Thank you very much for you supportive comments.
You are right, this website is basically the land of the losers. Everyone is a fashionable victim. I have never seen a former boot camp attendee ever write about just what self-destructive (and almost certainly illegal) behavior caused their parents to send them off. They are all victims. Come on now gang, be men (or women). Stand up for your own self-destructive choices and actions. Admit that most of you were drug abusers (probably still are) and that you could not control yourselves.
No, no one wants to own up to his or her teen-ager behavior. If you read the posts, sound something along the lines of this: I was a good (well, mostly good) teen. One day I was walking home from school and was abducted by space aliens. They kidnapped me and took me to this awful place called boot camp...."
The most candor one finds is when someone says they were "doing teenage stuff", which one will "grow out of". That comment seems to encompass such "stuff" as drug use/dealing, violent behavior, rebellion against parental authority, running away, drunkenness, failing school, etc. A good truth-in-posting-rule would require each poster to honestly state the actions and choices he or she made that caused his or her parents to spend their hard earned money in attempt to save their child.
Some posters, such as Ginger, required two trips. Ginger, why did you not give up drugs the first go-around?
The answers back are all the same: Quack, quack, quack -- if you support any boot camp program you are a child abuser -- quack, quack, give-me-another-joint, quack, quack, etc.
From what the parents write, the biggest problem seems to be they took their kids out too soon. So, parents, are you happy now with your teens? Are they back on drugs? Do you sleep well at night when they are out? Do they sound like Devlin?
What kills you victims out their in Frontisland is when people like us write about how the book camp worked for our kids. It just highlights that you failed. Failed utterly. Failed completely. And that in those dark moments of your loneliness, when one drug is wearing off and the other has yet to take effect (sound familiar Ginger?) you realize, despite all of your claims of "abuse" and "torture", that you are failures: you failed as teens and now fail as adults. Now, in that desperate search for meaning, the search that gives you some glimmer to live for, you must attack the vary programs that might have saved you from your current oblivion.
And so, you all meet up each evening. You convince yourselves that your are victims (thus not responsible for your own behavior) and rile against those who have saved their children from your fate. And then, when you log off your computer and pass by the mirror, you look at yourself and know the truth...
Fondest Regards, Nemo