Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Teen Challenge
To those who find this forum...
Firebird81:
--- Quote from: ""Karly"" ---I'd also like to make another comment to your statement regarding how you say that:
--- Quote ---"Teen Challenge is largely run by former addicts"
--- End quote ---
Please make note that Teen Challenge is also run by MANY ex-cons who did not do jail time and chose Teen Challenge instead!
Karly
--- End quote ---
I was an ex-con that worked for Teen Challenge. I did not use TC to escape jail, tho. Are you saying ex-cons can't change, Karly? I spent 3 years in state prison and another 2 in various county jails before entering TC. Teen challenge deals with the worst of the worst addicts, hardcore street addicts that have nowhere left to turn. AA and NA meetings are run by ex-cons. Many residential treatment facilities have ex-cons that hold positions.
I have been clean 13 years. Today I own my own home, am happily married and make a very good living in Orange County, California. Honestly, I take offense to your obtuseness.
Firebird81:
--- Quote from: ""Karly"" ---Your offer? Offer for what? To argue? No thanks!
--- End quote ---
argue? no. You've mae many accusations and false assumptions about TC. Have you ever been to a teen challenge? Ever gone to a turning point meeting to see what they are saying? Ever seen the Teen Challenge Choir perform? Ever ask those people standing in front of the stores what their experiences have been? Are you even interested or are you grinding some axe at the expense of others?
hanzomon4:
Fire, we've seen all of this before with other abusive programs. What you view as proof of success only furthers Teen Challenges image as a abusive facility.
Do some research on the other programs listed here and you'll get the idea.
Firebird81:
--- Quote from: ""hanzomon4"" ---Fire, we've seen all of this before with other abusive programs. What you view as proof of success only furthers Teen Challenges image as a abusive facility.
Do some research on the other programs listed here and you'll get the idea.
--- End quote ---
What I view as success is completing the program and living a successful, sober life. Succeesful is subjective as some will seek financial success, some will seek fulfillment in other ways. Succeesful means being able to live your life as you wanted but couldn't because of drugs.
Teen Challenge is in no way an abusive program. Karly makes the absurd claim that it is because of a daily schedule that includes prayer and devotional times, as well as church. Oh the horror of it all! Have there been bad staffmembers at some facilities? Of course and as soon as TC sees that, they get rid of them. The vast majority of staff and interns at TC are dedicated, caring and loving people who have a heartfelt desire to help those who are where they themselves once were. These staff memebers typically make less than $1000 a month(far less in many cases), that's how dedicated they are to helping others.
This is not Phoenix House model where students are forced to wear toilet seats or sit on a hot seat while others shout abusive garbage at them.
The truth is, I don't care about convincing the people who run this or any other site. The ones I am concerned about are those who in their search come across these places and see this. I want them to know the truth, because some of their lives may depend on it.
Karly has already shown that she has no interest in knowing how TC really works.
Antigen:
--- Quote from: ""Firebird81"" ---I know there are many people who rely on the internet today to research organizations they may wish to have dealings with, either by supporting or, in the case of Teen Challenge, more commonly, in a search for help for themselves or a loved one.
I think it is very important to make all of you aware of the two most common motives people have for attacking Teen Challenge.
Translation: Don't go thinking you can go thinking for yourself, now. You don't have anywhere near the super hero awareness I have. But don't worry, I'll do all the thinking for you.
The first is former students who dropped out of the program. One such student now runs a website claiming to expose Southern California Teen Challenge---the very center I graduated from and the very district I worked for as a student advisor for 5 years. Many dropouts do leave angry. Change is hard. And Teen Challenge sets very high standards for success.
Translation:
You don't get super hero awareness like me without graduating the program. Only staff, who have attained a high degree of super hero awareness by associating nearly exclusively with other, similarly preternaturally endowed members are fit to judge whether or not a junkie is really sincere in their recovery or not. You wouldn't be able to tell, you're not qualified to judge and they are not even capable of thinking straight. UNLESS they're trying to convince you that they're not psychotic skidrow junkies who know what they're talking about. In that regard, they're deviously clever, brilliantly manipulative masters of deception. Only we are smart enough to see through that bullshit. Why? Because we're all junkies just like they are! So for God's sake don't listen to anything they say.
The second and uglier motive for attacking Teen Challenge is a relatively new one. And it is politically based, driven oftentimes by left wing organizations and special interests opposed to Bush's faith-based initiative.
Translation: Bush supported welfare mamas are not the same as Dem supported welfare mamas. Only a Bush supporter is endowed with enough super hero special awareness to tell good publicly funded social programs from bad ones. Again, don't try this at home, leave all the thinking to us.
Teen Challenge is the primary target of these people for two reasons, neither of which are Teen Challenge's fault. First---It was an incident in Texas where certain entites took it upon themselves to try to run TC out of the state. George Bush was Goverenor and stepped in to protect the program. Why? Did Bush stand alone? Absolutely not! Most texans knew Teen Challenge's reputation and exemplary record of helping addicts and found it absurd that such a great program that has done so much good could have it's doors shut because of some legal loophole.
Translation: Many people errantly view the establishment clause of the First Amendment as actual law and a good idea to boot. They haven't been endowed with the same super hero special preternatural awareness that George Bush has, so what do they know about anything. We who are so endowed know that it's just a silly litle legal loophole. Keep going to meetings and you'll be able to clearly see that too.
--- End quote ---
Ok, now this is just silly!
--- Quote ---This incident is what inspired Bush's federal faith based plan. Secualr and staterun programs are huge failures at rehabilitation, yet Teen Challenge showed much higher successes. Of course, since TC was the very basis for Bush's program ( not a RECIPIENT. TC would not qualify for funds thru this initiative!), political opponents proceeded to tear apart the initial study conducted on TC. The resulting hoopla has led to the usual nonsense and blogs and expose's--you name it. Of course, several other studies have also been conducted and repeatedly show 65-70% cure rates for graduates of the program. And, contrary to what you read here, a far higher percentage of people graduate TC than any other program I know of.
--- End quote ---
First of all the Faith Based Initiatives program was Clinton's baby. (I shit you not, under Bush they initially floated the remix with that unfortunate acronym). It started out as the AmeriCorps and California's "treatment not incarceration" themed Prop 36> I thought the whole package sounded an awful lot like something out of Gulag Archepalego. I had to call my daddy up and apologize for being a smarty pants for arguing that at least the Dems aren't as mean spirited as the Repubs.
Second, those figures are made up out of whole cloth. Not calling you a liar, in order to lie you have to know what the truth is and consciously say otherwise. But they're bullshit none the less. If there were such a thing as a drug treatment program that had anything more than around a 5% sustained remission rate (exactly the same as spontanious remission w/ no treatment at all, btw) it would be earth shaking news and you'd have psychologists, sociologists, public and provate granting agencies and not profits up your ass documenting this miracle cure.
I can sit right down and write myself a letter about anything at all and call it a "study" in whatever topic may flit through my mind. But that wouldn't make it any more of a peer reviewed, properly done and credible study than whatever marketing copy you're citing. Show your faith in your convictions (beliefs, not successful indictments). Cite the source if you really want to be taken seriously on that point.
--- Quote ---There is a third motive and that is one of anti-Christian sentiment, particularly anti-pentecostal sentiment. The reasons behind this are due completely to religious differences of belief.
Teen Challenge is largely run by former addicts. The programis based around not only introducing one to Christ, but teaching Chrisitan principles to be applied to daily life. It's not for everyone. TC does not hold people against their will. When someone says they want to leave, they are allowed to go.
--- End quote ---
Yes, especially among those forced either by law or family to be so indoctrinated against their own will and concience and those of us forced to fund your religious crusade through public funding. I'd love to get into this a little more, but I have to take one of my kids' friends to an ARD session. If she's 5 minutes late, they throw her ass in jail for some while. She says she gets a big kick out of doing her introduction; "Hi, my name is ______ and I'm a pot head". As de dawg chases his tail!
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