I think that people who feel gratitude to the Program and credit it with having helped them accept as fact the fiction that they were primally flawed individuals to begin with.
I do not buy that for a moment. We were all but a very few children. Some few were very, very young adults. Children and young adults make mistakes; do things for which they are later ashamed or regretful. That's why we don't allow them to vote, own real estate, drive cars, perform surgery or hold public office. Nearly always, we learn from early mistakes and grow up to be reasonably decent, competent human beings, even without undergoing brutal thought reform.
"But if it saved one life...." you often hear. It's doubtful if the Program ever saved any and pretty nearly irrefutable that it took more than a few.
Anyone still sober? Sure, some say they are. Many of those, (not all, just many that I've met) if you get to know them a little better, you find they're using prescribed psyche drugs. Don't get me wrong. That's fine with me. If it works for you then, by all means, stick with it. But it would be right decent of you if you would not condemn folks who use different drugs under their own authority.
And the vast majority among Program survivors report a couple of years (or more) of intense pain-killing, wild partying and other kinds of off the chain activity. Some attribute it to psychic self medication--to kill the pain. Others look at it as a self fulfiling prophesey--making their fabricated drug lists "real".
This is, of course, just my opinion. Inasmuch as no one can know the mind of another, I'll never be able to say for sure why anyone thinks what they do. But I was involved with the Program from the age of around 6 or 7 and my family is involved still. So I have a lot of clues to work with and a lot of incentive to have given this a lot of thought over the years.
