Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Straight, Inc. and Derivatives
Growing Together of Lake Worth, Florida
Blopa:
It's me I am Blopa (Pablo) and I wrote a much longer reply, but it 'blanked out' or disapeared when I was about to post it, maybe because I am not a registered user anymore. The story of the password is a long one: I was receiving emails constantly for unrelated issues, so I changed my email address at this forum. Now I can't log in anymore with my initial username.
I did not revisit this site for a while until I could make up my mind regarding my son's placement. Up to then I had nothing to contribute.
Nobody asked me to write anything, I did not get in trouble and I did not pull my son.
I am getting kids 3 and 4 times a week, I talk with them a lot, play with them, eat with them. I talk to other parents and with former 'clients', etc. Up to this point I think that this is a good program. There are several kids that leave the day they become 18 (so they can sign themselves out!), and others that chose to stay. There are kids that are droped of the program by staff because their parents do not participate. I witness all of this, nobody told me this things.
I guess that unlike cancer, the treatment and cure of drug addiction is still a 'practice' and not an exact science. But after 3 or 4 other treatment programs and years of counseling, this is the best alternative we know. Like others, my son was way on his way to kill himself with his life on the 'outside'; I doubt he would be alive today. The first thing I had to secure was his life, and that we accomplished. He appears to be working the program.
I see several differences between what I read was normal practice at those other programs and GT: there is no locking people in rooms, there are no special PBJ sandwich diets, no belt-looping (whatever that means), no sitting on top of kids, no spitting at one's face, kids can sign out at 18, kids can refuse treatment (I saw this many times) like not talk, refuse to take pills. All these could be fundamental differences that makes this program different from The Seed, etc.
I understand we are taking a risk, but we were not sitting by the fireplace one day and out of boredom decided to send our beloved son to a jail! We did this when life together became impossible, when his survival was at stake, when he was high and non-functional (like skipping school every other day), etc. I asked here and in other places: Do you have a valid alternative as a solution? and NOBODY came forward with a workable solution. "Talk to him", "Love him unconditionally" etc. are the kind of 'solutions' suggested to me. I did all that, it does not work by itself.
Cheeky54:
Re: You'll never see it. I can't believe after all that you have heard from people, that you don't seem to grasp the simple fact that you'll never see it. The kids will come to your home, you'll talk to parents and graduates who are still obviously brainwashed, they'll never say anything against the program. You'll never see it, until it's to late. Even then you might now, I know tonnes of kids who after they got out of treatment tried to explain to their parents the things that went on when the parents weren't around, and by that point the parents are so programmed they don't believe their own kids.
I use to spend time (on staff) at a different centre trying to convince parents that treatment was the only solution, practiclly begging for the sake of the life of their child, to sign them into the program. I would give everything in the world now if I could sit down with some of those parents and you and try to make you understand how wrong it is.
Tearing someone down to try and build them up into the image you want is wrong. They'll never be the same, they'll never be the person they were meant to be. Even though I have been out of hell for 5 years, I still have not found myself. I don't know if I ever will. They'll always be a bit of them in me and that is really hard to accept.
Antigen:
Alternative solution Pablo, I did offer you an alternative course of action. You just didn't like it. But I'll repeat it to save you the trouble of going back over old postings.
Take a look out your window down to the waterway. See all those little boats skimming playfully on the shimmering water? Buy one or rent one with the money GT will squeeze out of you if given the chance. Take your boy, your wife, maybe a friend or two and spend a couple of weeks or months touring pleasant little sub-tropical vacation spots.
Or maybe a tour of Europe?
Or something more to your liking.
I know this stuff doesn't sound medical or magical enough to do any good. But the fact is that drug abuse and other self destructive behavior is not a disease. In young people, it's more often an adventure gone bad or just a simple lack of perspective. Help your son gain some of that. Give him a change of set and setting and a little distance from his problems. From the look of things, you can afford that.
Even if you can't carry off any of the high buck options mentioned above, it's real cheap to walk the AT. That would afford both of you all of the adventure, solitude and oportunity to commune with nature offered by those high-buck wilderness programs without the risk inherent in abandoning your child to a psychotic, sadistic cult.
Cheeky's right. I never heard of physical beatings during our family's 10 year association with The Seed in Ft. Lauderdale. And I only got sat on once in Sarasota. It was the psychological aspect of the program that was so harmful.
After months of limited sleep, constant surveilance and antagonism and just overwhelming emotional group interplay, they're telling him things like "Your parents don't want you any more, that's why you're here." Every kid suspects that whenever they're at odds with their family. And, in that state of mind, he believes it without question.
Did you say there's a tendency toward suicide in your family? There's no worse thing you could do than to expose your son to this particular type of treatment. Suicide rates among former clients, including graduates and staff, runs around 100 times (one hundred times... no typo) the national average.
Cheeky, you will find yourself. Your self never left, it's just that you were trained to reject you. No life is without some sorrow, but it'll be alright, I promise.
velvet2000:
Re: Alternative solution I've probably said this before here, but talking to your kid, loving him and supporting him is the best solution in the long run. You want to force your son to change right now dramatically because you're scared for him. That's understandable, but wanting and actually trying to force him to do it are two different things. If he died out there, you would miss him but know that you were the best parents you could be. If he doesn't die in a straight based program, you will live with the knowledge that you exposed him to torture and pretended that you didn't.
Once again, as myself and many others have said, I was not beaten, I was not belt looped, I was not sleep deprived or starved. I was humiliated, insulted, manipulted, and denied the right to be myself. Going through an experience like that during your youth is much harder to recover from becuase you are still emotionally developing, than it is for adults who also are torn over cults like this.
I once started my own program that helped youth who were far into addiction. It was non confrontational, you could come and go as you pleased, there wasn't even any counseling, kids could just talk to kids. The only real rule is that the kids had all the power and anyone who judged or broke confedientiality would be dismissed. The result was an extremely succesful program where most kids changed quickly and were able to move on to better things. My point is that tough love doesn't work. Actual unconditional love does.
Kathy:
GRowing Together Did you check out the police report. Alot more rape goes on in the program than what is reported.... I'm sure the Naked Crusader still lives at GT.... For your son's sake, I hope it/he doesn't. I'll pray for you and your son.
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