Although my experience was good and bad..Im glad I went there and I got the hell out after 10 months.This was written by a fellow cedu student who went before me.I thought it was well written and brings back a few memories.You may have seen this on another message board.
It's a huge trip to read all these people, kindred
souls if you will, talking about their CEDU
experience. I'm from the old school Cedu days and it
seemd like it has changed very little. How the hell do
you even begin to describe what happened up there? I
was lying in bed one morning when this big giant came
in and abducted me and then took me up to CEDU school.
It was quite traumatic. I remember being led around by
this brainwashed fellow who told me that the girls
didn't exist as sex objects and that I was encouraged
to masturbate. I thought this guy was mad and wondered
what type of drugs they must put in the water. I
begged my parents to take me home but they wouldn't.
As the days went by I adjusted to the bizarre ways of
the school. It seemed like a cult of mind control that
insidiously crept into you. Soon the outside world was
a distant memory. During the day I would be cutting
wood or feeding horses and then in the afternoon it
was "rap" time. During these groups it was par to
expose your darkest secrets. These sessions were
extremely abusive and after a while they served to
make one into a jaded mess. The tricky part of the
whole process lay hidden in the fact that many aspects
of the program were in fact bewitching such as the
panoramic scenery and the innocent souls you'd meet in
that dream waste land of the pysche. Cedu school sort
of took wayward kids and thrust them in the middle of
one madman's idea of what would "fix" them. You
couldn't really hate the other kids for being their,
but instead you sort of had to love them extra hard
and therefore a strange affection was birthed among
the "peergroup." This affection mixed with the
scenery, mixed with the gut wrenching deprogramming
curriculum made for a perfect stew in which to lose
yourself. The way they would play the same song again
and again and make you tell all your secrets to the
group. Honestly, I think the place turned me into a
half pervert listening to these sordid tales of girl's
doing these things while at the same time being denied
sex and also being sixteen years old. In fact I found
the whole environment to be sexually charged with the
way you might get so colse to a female staff member
and during the profeets have her whispering in your
ear the most painful information though she would coo
it in some kitten's voice. It seemed like anything
could happen up there yet it never did. It seemed like
most of the kids there were young drug addicts mysekf
included and they, the school, never taught you
anything that would help you stay clean in the future.
The information they gave you was wise, but giving it
to me for example, at sixteen, was perhaps too much.
This was the kind of info you learn after a full life
of experiences and they were like force feeding it to
you in this cultish manner. I will say that I had some
great times up there, and to think of it now makes me
sad as since then life has been tough for the most
part. I enjoyed the theatre and a lot of the people I
met. Most of them that I kept in touch with got
totally messed after. I also enjoyed that area of
Claifornia. It was just that leaving Cedu was like
nearly impossible because where in the hell do you go
with your life after you have supposedly been to the
"summit" of all Summits? Some of the staff were great
but the whole thing was ultimately quite difficult to
process. I remember after I left and was living in
L.A. some of my friends and I took an inebriated ride
up there one time at like three in the morning. It was
like the place still had an invisible hold on us that
we needed to liberate ourselves of so we headed up
there unannounced and uninvited and much to our
chagrin our truck got stuck in the snow. Some twisted
maniacal watchman ousted us from the property. I don't
know. I guess when I sum it up it seems like the place
was emotionally incestuous because it was wrong what
they did but it felt good at times, the emotional
release, the closeness with friends, the unreal
realness of some of the experiences, the magically
sparpked aura that lurked there. But it wasn't right
ultimately just like some kid who suffers incest might
know it's wrong but at times might feel good during
it. But all I can say is that if you survived Cedu and
lived to tell about it the wise thing to do now is
take the good and try and let the bad go. There are
people who've been through worse and I'm sure it
wasn't all bad but I know it was all weird. Looking
back I can see that some of the things I learned there
were profound yet I wasn't able to apply them in a
practical fashion though they've helped me in dealing
with people. I would also say look out for drugs. I
myself have had terrible drug problems since I left
which was long, long ago. I've never really been able
to communicate my feelings about Cedu and I even sort
of forgot that I had them so I appreciate that other
board the kid put up. It was like a trip through the
looking glass of feelings. One day I'll write a book
about it when I feel psychologically stout. Take
brothers and sisters and if Cedu left you baffled and
even perhaps eerily damaged as it may have left me,
maybe use their old slogan to forget and move on from
it -- Today is the first day of the rest of your life
