Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Daytop Village

Daytop doesn't deserve to exist

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Ursus:
Family connections: Monsignor O'Brien's Daytop Village - Of Several Minds
Commonweal,  Dec 20, 2002  by Paul Baumann

I went for my first helicopter ride the other day. Naturally, I was apprehensive about buzzing around thousands of feet above the ground in a contraption that seemed more closely related to a lawn mower than to an aircraft. But the experience was more exhilarating than scary. For some reason, being able to take off, land, and hover like a bumblebee seemed less unnatural than being propelled through the sky in a jet. And as it happens, the purpose of my helicopter trip was equally exhilarating.

I don't recall saying more than a few words to a priest when I was growing up. My mother and father didn't know any priests personally. We never had a priest over to the house socially or in any official capacity. I was vaguely aware of the fact that my father's first cousin, William B. O'Brien, was a priest in New York. But I can only remember meeting O'Brien once or maybe twice as a child. He was a distant and formidable figure. A priest of the "old school," my father liked to say, which usually meant a tough guy who would brook little nonsense.

When I graduated from college and told my father I wanted "to write" (speaking of nonsense), he suggested I drop O'Brien a note. One of O'Brien's neighbors growing up in Tuckahoe, New York, had been Robert W. Creamer, an editor at Sports Illustrated and a highly regarded biographer of Babe Ruth. O'Brien did put me in touch with Creamer, who responded to my plaintive letter with a gruff and dismissive note. Evidently the "old school" operated in journalism as well.

That was thirty years ago, and just about my last contact with Monsignor O'Brien until he came swooping out of the sky in a helicopter like some fabled tycoon to pick me up from Westchester County Airport and whisk me off to Rhinebeck, New York. He wanted me to tag along with him on one of his regular visits to the residential treatment centers of Daytop Village, the drug rehabilitation program that he founded in 1963 and continues to run. In this instance, "old school" also means a priest who has waged a successful battle against one of the great modern scourges.

O'Brien, seventy-eight, was not flying the helicopter; he sat calmly next to the pilot, reading the New York Times (reading the letters to the editor about Peggy Steinfels's October 22 op-ed piece, as it happens). Also on board was Eugene Porcaro, an assistant district attorney in Manhattan and once an altar boy for O'Brien, and James Gilhooley, another archdiocesan priest as well as a much-published writer. We flew up the Hudson, past "Sing Sing" prison and West Point, and landed on a playing field at Daytop's facility for adolescent boys.

A stream of boys rushed out to greet O'Brien and escort us into one of the buildings where all the treatment center's young clients had assembled. O'Brien was greeted with thunderous applause, and I was beginning to feel like I was in a Bing Crosby movie. Standing before the group, O'Brien introduced each of his guests and then called on various boys to explain how they had come to Daytop and what the program, which entails extensive group therapy and a rigorously structured schedule, was intended to accomplish. He sprinkled his interrogations with wisecracks, and after each boy told his story, O'Brien hugged and thanked him.

We visited three other facilities that day; these were for adults, including one with many clients from overseas. Daytop is an international organization, with programs from China to Rome. O'Brien travels extensively, preaching the gospel that a therapeutic community, not prison, is the best way to treat drug addiction. Addiction, he believes, is a symptom of the failure of the modern family. "Drugs are an attempt at self-medication to block out the excruciating pain of family crisis," O'Brien has said. Daytop's treatment program tries to create a supportive emotional community in which people feel secure but at the same time are held strictly accountable for their behavior. Its success rate is high. More than 85 percent of those treated stay clean. Daytop has treated more than 100,000 addicts in its nearly forty years, and has close to 10,000 persons enrolled in its residential and ambulatory programs nationwide. It is widely regarded as one of the most successful programs of its kind.

"Cousin Bill" had not told me that he would call on me to speak, so I was a bit flummoxed to find myself addressing a group of recovering drug addicts. However, it is impossible not to be impressed with the sincerity and courage of Daytop's clients, and it was not hard to speak to them. Still, it was humbling. The older I get the more I have come to appreciate how difficult it is to change anything about one's habits or life. Battling addiction seems like an overwhelming challenge, and is often a life or death struggle. Yet Daytop has found a way to help people do the seemingly impossible.

At the end of each assembly, O'Brien led everyone in the recitation of the "Daytop Philosophy." "I am here because there is no refuge, / Finally, from myself," it begins. It concludes: "Here, together, I can at last appear / Clearly to myself, / Not as the giant of my dreams, / Nor the dwarf of my fears, / But as a person, part of the whole, / With my share in its purpose. / In this ground, I can take root and grow; / Not alone anymore, as in death, / But alive, to myself and to others."

It is a remarkable experience to stand in the midst of hundreds of people who, having confronted the worst in themselves and in many cases the worst this society has to offer, can profess such a faith. No wonder O'Brien likes to fly in a helicopter: he's used to defying gravity. You could call it "old school."

Anonymous:
Well Ursus you have found the true story of Daytop. The article was excellent and the truth. Please don't not be swayed by some of the post on this site. Some have still not come to terms with there issues. Daytop and Monsignor have saved millions of lives. Thank's for the Post.  :lol:

Anonymous:
Note the lame and misleading "85% success rate" nonsense.

This is measured by counting *only graduates*.  What it doesn't account for is that 80% of people don't complete the program and most drop out in the first few weeks.

So, the real success rate is virtually identical to that of Syanon-- 15-20%.  And this is actually the same as for... wait for it... no treatment at all!!!!!

In other words, if you just wait two years, about 15% of addicts will quit.  This group wants to stop-- so if you tell them they should stand on their head or stay in an emotionally abusive group and that's the only way to get clean, they'll do that.  The ones who aren't ready to stop will drop out...

This is why people need to learn about research and about things like the "self selection effect" of which this is but one example.  Know this and these people cannot baffle you with the bullshit.

Ursus:
This is most certainly true (skewed "success rates" and the contribution of self-selection).  Also, while I do not doubt that some people genuinely feel helped by the process, it is so destructive to so many that one really has to take that into account when thinking about success rates.  Is it worth saving a few, when so many are so damaged by this?  What kind of effect does this have on a person, seeing and/or participating in hurting other people like that?  And those few that are "saved," might they not have also been "saved" by some other, less exploitive, means?

This method of measuring success rates appears to be endemic to the business.  My old nemesis, Hyde School, claims 98-100% of their student body goes on to college.  What they omit from this calculation is that perhaps only 20-40% of the student body makes it through the abuse and mind-fuckery to that point, and that acceptance to college is, in some cases, depending on the campus, a prerequisite for obtaining one's diploma or certificate in the first place.  Talk about self-selection...

============================

BTW, Commonweal is "the oldest independent lay Catholic journal of opinion in the United States," hence its sympathetic position vis-a-vis Monsignor O'Brien.  Usually it is generally pretty liberal, tends to take anti-war stances, but clearly, Paul Bauman (Editor) did not attend Daytop himself.
http://www.commonwealmagazine.org/

Anonymous:
How do you define success?

I argue your point of "people who changed while at Daytop may have succeeded at some other form of treatment program." How do you know that? Also what about the hundred of thousands of people who left Daytop and at some point in the future became productive and successful individuals don’t they get any credit for that? You tend to put so much effort into trying (and by the way failing) to slander the program that you lose sight of all the good. Daytop is not for everyone, this is a fact. They never claimed to be nor do they discourage other methods or forms of treatment. Don't lose sight of the bigger picture. They try and in the majority of circumstances succeed in helping people.  

 "You can't do it alone" - Monsignor William O' Brien

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