Personal Story of James from Straight
A New Approach to Reducing American Demand for Illegal Drugs And the Potential for Harmful Treatment Modalities
In most statments like this one, the author begins with a list of his own credentials.
I have only one real credential that I care to share.
I was mistakenly admitted to a long-term semi-residential chemical dependency treatment program. I was diagnosed in error at the age of seventeen as being chemically dependent.
I had been sexually abused starting at the age of twelve. I was the victim of three different sexual predators. One was a schoolteacher in a private well to do school. Another was a camp counselor at a church camp. Daryl was my primary abuser and the priest at my church. He had been an administrator of the camp during my previous abuse. Ironically, he was the person I first sought help from. He would later use that knowledge of my personality to make me his victim for four years.
I began to experiment with marijuana and other hallucinogens by the age of fifteen. I began to use these drugs as a way to escape the pain I felt but could not define. I was lying to my family and had started running away from home. I know now that I did these things as a result of being abused. At the time, I decided that I had a drug problem and needed treatment. It was very nearly fashionable to have a drug problem or a therapist at my school. Unconsciously I knew there was more to it.
I found out about a place called "Straight Incorporated" from a high school counselor. The pamphlet she gave me offered a place where I would be loved, protected, and most of all- away from my abuser. The pamphlet also made it clear that this was a facility of last resort. As I saw it, the program only let in the most screwed up kids. I was nervous that I might not qualify, and that I would be turned away and forced to return to the life of pain and confusion I had been leading. The seed was planted that I must to "qualify" to get into this elite and special program.
I convinced my family to set up an intake interview for me. I told them the most horrible things about my "fictional drug use". I claimed to have used thousands of doses of LSD, and hundreds of grams of cocaine. I told them I was hooked on inhalants, and speed. I made up a good story, and left all of the sexual abuse out. I was embarrassed to tell them the truth, though they had been given clues along the way. At one time I had been picked up by the police for being in possession of hard-core homosexual pornography. I had lied to protect Daryl, and he narrowly escaped detection as a sex offender.
My parents had initial reservations about me going 200 miles away for treatment. But I was adamant at this point that this was the only program in the world that could handle my vast drug problem. After attending an open meeting and a pre-intake interview they became emphatic about me getting admitted.
During my intake interview I reiterated my fantastic story of drug use. I told them I had used LSD so many times I could not count them. I claimed to be having constant flashbacks. I falsely confessed to using a litany of every drug that could be used. I stopped short of injectables, and after all I had no tracks. I related many of the sexual exploits along the way as part of the fun of my drug use, never realizing that I had been sexually abused. The people who were doing my intake suggested that I had been participating in this "twisted" sexual behavior due to my drug use, and I agreed without argument. I claimed that I had been using drugs since I was 12, when in fact I had been abused since that time. I had already internalized that I had a drug problem, and that I could blame all my behavior on that.
I was in treatment for almost two years. I had a rough program that included leaving the facility for about two months. I had become so dependent on the group that I failed miserably, and returned to group a broken man. I once again began to falsely confess to a number of sexual exploits, and fantastic levels of drug consumption. This was the only way to progress within the facility and I had learned it well. The facility also employed several techniques to break down the existing ego, abuse, denial of privacy and the like. Cut off from the real world I became immersed in the program, and finally progressed to the final inpatient phase, and became a staff trainee. I internalized the idea that I was not gay, but had gay sex as a result of my drug use. I believed I was chemically dependant. I had internalized a method of getting help through ritualized false confession. I had internalized a process for stress management that included creating conflict and confrontation as an excuse for escapism. I had told and retold my false confession lies that I began to believe them myself. I lost most of the memories of my pre-abuse childhood. I internalized the belief that all of my life prior to being in the program was the evil result of my drug problem.
I left the program early after a conflict within the staff. I was unprepared for the outside world, and had never come to terms with my pain from the sex abuse. I had been treated, and converted, but never healed. I was the victim of a clinical malpractice, and the victim of my own personality. I lived the next 15 years in a repeating cycle. I would become depressed, used some light drugs, convince myself that I was in relapse, go for help from a clinician, lie about past and present use of drugs. I had to make myself sound like the worst case ever, because that was the only way to get into the "elite group" of drug addicts. That was the only way to get the "special help" that someone as screwed up as me needed.
I began to come out of this cycle in the summer of 2001. I learned about the program I was in, and the model it worked on. I learned about Synanon, The Seed, Kids and Straight. I learned that I had been lying for years about things I never did as a tool of manipulating people. I learned that I confessed compulsively. I learned that I had been in a cult. I now am facing long-term therapy. I may have to spend the rest of my life using prescription medications. The physical abuse of the program left me with spinal injuries that plague me today. I will likely be using pain control medication for the rest of my life as well. I never did go down that predicted road to Jail or Death. I never ended up using harder drugs like heroin, or speed or cocaine. I never tried the designer drugs that came about in the years after my "treatment". I did continue to smoke pot, and be a social drinker no different than 50 million other Americans. I did do further experimentation with hallucinogens, and eventually stopped. But my life continued to be erratic and hellish as a result of my internalized belief that I had a terrible drug problem, that I had done all these horrible drugs since I was twelve and that I was doomed to fail without the group. I lost job after job due to my inappropriate stress handling skills. I became increasingly self-isolating due to my internalized belief that anyone not associated with the group was going to try and "bring me down". I became paranoid that at any time I was going to be arrested and court ordered back to the program. I became complete traumatized with regard to any kind of group therapy, as anyone would after being abused in a group.
And all of this was in the name of saving me from my non-existent drug problem. Surely there has to be a better way?
There is a better way and it is called harm reduction. I know this terminology carries some political baggage, so I like to call it the nicotine model. Think for a minute about what we do for nicotine addicts in this country.
First, they are drug addicts like any other addict. Nicotine is one of the two most addictive substances we have encountered. Caffeine is the other. I regularly see people on the streets in San Francisco begging for money for a pack of cigarettes. I see people picking up the butts from the gutter and ashtrays to get their fix. Even within many treatment programs today we allow people to continue their nicotine addiction. Go to most AA or NA meetings and you will find a segment of the group that is addicted to both nicotine and caffeine.
I was a nicotine user for a while. It didn? suit my tastes and I quit. I did not require a treatment program, or any confrontation, or even any kind of patch or classes. Since I am not chemically dependent I could simply chose not to smoke. I was habituated, and I suffered some short-term stress effects from stopping. A couple of days of irritability and I was free. But for people who are dependent what do we do?
Well in my HMO the first step is a class designed to help me decide if I am ready to quit or not. If it turns out that I am not ready, I am free to continue using my drug, even though we have clear medical knowledge that it is harmful. The second step, if I am ready to quit, is to start out on a nicotine patch. This is the core of harm reduction. I am given by a medical doctor a less harmful way to deliver the drug. I am not arrested, or ridiculed, or cajoled into this process. It has to be voluntary to work. As an adjunct to this drug delivery, I attend a series of classes designed to help me understand why I am smoking, and how to avoid starting again. I am expected to refrain from other delivery systems during my time on the patch. If I do fail in my attempt, I am not cast out of the HMO, or sent to Jail. I have the chance to try again and again, and I am supported in each decision to try to stop. The Patch is dosed in a decreasing pattern, until at the end of the course- I am no longer dependent. I have learned why I was, and how to avoid it again and I am never stigmatized as a criminal or as an addict.
Quite simply we must now apply this model to all the drugs, not just the one legal one that we tax. There has to be similar harm reduction programs and patches developed for all the "drugs". The focus initially should clearly be on the most addictive of the currently illegal drugs. Heroin, Cocaine and Speed all lend themselves to this kind of process. Later it will be vital that we develop a similar delivery system for the active compounds in Hemp as well. We will have to develop a clinical approach to helping addicts that is based in compassion and empathy- not in Punitive Prohibition.
If marijuana is a gateway drug, so is Chocolate. They stimulate the exact same receptors.
James