medical or clinical care in any way- then or now. This was known, to use the parlance of the group, and explains why we were coerced into keeping the secret.
No doubt, some would prefer that we continue to remain silent. "Be a good little addict, and sit in the corner". Except that many of us were not addicts then and are not addicts today. We were argumentative and difficult, or abused and in pain, but our treatment plans recognized no difference in these situations. We were all labeled as 'afflicted with a disease of our morality', and had to learn to think the "right" way. I am thrilled that some people were saved, but we can no longer afford to deny how many have been harmed.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The people who ran Straight Inc. had the best of intentions. I hope they reached their destination.
