Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Seed Discussion Forum
Physical Symptoms
cleveland:
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!.
_________________
Wally Gator[ This Message was edited by: cleveland on 2004-09-23 07:05 ]
rjfro22:
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.
GregFL:
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 ]
rjfro22:
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.
GregFL:
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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