One of the most profound positive experiences and lessons I learned in a program was the necessity to take personal accountability for your own actions. Without doing that, in an honest way, you will always remain trapped in a cocoon of denial. When I was a troubled teen I felt like I was a victim of everybody else. Why couldn't they just leave me alone? That's what I kept saying to myself. I want to get high, get drunk, commit crimes, disrespect and put my family in danger. Well I grew up poor, my family had troubles, the teachers were unfair, I didn't get this, I didn't get that. To me the world was unfair and against me. I felt justification in doing whatever I pleased, because if they would fight against me then I don't care about anyone else either. So I was very self centered and the outside world lost relevance more and more as time went by.
When I finally ended up in a program I thought it was an injustice of the greatest magnitude! I was furious and thought, do the American people know that citizens are being held against their will like this? I wanted to climb to the tallest rooftop and scream from the top of my lungs, I want my freedom back. But for me, that freedom meant sure death or imprisonment. So there comes the rub, what is more important, someone's life or their freedom? Who gets to make that distinction and decide when it's gone too far? Right now its parents who make that decision. My parents made the right decision. I know for a fact this is true, and to suggest otherwise might make me feel good. I could have continued to look at it as an injustice. What after some time I was able to get honest with myself and realize, that injustice is what actually saved my life.
Back when I was a teen I would have gladly been out of the program, and free to my own devices. The process of being asked to look at myself honestly, and take accountability for what I had done was difficult and stressful at times. But other times there was positive things that happened, it was not the pit of hellfire and despair that it's often described as here on this forum. I don't live in a black and white world, I can look back on my experiences as they actually happened, not through a political or agenda driven lens.I am able to take accountability for my actions that lead to me being placed in a program. Had I not done certain things, I would have never ended up in a program. Everything that happened was a result of my own actions, I know this now and accept it as truth, because it is.
So I choose to be honest when talking about my experiences on this forum. This is met with hatred, conspiracy theories and plenty of people telling me what I should do, what I should believe, what I should be like, what is wrong with me, and all sorts of theories about why I have come to the conclusions I have. That's all a waste of time. If you want to know why I believe what I do, read my posts, because they are the truth. I am trying my best to be respectful and focus on my own experiences here, and that's what I've been doing. If you don't want to post in this thread, then don't. Start your own threads about negative experiences, that would be great. But people pressuring me to change my views, change who I am, or just plain shut up will not persuade me to not share my own experiences and opinions.
The fact is, in my own personal experience, a private program really did save my life. I'm not going to lie and say it didn't, or lie and say I was abused, or stretch the term of abuse to fit in with what actually happened to me. Yes i was held against my will, because my will involved getting high on drugs, harming myself, and causing mayhem and generally being an asshole in every way imaginable. I constantly was putting my life in danger and other people's because me and my friends would drive around while heavily intoxicated. So me being put in a program, not only saved my life, but possibly the lives of people that we might have killed in a DUI. My parents tried all the local options and alternatives offered by posters here and none of it worked. I simply manipulated my way through all of those hurdles, in my quest to ultimately destroy myself through drug use or suicide. The only thing that stopped me, was to put me in a facility against my will, and have people watching me 24 hours a day. I'm not proud of any of this, in fact it's quite shameful. But I am at a point in my life where I am willing to be honest about who I was, and what really happened.
It would feel great to think I was right, and should have been free to behave that way. To think that the program was in the wrong, and in fact evil. That my parents are ignorant at best, evil at worst. That society was in fact wrong to tell me no, you are not free to destroy yourself, as a minor child. That I was abused and imprisoned against my will and treated like shit. But none of that is true, and as comfortable a place for my ego as it would be to believe this, I know in my heart it's not true. They saved my life, against my will. I wanted to end it through my behaviors, they demanded that I not do so. I can't speak for other people, this is about my own experience. People are also free to share their own experiences on this forum. I follow a self imposed rule that I don't respond to hatred, conspiracy theories and posts like that. If people expect a response from me, they should be respectful and talk as they wish people talked to them. I am also following this rule now, I am not going to waste my time with arguments here. I am here to share my experiences and opinions with those who wish to read it. If you don't, then don't read it, it really doesn't bother me either way. Thanks