If and when I've ever chosen to tell friends about my time at the Seed, I've explained that it was based on AA principles, only more confrontational. Chris has a valid point, most people in the general population have not performed any type of self-examination so they don't understand, even the basic concept of a l2 step program. I recently had to explain to someone what the basis for AA and Al-Anon are, at 34 she'd never heard of Al-Anon and didn't know what it was for or about, odd, I figured everyone knew about those kinds of programs.
My ex-husband was in the Seed and my kids generally know what we both did as teens and we left it at that. However, we both missed the boat with them, they were both smoking pot under our noses and we didn't have a clue. I think kids today are substantially sneakier than they were when we teens, plus they didn't go overboard, particularly like their father, and they both told me after they decided it wasn't for them. Oddly they both felt guilty keeping such a secret from me and had to come clean and let me know. My oldest tried it a few times and didn't like it at all, so he quit, and my youngest had a teacher who expressed disapproval and disappointment (wonder why she never called on that one, she called about everything else!!), that plus the military was good reason to quit for him. Now drinking for them is something else, baby alcoholics in the making, hopefully time and maturity will fix that one, cause I certainly can't and won't try.
Generally though, people once they find out that I'm an only child attribute everything they know or think they know about me, to me being an only child and in their mind that explains everything. That and since we all wear different game faces for different people and places, no one really knows us but ourselves.
As an aside to Chris, I've found this dating thing to be weird too. Flirting (game playing) in your 40s is odd and half the time if a man is flirting, I miss it, friends have had to knock me upside the head and tell me what's going on, probably some throw back to the Seed I'm sure. As for flirting myself, truly odd, after having been married forever and now divorced. Makes me want to pull the blankie up over my head and take a long nap.