Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Ridge Creek School / Hidden Lake Academy

Drugs on Campus

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Anonymous:

--- Quote from: ""Lacey"" ---The supervision is a joke, the addictions program is a one-size-fits-all mentality with a stupid rating system as to "how addicted you truly are." .
--- End quote ---


As a parent who had a kid at HLA a bunch of years ago I have to say something about this outrageously bogus "rating" system.  There are 10 or so questions that the kid has to answer.  On the basis of those answers, the level of addiction is determined.  Just think about how crazy this all is.  We were told by those assholes that our son was a "severe addict" with practically no hope of ever being off drugs and/or alcohol.  They do this to scare the parents to death, and it works.

Oh, and did I mention that the person administering the "test" was  "Doctor" Clay Erickson.  He had us all convinced our kids were addicts just like he had us convinced he was a real doctor.

And yes, according to my son, it was easy enough to get drugs, alcohol, etc on campus.  Mostly from staff.

Antigen:
No shit!

Look, folks, it's real simple. You simply cannot pay someone to raise your kids better than you can. You can pay someone to break them down and make them pretend they're all better. But ask some of us old heads who have been through it. Even most of the ones who have towed the line for decades so often talk about nightmares, phobias and all kinds of trouble owing to the trauma they suffered as teenagers.

Now, as frustrated and angry as I still am over the whole thing, I don't think the people who run these places and who staff them or who send their kids there ever intended or do intend to do any harm. Ask TSW. He used to be staff. Hell, ask my sister in law, she was on staff too. They all, except for a small minority of sadistic assholes who knowingly get off on the shit, thought they were doing The Right Thing® But, just like routine lobotomies and witch burning, they were wrong. Now we're here to tell you, yup, shaw nuff, that conflicted gut feeling we all had from time to time (some of us constantly) that it was an horrific evil, GO WITH THAT! Or suffer the consequences of those too fucking stubborn or stupid to learn from history.

Lacey:
To give some background info on why I recommended a wilderness program. Parents of students in treatment will 99% of the time NOT be persuaded by anyone that it's wrong to send them away. My parents didn't get it, and most other students parents I've talked to still are under the impression that what their doing is best for their child. So for me to sit here and say "Just pull your kid! Bring him home!" will more than likely just have those parents who desperately need the validation that what they did for their child was the best decision skim right over my post. So yes, ideally, I want children home with their parents and the parents to to the harder thing by raising them themselves. BUT in most cases, that wont happen.  So PERSONALLY (based on my experience alone in the 3 seperate programs I went to) the wilderness program was the least harming. Now yes, parents should not take the "lesser or two evils" mentality for their kids, but lets be honest... Most of them do. So my recommendation was based on the fact that these parents probably wont wise up until much later in their child's life, and that if their GOING to stick them in another program, then from my experience alone (which is all I can convey), the wilderness program was the "best" (lesser of the evils) that I endured.

Plus, (and this really only applies to my situation) my parents were in the middle of a nasty 20 year long court battle, and going home would NOT have been the best for me. I would have been put back into a manipulative, extremely hurtful environment that was created by my own parents. Neither of them really had my best interest at heart, and I was a tool to hurt one another. It was so bad that even the court decided to not let either of them represent my brother and I in the case, but to appoint us a guardian ad laudem (sp??) as an objective 3rd party entity. I don't know where the best place for me would have been, it definitely wasn't home, it definitely wasnt in treatment, and my parents were definitely not open to sending me to a regular boarding school. So programs were just kinda where I bode my time until I was old enough to go to college (17, 4 years after I entered my first program).

This parent obviously isn't open to bringing him back home, so thats why I recommended the wilderness. It was just the least hurtful place I went to.

But whatever, I don't know if any of you will understand this, and still think that I'm just blindly supporting BM schools. Oh well.

Anonymous:
I completely agree with most of what lacey has said.  I too am a former hla student, and also a Utah wilderness program student.  I think that wilderness is definitely less harmful and more effective than a TBS type program.  I was at second nature wilderness in 2002 before attending HLA and i feel it really helped me.  I still keep in contact with both students and staff from the program.  However, HLA was a very negative experience for me and my family.  Having never been around cocaine going into the program it was available to me on several occasions in the short time i was there.  Many people would sneak drugs in while returning home from breaks.  I ended up leaving HLA 2 months after entering with a black eye and a broken nose which i received when a staff member decided to introduce my face to the ground for refusing to split firewood on restrictions.  My parents were told i had gotten into a fight with another student.

Anonymous:
Who was the staff member that broke your nose?
Did you get medical treatment?
Did your counselors know about this?  What did they do?

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