What's really hilarious is that I have had some interesting and productive dialogues here that included MGDP, TSW and others when I was just "Guest." As a Guest I could be a member of Fornits, but as someone with a real username and with what I have said and done, I'm just another stupid program parent to be ignored or flamed. I have on this forum and ST expressed mostly anti-program sentiments and have advised other parents publicly and privately to stay away from the Troubled Teen industry, and to not send their kid to wilderness and especially to not send their kid to a Therapeutic Boarding School which is neither therapeutic nor much of a school. If I have helped even one parent (and I think it's many more than that) to avoid making a mistake, then I've had a positive impact.
I feel lucky that my son had a positive experience in the wilderness, but I know that many others do not. "Luck" should not be a factor when consider "therapy" or "recovery" options, and my wife and I were foolish and definitely beyond desperate at the time. The fact that I still post here and on ST should be a good indicator that (a) I'm not really "ok" with what we did, (b) I don't want other parents to make uninformed decisions that could really fuck up their kids and (c) I resent the strong pressure that was applied to us to send him to a TBS after wilderness, despite the fact that he did so well in WC (by their assessment, not just mine) and that I felt like 7 weeks was already a pretty long time for him to be away from the real world.
Every time I try to write about wilderness, I find myself using words that appear to defend it, even when just trying to explain what happened and what didn't happen.
I apologize for trying to compare how wilderness therapy today is different from boot camps or abusive death marches like Challenger. To do so only sounds "pro-program" and might encourage some parent to send their kid to wilderness after they catch him smoking his first joint. That would be wrong on many levels and would undo what little bit of good I may have done these last few months.