I never truly resisted. Part of this I suppose was a product of arriving at NWA via ascent, where I realized early on that no amount of will would change my situation, and that I desperately wanted to do anything to change the most miserable situation of my life. I also wanted to beleive that the CEDU philosophy could help me, because I knew my life needed changing.
On the other hand a lot of my motivation in compliance was always to keep people off of my back and out of my face. I never fully accepted what was sold by CEDU, because it never seemed grounded in anything concrete or verifiable. I read and used my brain, finding ways to interject outside perspectives into the cult bubble, including reading books that were illicit and had been snuck into the school. I resented CEDU for its maddening derision of all things intellectual. Eventually I entered into a pagan religious circle, worshiping nature and authoring charms to curse the school and some of its members, and to protect runaways. All this while I was a trusted and well thought of upper school student.
So yes, I broke immediately. I kissed so much ass my face was brown, I narced people out for trivialities, and I behaved in ways Ill never be able to forget. But resistance for me was the commision of thought crime. The king of all agreements was the one that compelled you to accept everything in the doctrine completely and without question, and that was a rabbit hole I could never completely dive into. Inside I was always seething with hatred for the place that had enthralled every aspect of my life, and that never changed.
On the subject of whether the schools got less coercive, this seems to be the conventional wisdom. I also think it was variable between schools. In the middle of my time at NWA we had some RMA staff brought in (sheila claremont and tony alvarez) and the level of confrontation they brought with them, led to a literal uprising on campus. There was a lot of disorder at NWA and a lot of disregard for certain less serious agreements, so a lot of what I related isn't that impressive by the standard of shit that went down during my time there. On the other hand, the place was still very totalitarian, and I could have been in deep shit for all that stuff regardless.