Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform > The Seed Discussion Forum
More Trivia
Antigen:
Wow!
Ok, I haven't read your whole post yet (except I spotted my name, and I like you too :wink:) but I have to answer this:
--- Quote ---On 2005-11-24 08:53:00, Anonymous wrote:
Because I agree that the seed I went to the second time was not the seed I went to the first time. But even going there helped in the sense that it go me to the place that I could fit in with some of the more "normal" kids at school. Did some of them drink or smoke a little pot? Sure but on the whole they were half way decent kids with some principles for the most part.
--- End quote ---
I saw the same thing. So either it really happened that way or we're sharing a trip. See, my older brothers went in very near the beginning, I think in 1970. And the whole atmosphere was just so much more laid back. The blithe, vacant smiles and constant "luv ya's" as greeting and salutation, just like "Aloha" were a bit creepy. But, overall, I didn't get the feeling early on (now, this as a 6 or 7yo little kid) that it was a violent, hostile or overtly coercive group. Just weird, but in a mostly nice sort of way.
But that thing that you mention as a benefit? Being able to transition from an evidently very messed up social circle back into something more in line w/ community standards? That was quickly eliminated.
By the time I was starting to turn into a teenager, it was total isolation. The dogma had taken on a life of it's own. I don't think Art had any concept of what was happening or any real control of it. He was too high on all the adulation. If 90% of teenagers were druggies, as Art said (and Art was damned near infalible in my mother's eyes) then it's best not to take any chances. No problem if I wanted to hang out with my brother's 23yo ex junkie friends. But the guitar playing kid w/ the peach fuzz moustache? Why, his hair touches his collar... he might be a...... brilliant classical guitarist who went on to Berkeley music school on a musical scholarship by the time I escaped the Program and looked him up through his dad who was none too keen on an alleged former junkie trying to track down his son...
There was no fitting in. The plan changed. The entire culture became insular and paranoid so that transitioning back into the real world was seen as a failure. Anyone who did that would be shunned totally, even by family.
It really puzzles me to see Marijuana connected with Narcotics - Dope and all that crap?it's a thousand times better than whiskey - it's an Assistant - a friend.
Louis Armstrong
--- End quote ---
Antigen:
--- Quote ---On 2005-11-24 08:53:00, Anonymous wrote:
Some might say the seed just had me kidding myself in a different way. But they sent me inside myself for answers not outside so I don't think so. They didn't say we have the answers for you they said you have the answers inside of yourself if your willing to look there and look there hard. So now that I have wrapped my experience in pretty paper and tied it with a bow I have to say that my second time around wasn't quite right. They had given me the tools to see that, to recognize the rampant egotism of the newer staff, the forced and more coercive atmosphere. I am sure glad I went there the 1st time I wish you could have experienced it to. So I wouldn't have to type so much.
--- End quote ---
Yeah, I think maybe to a degree. I think maybe there's a big difference between how people perceive the whole experience based on whether they really want and need help or not. For you? Telling the truth may have fit the Program; it was just what they wanted to hear. For me? I had to keep it all bottled up and carefully hidden. Was I depressed and careless? Oh yeah! Why? Because I was trying to impress druggiefriends who always treated me badly and stuff? :rofl:
Well, that's what I had to say. But it never had been true. I didn't HAVE any friends, damne it! Except the other jr Seedling, who was a boy 4 years younger than me. When I got to be about 12 or 13, I was embarrased to be seen w/ him, so I quit hanging out with even him. I was just starting to make a couple of real friends. It just happens that they sampled the pharmacopia. That was way on the periffery, nothing like a central issue. The reasons why we were starting to be friends were things like speaking up for me when the cheerleaders were especially cruel to me. Or the one classmate, student government officer, cheerleader and all, who risked her political currency by stating that I had been right and she wasn't going to rat me out for finally defending myself against another persistant bully in the locker room.
Real stuff. The real stuff that I needed. But I couldn't let my mother find out I had friends at all because... well, like any good DA can indict a ham sandwich, all teenagers were suspect. And we just don't want to go there, do we? Since my Bible teacher was my pastor and my science teacher, part time band instructor and tennis coach was my deacon and sunday school teacher, I couldn't have friends or it would get back to her.
THAT is why I was so fucking depressed! I don't know what would have happened in the early Seed if I had sat voluntarily on front row for three days then stood up and said "Know what? This isn't for me. I have no idea what you fucked up people are talking about." and walked away. In the 2nd generation Seed that I found myself in 10 years later, there would have been violence. So I had to lie and call it Honesty. Just like most of the rest of us did.
I can't imagine that, at your tender age and given the kind of trauma you'd been through, that the Program dogma didn't maybe unduely influence your thinking. But I don't think you're out to coerce anyone to agree with you or otherwise do any harm with it. So I really don't have a problem with it. I do have an interest, though. So just let me know if I come off as disrespectful or mean spirited. I'm really not. But I am fascinated w/ this whole story. See, I can't get family history out of my family. That's partly due to their Victorian roots on one side and raw acrimony on the other. But a big part of it is that I'm an apostate to Program culture while they're all either militant Stepcraft practitioners or they're humoring the others in the name of peace. In a big way, this IS my family history.
I was born a heretic. I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
--Susan B. Anthony, U.S. reformer and suffragist
--- End quote ---
_________________
Drug war POW
Straight, Sarasota
`80 - `82
landyh:
--- Quote ---On 2005-11-26 10:05:00, Antigen wrote:
"
--- Quote ---
On 2005-11-24 08:53:00, Anonymous wrote:
--- End quote ---
Yeah, I think maybe to a degree. I think maybe there's a big difference between how people perceive the whole experience based on whether they really want and need help or not. For you? Telling the truth may have fit the Program; it was just what they wanted to hear. For me? I had to keep it all bottled up and carefully hidden. Was I depressed and careless? Oh yeah! Why? Because I was trying to impress druggiefriends who always treated me badly and stuff? :rofl:
Well, that's what I had to say. But it never had been true. I didn't HAVE any friends, damne it! Except the other jr Seedling, who was a boy 4 years younger than me. When I got to be about 12 or 13, I was embarrased to be seen w/ him, so I quit hanging out with even him. I was just starting to make a couple of real friends. It just happens that they sampled the pharmacopia. That was way on the periffery, nothing like a central issue. The reasons why we were starting to be friends were things like speaking up for me when the cheerleaders were especially cruel to me. Or the one classmate, student government officer, cheerleader and all, who risked her political currency by stating that I had been right and she wasn't going to rat me out for finally defending myself against another persistant bully in the locker room.
Real stuff. The real stuff that I needed. But I couldn't let my mother find out I had friends at all because... well, like any good DA can indict a ham sandwich, all teenagers were suspect. And we just don't want to go there, do we? Since my Bible teacher was my pastor and my science teacher, part time band instructor and tennis coach was my deacon and sunday school teacher, I couldn't have friends or it would get back to her.
THAT is why I was so fucking depressed! I don't know what would have happened in the early Seed if I had sat voluntarily on front row for three days then stood up and said "Know what? This isn't for me. I have no idea what you fucked up people are talking about." and walked away. In the 2nd generation Seed that I found myself in 10 years later, there would have been violence. So I had to lie and call it Honesty. Just like most of the rest of us did.
I can't imagine that, at your tender age and given the kind of trauma you'd been through, that the Program dogma didn't maybe unduely influence your thinking. But I don't think you're out to coerce anyone to agree with you or otherwise do any harm with it. So I really don't have a problem with it. I do have an interest, though. So just let me know if I come off as disrespectful or mean spirited. I'm really not. But I am fascinated w/ this whole story. See, I can't get family history out of my family. That's partly due to their Victorian roots on one side and raw acrimony on the other. But a big part of it is that I'm an apostate to Program culture while they're all either militant Stepcraft practitioners or they're humoring the others in the name of peace. In a big way, this IS my family history.
I was born a heretic. I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
--Susan B. Anthony, U.S. reformer and suffragist
--- End quote ---
_________________
Drug war POW
Straight, Sarasota
`80 - `82"
--- End quote ---
I don't really know what to say Antigen. I find your post to be heartbreaking. I know myself that while my experiences are terrible the worst of them came from forces outside of my family. So I had that no matter what even if it wasn't perfect. I am sorry you didn't. Do I find your posts to be mean spirited? Not in the least. I mean do I see anger in them? Yes! But not at all as directed towards me. The Seed was a safe place for me the 1st time and I needed everyone of those "luvyas". It was a net gain for me. Because I didn't believe anybody would really accept what I really thought I was inside I never really could tell anybody. I wish I could have. I believe it kept me from getting better. I don't blame them for not being aware enough to know. Because it seems a few knew, tried to reach my hurt and I wouldn't let them. Reading about your own pain brings out my compassion, my own pain, breaks me inside and out. We were both robbed of something but in different ways. But do you see a difference in that my own trauma was from a source whose motives were to wound maybe to make me experience there own trauma's in some way. They were ill intentioned, sick, even evil. Is there no comfort in the motives that created your own pain. Seems to me that though misguided the intentions were of a different source than that of my own pain. I don't speak here to minimize your feelings because I think I grasp at least to an extent there depth. For Gods's sake i cried for you when I read this. But if peace may be found in forgiveness then and I'm not telling you it is but that it might begin there does not the intent of those who hurt you at least crack open the gateway to that path. Wherin do I find my own peace surely my own options are different. I find some in the exploration of our shared though different pain. I thank you for that. I find myself shaken by your message to wish for your healing and no less my own. One thing that is clear to me is that the time has come for all of us to seek and find our own "answer" however and wherever we can. I just happen to belive (not know)that surely it lies somewhere in a distance beyond blame.
Antigen:
Don't cry for me Argentina....
Seriously, yeah, I'm over it. But still interested in getting the word out. See, the Seed wasn't the only Synanon based program for teens that Bobby DuPont bankrolled. There are dozens of them out there derived from the Seed/Straight line and some hundreds more grown out of the CEDU "therapeutic" boarding schools. TC has become the accepted model for treatment of any old thang that afflicts the parents of teenagers today. I think people need to understand what that means.
And no doubt in my mind at all that it all started with good intentions. But you know what they say about good intentions.
If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine- but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you've been bad or good- and CARES about any of it- to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working.
--Frank Zappa, American musician
--- End quote ---
landyh:
--- Quote ---On 2005-11-28 15:27:00, Antigen wrote:
"Don't cry for me Argentina....
Seriously, yeah, I'm over it. But still interested in getting the word out. See, the Seed wasn't the only Synanon based program for teens that Bobby DuPont bankrolled. There are dozens of them out there derived from the Seed/Straight line and some hundreds more grown out of the CEDU "therapeutic" boarding schools. TC has become the accepted model for treatment of any old thang that afflicts the parents of teenagers today. I think people need to understand what that means.
And no doubt in my mind at all that it all started with good intentions. But you know what they say about good intentions.
If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine- but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you've been bad or good- and CARES about any of it- to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working.
--Frank Zappa, American musician
--- End quote ---
"
--- End quote ---
Yes and I saw some of the changes so I do understand some of the strong feelings people have. Just out of curiosity does anybody here know if Teen Challenge is based on the same model that these other programs were? I am curious because my best friend and love was just disapeared into that program where I can have no contact with her. She went in voluntarily and felt she needed the help they offer and I hope she is right as I wish her nothing but the peace and happiness that she seeks I just don't really want her subjected either. And yes before anyone else says it I do recognize the terrific irony of a 44 year old man whose girlfriend is in Teen Challenge. It makes me laugh a little anyway when I think of it or would if I didn't miss her so terribly. She was there for me over the last five years through thick and thin and the loss has been very difficult and painful for me.
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