Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > Daytop Village

David Deitch

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SEKTO:
Hi there, accountabilibuddy.

Hmmm, no, I'm not sure that I have seen this thread before, but will study it out and get back to the forum later with my thoughts.  

It'll have to wait until tomorrow though, as I have had a long day and just want to chill now.  

Thanks for pointing this out, and asking for my input.

Peace be upon you.

SEKTO:
This is a lot of ground to cover, so I'll try and make my post well-thought out but relatively brief.

Personally, I never heard of Straight until '93 when I met a guy in DAYTOP named CM who had come out of there when they closed, and told us all kinds of horrible stories, really bad stuff.  He was telling us how DAYTOP was a cakewalk compared to what he had come out of.  

On the matter of Great Drug War, and to provide some context:

At the height of the American Empire (late forties through late sixities) when for all intents and purposes we had all the bombs, all the cops, it was all ours with the two car garages and the Cadillacs, the split-level ranch houses, we were Number One in the world and there was no competition.  Communism was The Great Evil and these were the days in which JBS had its genesis.

There were 76 million Americans born between the years '46 and '64, they were trained by Dr. Spock to be demand-fed; they were the first consumer species, they were the first electronic species, and the very fact that you were an American and you were young at the time (late forties through early sixties) meant that you deserved the world.  

The importance of this to me, is that this represents a demonstration on the Baby Boom generation of their sheer numbers, of their strength, of their clout, or their power, which was in straight quantity.  

The '60s and '70s hippie/antiwar/drug culture, and the backlash against that counterculture in the form of all of the Nixon-Reagan-Bush conservative drug war hysteria were all a part of this profound, historic generational change.  

The long and the short of what I have to say is that a whole generation of American kids got screwed over by that '80s and early '90s Reagan/Bush era "Just Say No" antidrug hysteria that we grew up immersed in, which had its origins in the likes of Harry Anslinger, and more recently Richard Nixon.  

More thoughts as they come to me.

Avoid all needle drugs, the only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon.
Abbie Hoffman

Inculcated:
http://youthfacts.org/lohan.html This site had some interesting facts posted & linked with David Deitch weighing/cashing in on hysteria about Druggie Teens.

December 8, 2009
The "Lindsay's the EveryGirl" lynch mob
Associated Press entertainment writer Sandy Cohen's abysmal--and typical--lack of journalistic ethics ("Lohan Latest Star to Tumble Into Abuse," July 24, 2007) imaging Lindsay Lohan as the poster child for young Hollywood and young America is just the latest fictional travesty in AP’s lazy, sensational anti-youth meanness.
Imagine growing up with a father—in this case, Lindsay Lohan’s father, Michael, now 46—whose rampant drug and alcohol abuse, repeated violent assaults, corporate thefts, and drunken criminality destroyed his family, led to years of incarceration, and forced his daughter to see legal protection from his “uncontrollable behaviors” and abuses. And parents who put her through a long, contentious divorce. And a mother, Dina, who was full of public sympathy... for herself... declaring to the press: "Teen drug addiction runs rampant and we are not the only family suffering from this. My heart goes out to families going through this pain."
No, Ms. Lohan, teenage drug addiction is not rampant. It is, however, more common when rotten parents put their kids through years of addiction, crime, violence, bitter divorce, and excuse their own execrable behaviors by publicly claiming drug abuse is just a "teenage" problem. With alleged grownups like these in charge, it's a wonder teenagers don't drink more. Fortunately, the Los Angeles Times ran a much more intelligent piece on young celebrities' toxic parents.
Add to that the toxicity of the entertainment press smeling a cheap chance to moaralize. Reporters such as AP's and commentators including “substance abuse experts” and self-described feminists, so insensitive they never mentioned Lindsay’s history of abuse and addicted parents—all so modern-day moralists can exploit her drug and alcohol afflictions to indict “young Hollywood” and young female America as some uniquely addicted, troubled generation worrying its wise and concerned parents.
Welcome to the “culture war” and its cruelties, led by news reporters, pundits, and quotable drug treatment hawkers eager to place their own popularity and profit ahead of revealing ugly truths to Americans.
The harsh reality: Lindsay Lohan’s drug and drunken driving woes are very atypical of young people (including young celebrities) today. But when teens and young adults have drug and alcohol problems, it’s not because they’re modern youth, but virtually always because they come from addicted, often abusive family backgrounds. Meanwhile, drug-abusing middle-agers like Lindsay’s father do represent a skyrocketing scourge neither news reporters nor “experts” (in this case, the Phoenix House’s craven “addiction specialist” David Deitch, quoted in the July 24 AP story) have the basic guts or decency to mention. Why should they? They know today's reporters run any anti-youth quip, no matter how factless.
The latest 2004 National Center for Health Statistics figures show 865 American teenagers did indeed die from illegal drug overdoses, and FBI reports show 551,000 Americans under age 20 were arrested for drug, drunken driving, and drunkenness offenses in 2005. That kind of fact gets huge publicity. Oh, the poor parents who suffer such terrible kids!
But what is never mentioned was that 10,763 Americans ages 40-49—the parents—died from illicit-drug overdoses in 2004 and 675,000 in this supposedly mature, stable middle-aged group were arrested for drug and drunk driving violations in 2005. Teens are suffering far more from their parents’ addictions and rotten behaviors than the other way around.
Of course, the press and supposed addiction experts like Deitch shrink from discussing. Instead, they spread lies that “today's youngsters start experimenting with drugs about age 12” (Deitch, quoted in the AP story). In fact, our most reliable and only long-term measure, Monitoring the Future, shows only 20.9% of today’s eighth graders (average age 14) ever used an illicit drug even once, a proportion that has dropped sharply since the 1970s. The National Household Survey shows just 11.7% of 12 year-olds ever used any drug at all. Hardly a 12 year-old epidemic.
But in today’s world of adults desensitized to young people and indifferent to real trends and problems, no one important cares what is really going on. Lindsay is a visible, exploitable commodity, and bullying interests are piling on her to push their agendas.
Mike Males, YouthFacts.org

Inculcated:
Oh, and Deitch’s comments in the article the author was responding to were:

--- Quote ---At the same time, the average age at which kids -- famous or not -- start using drugs has dropped every decade since the 1960s. Today's youngsters start experimenting with drugs about age 12, said Dr. David Deitch, an addiction specialist for more than 40 years and clinical director of Phoenix House, a national nonprofit provider of substance-abuse treatments.

"The earlier the age of onset of chronic drug-taking, the greater the prognosis is for long-term problems," he said.

People who start using drugs at young ages fail to develop "multiple social, intellectual and behavioral competencies," he said, which can often lead to further drug use and addiction.

The glitter and glamor of Hollywood only exacerbate the problem, he said: "That life is all about the excitement, drama and peak performance followed by a letdown that gets medicated with entertainment and medication."
--- End quote ---
http://youthfacts.org/lohan.html

Ursus:

--- Quote from: "Inculcated" ---Oh, and Deitch's comments in the article the author was responding to were:

--- Quote ---At the same time, the average age at which kids -- famous or not -- start using drugs has dropped every decade since the 1960s. Today's youngsters start experimenting with drugs about age 12, said Dr. David Deitch, an addiction specialist for more than 40 years and clinical director of Phoenix House, a national nonprofit provider of substance-abuse treatments.

"The earlier the age of onset of chronic drug-taking, the greater the prognosis is for long-term problems," he said.

People who start using drugs at young ages fail to develop "multiple social, intellectual and behavioral competencies," he said, which can often lead to further drug use and addiction.

The glitter and glamor of Hollywood only exacerbate the problem, he said: "That life is all about the excitement, drama and peak performance followed by a letdown that gets medicated with entertainment and medication."
--- End quote ---
http://youthfacts.org/lohan.html
--- End quote ---
And, of course, what Deitch himself was responding to was his own life history, not facts pertaining to the rest of the American public. One can only wonder at the "multiple social, intellectual and behavioral competencies" he failed to develop due to his time spent in therapeutic community environments consequent to his addiction(s).

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