Author Topic: Physical Symptoms  (Read 9160 times)

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Offline cleveland

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« on: September 22, 2004, 02:42:00 PM »
Did anyone else suffer physical stress-related symptoms? Someone on this site posted that when they were in the Seed, they didn't know that it was strange to have a continuous lump in your throat, caused by fear of saying something wrong in the group. When I was a 'happy seedling,' my stress level was so high that I developed hypertension and digestive disorders, in addition to the lump in my throat. It took me years after leaving to learn how to be calm, to relax, and to accept myself.

Perhaps is was Post Traumatic Seed Disorder after all...
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Offline GregFL

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« Reply #1 on: September 22, 2004, 03:06:00 PM »
I had mild hallucinations (melting visuals, fuzziness)during the first month. I was told it was due to my body withdrawing from all the drugs.

Funny thing, I had no drugs in my system. None. For 30 days prior I had been at my mothers in Ft Lauderdale, and my drug usage was sporadic at best prior to going in anyway.

I have since learned that many people experienced this and that it is not unusual for cult inductees and others under extreme duress to experience this phenomena.
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Offline cleveland

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« Reply #2 on: September 22, 2004, 04:45:00 PM »
Yes, there were physical/mental symptoms that were the result of the intensity of the experience. Some were unpleasant, others were like what you might find with meditation - an altered mood and feeling. Weird stuff that increases susceptibility.
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Offline rjfro22

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« Reply #3 on: September 22, 2004, 11:29:00 PM »
I remember going in and out of euphoric trances, but for me it was definitly my mind recovering from some serious drug damage, I also felt a sense of meditation and a feeling of being safe in the group. It did take a month or so for all those things to take place, but each day that passed things began to become clearer to me. I began to see a light at the end of the tunnel, but I really came from a very dangerous head-space when I came in. I know things were drilled in our heads day in and day out, but remember we came out of some deadly times, drugs were  epidemic at that time, it destroyed almost every body I knew back then. Ever since I was in the Seed which was '73 to 74" and actually I discovered it back in 1970 or early '71 I never felt they had any kind of power over me,  other then some much needed  tools to help me get through my days. And yes there were some bad days and some big ego's that tried to make me less then, but over all , I will never forget people helping people. I have been away from the seed 29 years and I will never forget what Art & Staff did for me . I did hate saying " I love you" to people at work or in school, but I did it, and actually got over myself for a while. I did what they told me to do and not with out a battle, but I learned something from everything' ,But I used what worked for me and what didn't I deleted. Let hear some positive things the Seed did . The Seed certainly  impacted our lives, we are still talking about it.
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Offline TRUCKER

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« Reply #4 on: September 23, 2004, 09:21:00 AM »
I could not have said it better!

                       TRUCKER
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Offline cleveland

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« Reply #5 on: September 23, 2004, 10:00:00 AM »
I appreciate the perspective of the two previous posts. Yes - when I came into the Seed, I had seen several of my High School classmates overdose, drown, carwreck, suicide, etc. and my own family had a strong history of alcoholism, so when I came in and was told drugs were the problem, OK!

However, I continued on to spend seven years of my life at the Seed, because I thought I was helping people and because I was led to believe that leaving was wrong, that I would be admitting I was a loser and that I would never be happy on my own. All wrong!

Also, as far as drugs go...there are dangers to anything we do, from sex to overeating to thrill seeking to smoking, drinking and drugging. I think saying 'Just Say No' to everything is a simple solution, but it will not always work. I have family in AA, and that's great; I have others who are unrecovered, and that's NOT great, and others who enjoy a drink now and again but are aware of the dangers. For me, quitting smoking was really hard to do, and I enjoyed the way if made me feel but I don't want to die for it. So I consciously worked on stopping. I hope that the same approach would work for me on anything I put in my body - I'm an adult. For kids, they get exposed to all this and worse every day, but I think putting a kid in a boot camp is unlikely to work in the long term. Check out the Straight sites and see all the kids who left and went on to overdose or suicide.

Besides that, when I left the Seed I needed counseling - my family had a lot of problems I needed to understand, and the most I'd learned about it at the Seed was that they were 'fucked up' - well, no kidding. I had also developed a crushing low self-esteem, partly from my family issues and guilt and partly because the Seed enforced that for me, never allowing me to think that I was good enough as a person.

If the Seed or anything else helped you, that's great. I did get a lot out of it, but mostly because there were other kids like me and we were forced to rely on each other, and became friends - friendships that ended when I left the Seed because I would be considered a 'druggie' and would not be allowed to interact with my friends. That is cultish behavior, and THAT is harmful.

Glad to hear from you, I appreciate this forum for all of us to express our views OPENLY, unlike relating in Group when if you said anything 'wrong' you'd know it. Honesty IS the first and most important policy, after all!.

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Offline rjfro22

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« Reply #6 on: September 23, 2004, 03:28:00 PM »
I too had some serious family conditions, which to some degree "using" actually helped
get me through some of  horror ,  but when the drugs stop working for me  and I no longer had any clearity  to get it together, I sank deeper in the problems  seeing no future, that feeling of " Impedding Doom" What the Seed did for me was take me out of the driver's seat and give me time to see things a little clearer among my peers. It certainly was intense, I still deal with family issues , even after all these years, but I no longer have to use over it,  When I left the program I slipped into drinking for several years , but I never forgot whay the Seed taught me and I have been clean  now for almost 19 years.   I do feel sad for all the people that did not make it, but nothing is just black and white. I wanted to live
and that will and the help of the Seed helped get me through. I know some kids had some serious depression issues, but unfortunatly so little was known about it back then.
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Offline GregFL

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« Reply #7 on: September 23, 2004, 06:31:00 PM »
Welcome back rfro2.



Well, my opinion is that the "epidemic" and this reactive "solution" in no way justified placing young children in a cult.

Also, I have friends, seed graduates, that have commited suicied and died of overdoses.What positive thing did the seed do for them? If we are to attribute your soberness to the Seed, then the Seed gets the blame for them, and frankly, your soberness to me wasn't worth their death.

Go ahead and discuss the positives of the seed. That is one conversation I can not personally participate in because the entire experience for me was bullshit. My spirit did not appreciate being locked in that warehouse and my mind did not appreciate the "help" of crude behavior modification, and my ego could not take being in a silly cool aide love cult during high school.

[ This Message was edited by: GregFL on 2004-09-23 15:45 ]
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Offline rjfro22

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« Reply #8 on: September 23, 2004, 10:18:00 PM »
Greg,
          Don't get mad at me,  That was my reality and believe me I feel horrible for people that commited suicide or over dosed or just didn't make it, but that happened to most of my friends that did not make it to the Seed.  I am sorry you had a such tough time when you were there. If I  really did not want to be in the seed at the time nothing could have kept me there, and  i did escape in the first couple of weeks, but I  came back a week later . Between the ages of 15 through 17 I had hitched all over the country, my point is if  I could not cope with the seed at the time and the choice was suicide or getting loaded, I would have gotten loaded and if I felt like my parents were to controlling, I would have ran away to California or the Village  , that's what kids did then.  But I did not have that luxury , I was dirt poor and mother had to take care of 5 other children,  So my life was in my own hands,  This is my own experience, I can't speak for others. Being a teenager at the time was tough and I am sure it is even harder for teens today, but the seed was about  staying clean one day at a time,  they were not equipted to deal with heavy personal issues.
I sure some of the weathier Seedlings had professional counculing outside of the Seed. Greg, how come you didn't take off ?  Why didn't you run away ?  Most groups are cultish,
the military services , religion, country, schools we try to learn our bounderies and we take what we need from them, but lets face it , do we also blame them for taking lives as well.
Any way I am rambling.
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Offline GregFL

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« Reply #9 on: September 24, 2004, 10:20:00 AM »
Why didn't I take off?  Good guestion.

Okay, I was 14 and had no support of my family.  I was put in a "foster home" under lock and key in a poor section of town with a doberman under my window and told he would kill me if I went out the window. I had no idea where I was and the thought of running around this place at night with no place to go and the police looking for me was terrifying. I was pad locked in the room at night. My oldcomer was physically stronger than me and we went straight from the Seed to his house with a group of older teenage boys. In conclusion, I was scared and had no where to go. I was also hungry and tired.

Further, I was  told daily If I did escape the police would capture me (as they did constantly in St Pete) and bring me back. Then I would be court ordered (which meant your sentence was minimum six months and usually longer). My father was tied into the power structure in St Pete and his buddy was the chief of police, who also had a kid on the front row with me. So I took the path of least resistance and that was to comply, confess, submit, paste of a fake smile, cut my hair and join the singing, poking in the back, waving my arm, hero worshiping Art barker and telling strangers I loved them. To me it seemed the only way out.

Dude, Please stop mistaking disagreeing for anger. At some point I hope you will realize that I want you here, enjoy your perspective, and love give and take conversations.

I also hope you will come to realize your perceptions of the seed are not shared by all, and that not only the losers and drug addicts are the ones that despised their time held captive by those lovey dovey self rightous Art Barker worshipping assholes, and that harm was done to many, including my old high school friend *** Beverly  who after graduating the seed, jumped to his death off the skyway bridge.  

To me, the place was a looney bin and I have often wondered how someone could delude themselves into not seeing the insanity all around them and not realizing all was far from normal...check this out....


"being dead was about the best thing I could think of. I thought about how peaceful I'll be. There won't be no more Seed. I can't stand this anymore."

a 16 year old girl, whom had only smoked pot prior to being admitted to The Seed, speaking to Margaret Leonard, times staff writer. The girl had attempted to slash her wrists in the Seed bathroom by hiding a razor in her pants. She broke off the plastic part and cut half her wrist. Her oldcomer was standing outside the stall. Her attempt only cut thru the first layer of skin. The staff told her...
"Don't tell your parents. You know you just did it for attention and your mom's gone thru enough. You don't need to hurt her anymore."

The girl ran from the Seed and lived in the woods near her mother's house for a week, unable to trust her mother enough to go home, fearing she would be placed back in the Seed.


Once she got home, her mother reported to the paper, "It was a mistake." The Girl reported to the paper that she was still confused and found it hard to trust people.

Source... St Pete Times.
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Offline Antigen

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« Reply #10 on: September 24, 2004, 11:35:00 AM »
rjfro22, about the 'epidemic'. I don't know where you were hanging out or what you were up to. I do know there are some bad neighborhoods and some extremely self destructive people. That's always been true. But I also know that, in those heady early daze of The Seed, the perception of an epidemic of morbid addiction was way, way overblown!

Just about the most outrageous thing my older brothers ever did was to steal a car from a neighbor while they were out, take it joy riding around town and then return it to the driveway w/o getting caught.

Me? I was only 5 or 6 years old. I spent my entire childhood after that point living under the dark cloud of The Seed. Other kids teased me, I could't react because I was supposed to be better than all those druggiekids. Some parents who my mother had tried to recruit wouldn't allow their kids to play w/ me. That hurt! Among those were the son and daughter of the BSO officer accross the street and they had been my very best friends up till I was around 9, when my sister went in and my mom tried to convince the parents that the older sister was s druggieinneedoftreatment by virtue of here (occasional) association w/ my sister. But I couldn't let it show because .... well, I think you know why.

In the rare case that someone was kind enough to try and be my friend despite all that, my mother would interrogate me over every little thing; a phone call, an unaccounted for hour... anything! Always w/ the underlying implication that I might be turning into a druggie any minute! This continued even after she transfered me to a small Christian high school.

That hysterical perception of a dangerous epidemic of drugs destroyed my life as a kid.

Now, cut to the present. Where are all the damned bodies? I know a lot of kids and young adults were smoking pot and trying out other drugs in those days. It was all the rage. Shouldn't they all be deadinsaneorinjail now? Where are all the junkies? So few people die from illegal drugs that the DOJ doesn't even bother to keep track, so they can't have all died. There were a damned lot of them!

No, the fact is that the cop's kids and just about everyone else I grew up "with" just grew up, married or not and went on to lead productive lives. Everyone I know who's now dead, a convict or problematically drug involved went through The Program.

Every man has a property in his own person.
This nobody has any right to but himself.
The labor of his body and the work of his
 hands are properly his.


--John Locke

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Offline TRUCKER

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« Reply #11 on: September 24, 2004, 12:16:00 PM »
Some people needed more help then what the seed had to offer.Further more,some people didnt need any help at all,it was everbody else that was wrong.The ones that needed more help jump of bridges or sit behind bars doin time and the ones that say it was everbody else fault now have mental anguish for the help they didnt need.Whats up! Will have more later got to go.


                  TRUCKER
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Offline cleveland

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« Reply #12 on: September 24, 2004, 03:00:00 PM »
Just wanted to add on to Trucker's and the other poster's comment that the seed wasn't equipped to deal with more extensive problems. Unfortunately, Art distrusted anyone but himself and staff he controlled so even when there were situations that needed additional help, it wasn't there. I bet that caused a lot of people pain. I know for myself, I could have used some real counseling on some issues I had to deal with.

I think the seed was effective at taking a person out of their present situation and maybe shocking them into making a change. That seems to have worked for both of these people.

I think that might have worked for me too, if:

a. I had had a serious drug problem (I didn't)
b. I'd been encouraged to leave and start living my own productive life
c. I'd been taught how to deal with the world as it actually is instead of dividing everything up into Seedlings (us, all good) and Druggies (everyone else, all bad) and nothing in between.

But obviously, even with flaws, it did work for some of you and I am glad that it did, although if it was worth it for some of the other people Greg talks of who were harmed, and the Drug War in general that Ginger discusses, that's the bigger debate today, I think.

Hey, my mom's a drunk today and if there were a seed to stick her in...you know, it would be tempting...I'm sort of kidding here...

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Offline rjfro22

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« Reply #13 on: September 24, 2004, 04:53:00 PM »
Antigen,
              You were too young at the time, to really have experienced  it in the same way. Do you remember the Dania jetties or Grenalds park and every concert in south florida.
they were huge drug fests of dealing and thousands of teen mixing every king of drug you can think off, and let's not forget all the rock stars of that 1970 to 1973 that over -dosed. Kids were overdosing in school.
Every where you went in those days there were drugs. Peer pressure was at it's worst.
the hippie culture by this time had become main tream, right after Woodstock and Easy Rider. The influence in film and music  was a big factor, and most of our parents really did'nt have a clue. Your mother over reacted out of the fear of what she was hearing. They really did not understand. I remember ft lauderdale beach back then, it was unbelievable, freaks every where. You could get any thing you wanted  every where. Does anyone remember how it was?  I was there it was crazy . fact
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Offline Antigen

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« Reply #14 on: September 24, 2004, 05:40:00 PM »
Yeah, I remember the legend. Remember Pirates' World? Or under the Pompano pier? Granted, I wasn't old enough to go out to all those places back then. However, all of my older brothers and all of their friends were and did. I knew them long term. I know what became of them. Generally speaking, Seedlings moved out of town and those not "fortunate" enough to recieve the blessing of Art's help stayed close w/ their families and continue to live and operate businesses or work jobs to this day.

There was a short lived fad in excessive drug use. I'm sure someone has overdosed at school at one time or another, but it certainly wasn't a widespread problem. The one story I remember about a rock concert was that a 13yo girl was trampled to death when the crowd rushed the stage.

But if there had been hundreds and thousands of genuine teenaged addicts in need of addiction treatment, then why did Art go after casual pot smokers and work so hard at convincing the parents, cops and everyone else that pot was a gateway to heroin addiction?

The obvious answer (Occam's Razor) is that there wasn't that much of a market for addiction treatment.

If you were actually addicted and in need of help, I'm sorry to hear it and glad you beat it. But you must know that most of those kids who got into the Summer of Love fad didn't let it take over their lives. There was no epidemic. Not even a pandemic. If there had been, then why was The Seed packed w/ kids who were not addicts and why all the hard work to get them to confess to being addicts when they clearly were not?

You say my mom overreacted. I won't argue against that, she certainly did. The only one of the 6 of us to escape The Seed was my older sister who was already in college. And she remains the only one of us w/ a 4 year degree.

But it's not asif my mother somehow got it into her head, all on her own, that druggies were everywhere and all of her kids and everyone in the neighborhood needed The Seed. Art pounded that drum continually and the Group and Staff reenforced it relentlessly.


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