Daytop facilities do not deserve to exist on this planet and it would be a benefit to all if they simply ceased. their ideas and practices are falsely-based, and destructive, leading to the harming of innocent children, and their mere existence is in essence stolen from the people of a country to whom they claim to be of such immense benefit.
You can only help a drug addicted individual. You cannot help a "drug addiction epidemic". In Daytop, the emphasis is on the good and well-being of the the clan, referred to as the "family"- not the individual. A person who possesses somehing in Daytop, for example, that majority does not, will often be confronted with an idea such as, " Do you think it is fair that you have this or that and the family does not?" In addition, any person or groups of persons feelings in the facility, always takes value over another person's thoughts or reality, leaving the individual always subject to the whim of the family, with no means of self-defense. The group, also, is often used as leverage against the individual, by the counselors, to pressure the individual into a state of obedience, expressed in the Daytop motto, " Drug Addicts Yeild to Positive Peer Pressure". While Daytop clearly favors the idea of the group over the the honorring and acknowledging of the actual individuals who make up the group, common sense dictates that you cannot help an individual through ideaology and techniques that attack and deny the individual at the source.
In order for a person to grow and heal, the person must be given the opportunity to express one's self. Daytop's mode of treatment is geared not towards fopisterrinf self-expression, but rather it's antipode, self-submission. daytop faculty are not interested in a client's expression of self, and in fact, consider it superfluous. humiliating tactics are used, instead, to a person's expression of self and bring the person to a state of submission and brokeness. Futhermore, a person is literally not allowed to talk about their experience with drugs, or what drugs meant to them, unless it is expressed in negative terms. In essense, that part of the person submits and is counted out of the equation. Sexual expression is strongly forbidden and to even have a sexual feeilng or thought for another member of the "family" is punished, and often degradingly so, leading to such experiences being quickly self-denied os psychologically repressed by the client. Expression leads to life, and submission leads to death- with or without drugs. In this respect Daytop chooses death over life.
The majority of the time, a person knows in their mind that giving into a drug is wrong. It is a person's giving in to their emotions over their better judgemnet that leads that leads them to get trapped into an addiction. Daytop's methods model the supremacy of emotions over reason. Long groups are held all day encouraging endless, bottomless conversations about the client's feelings, giving no attention to the client's thoughts or ideas, which are considerred to be a part of the person's "image", worthy only of being "broken". As further example, if a client does something out of character, considerred wrong by program standards, or wrong in general, such will be forgiven if it is deemed that the person was "having feelings". having thoughts, on the other hand, is scorned, and often punishable until the thought is changed. For a person to overcome an addiction, without taking a worse problem on, the mimd must be strengthened, and emotions controlled. daytop's practices, in essence drown the mind within the emotions.
The result of Daytop's practices are what one might expect them to be. the majority of youths who enter Daytop happy, confident, and honest, leave miserable, confused, and dishonest. Paranoia, self-doubt, and mindless obedience are rampant in the facility and pretty much run the program according to what it is, or to paraphrase a govt' child welfare org., referring to a Daytop off-shoot, " These kids were as mindless automations, pleasing their masters".
So what keeps Daytop in business? It is simple. Government intervention. Daytop takes in more then half of their money from gevernment sources and still to this day pleads for and more or less demands more. This not only keeps Daytop in business, even if they had almost no client's at all, it also makes it nearly impossible for competent people and companies in their line of service to compete. How do you out-advertise a company who has so much unearned money consistantly thrown into it's system. It is possible, but nearly not so. Enough to discourage and often defeat others.
So you see, daytop, first steals business from the true proffessional, opportuinty for a for a better society for us all, and money from the tax-payer, in order to create it's existence. They then steal the light in our children's eyes, the mechanics of their minds, and time of their life, in order to perpetuate and continue it's existence. It just gos to show you that if your philosophy is that of a theif, everything you do will involve theivery and perhaps even your mere existence. The theif that is Daytop, steals far more then nearly all other theives, throughout history, and therefore this planet would not only get by alright without Daytop, but benefit immensely by it's disappearance.
Paul St. John
( it's nothing personal. it just is)