Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Seed Discussion Forum
damaged beyond repair
GregFL:
Great post stripe, but this most of all rings the bells of truth, as I understand truth and apply to it my own situation...
--- Quote ---On 2006-01-25 09:22:00, Stripe wrote:
but if you are not powerless and are not an addict, it's a false premise.
--- End quote ---
and living your life under a false premise may not ruin your life, but it closes so many doors to personal growth and real self-awareness that I found it totally necessary to reject the seed in order to find myself.
Some people seem to have found themselves within those confines, but to me I might as well have been smothered by a giant pillow.
marshall:
stripe wrote:
-----------------
"Sure, it's fine for a drug addict to premise their life on powerlessness and addiction, but if you are not powerless and are not an addict, it's a false premise."
---------------
Great post Stripe. Just wanted to add to Greg's comment about this line. I've mentioned here that I have been addicted to some degree to several substances during my youth. All were legal. I became addicted to prescribed valium at one point. This went on for over a year. I also developed an addiction to codeine in a prescribed cough syrup that lasted for months. I was able to stop both of these on my own before I ever went to the Seed. How could this be possible? Wasn't I supposed to be a powerless druggie in need of a group and program to overcome such dependencies? Like many others I also became strongly addicted to cigarettes before and especially during my program...at one point smoking over 2 1/2 packs of Kool per day. I was able to quit this 5 year addiction too all by myself a few months after I graduated the Seed. (quiting during the program would have been extremely difficult) These are the only true addictions that I've ever had (discounting my ongoing daily use of caffeine) and none were 'cured' via the seed or any other program. So what did the Seed cure me of? An addiction to pot? Beer? Those were the only drugs I used habitually (aside from tobacco) during my preseed days. All the rest could best be categorized as experimentation or curiosity. I took speed 5 or 6 times over 3 years. Qualudes a few times less than that. The rest consisted of hallucinogenic drugs...none of which are addictive or even habit forming for the average person. I used mescaline once, what we called THC 20 or 30 times over 3 years, LSD 5 times and mushrooms 20 or so times and hashish a dozen or so times. Is this what the Seed cured me of? I was already tired of daily pot use by the time I went to the seed. Since I was able to quit all 3 of those truly addictive drugs, I can't imagine why I wouldn't have also been capable of stopping the use of cannibis or other hallucinogens without any program as well.
For me, this brings the whole program lie into focus. I am definitely not powerless over drugs or alcohol...and despite program assertions to the contrary, apparently never was. And why does someone such as myself not use drugs & rarely use alcohol...while so many of those who still embrace the party-line of powerlessness still battle on-going addiction issues? Does the dogma of powerlessness somehow encourage the very behaviour it seeks to end? I think this is very likely. If I truly believed I was powerless over alcohol, after the first time I drank a beer with my father I may have thought 'what's the use? I took a drink...oh god! Now I'm a worthless piece of shit. Might as well get drunk every day now.' I can see how this very premise might have caused me to become an alcoholic. Or the one time well over a decade ago that I decided to smoke a joint. If I believed I was powerless I would have had similar thoughts and concluded that I was now a hopeless druggie so why not get high every day and go find some smack or coke? I can be around groups of people smoking pot now and feel no desire to smoke it. I don't run out of the room, seedlike, in a panic to escape lest I succumb to my supposed 'powerlessness'. IMO, the doctrine of powerlessness is all a bunch of hooey. Not only false, but probably actually harmful.[ This Message was edited by: marshall on 2006-01-25 19:59 ]
Stripe:
MARSHALL WROTE:
And why does someone such as myself not use drugs & rarely use alcohol...while so many of those who still embrace the party-line of powerlessness still battle on-going addiction issues? Does the dogma of powerlessness somehow encourage the very behaviour it seeks to end?
Marshall, I think the answer to your quesiton is yes.
Not12now has to know that what might be aching to get out of her and causing her anguish and uncertainty is the truth that she is not what her mother or the seed believed her to be.
N12N, if you were truly powerless you would be fully at peace with believing that or whatever the teaching was that you embraced about yourself. You would have no questions, no doubts and most certianly, no conflicts. But that's not the case.
And like many more of us who went through that program and have tired in vain to reconcile and embrace the teachings and have come to that same conclusion, you are now finding more questions than answers in the seed teachings.
It's perfectly okay to reject what does not work. That is logical, normal human behavior. It's actually the right thing to do. Here's a twist for ya:
:grin:
As those in "recovery" say...the definition of insanity is repeating the same act over and over over again with the expectation of a different result.
Well, there you have it.
Obviously, for some of us, seed addiction philosophy did not work and when the pain of the continued "insanity" became greater than the fear of letting it go, well, what's left but to let it go and reject that which is harmful? I mean how much worse can it be? For me, it's not bad at all. It's quite nice, really. It may be a much more difficult path at first, filled with resistence and doubt and emotion, but one which in the end brings peace.
GregFL:
--- Quote ---On 2006-01-25 19:54:00, marshall
? Does the dogma of powerlessness somehow encourage the very behaviour it seeks to end?
--- End quote ---
For all but a very few, I believe this is very true.
Oh, there are the skid row type winos, the chronic destructive on-the-steets drug injectors, the alcoholics that chug off the bottle at every opportunity...these people seem to choose their addiction or complusions over almost every thing else, and The argument for their powerlessness makes some sense...at least temporarily until they gain back the power they have given the bottle or the substance. Then I offer they usually have regained the power they need and they need to use it, and wallowing in their former powerlessness is counterproductive and keeps them sucking at the teat of treatment.
But powerlessness as a concept or as a one size fits all treatment modality is sorcery.
Johnny G:
The concept of powerlessness was expanded to include anything outside the seed; that combined with the paranoia embodied in the concept of anyone outside the program being a "druggie" contributed greatly to the experience of the 80's and 90's.
As Cleveland pointed out in another thread, it was like the frog in the pot of water - after a while I realized how much control over my life I had really given up. It was a gradual process, but it got to where I felt really trapped. There was a certain amount of rebellion in some of my activities at work and watching the house, etc. but in the end I felt like anything I said or did that could be interpreted as anything less than total assent to the program would incur the wrath of Staff. I had no car, and I envisioned being booted out with whatever I could carry (I never thought they would drive me to the airport, or give me more more notice than the time it took to blast me)
I have come to terms with my parents decision to put me on the program (I looked at it as the best of several bad options, so I chose to be there, they just wrote the check), I have let them know what it was about and that there are clones out there, now we just leave it alone.
I think they got sucked into the hysteria of the time like so many other parents did and did the best with what they had - good intentions did the rest...
now we know better -
G
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