There sure is alot of name calling going on around here. I guess it's the nature of the beast being an open forum and it sounded like a snappy thread tittle. I've been reading and following links here long enough I think I can articulate in the apropriate lingo a thread ,perhaps, of some use to me and others. Maybe after reading others memories my own can now find some form of userstanding of the things I have for so long been unable to get a grip on. One thing that has become very clear is the diversity of peoples experiences before dureing and after their program(ing) or so varied it's a wonder anyone feels like they are relating to anyone but themselves about what happened. One thing I learned while cleaning horse stall is, if you hang around enough shit you're going to get some on you. Since I think who you were before is an integral part of your experience in the theraputic comminity (TC) world I'll start my story with a little history of me before rather than start with my intake like many do here. I was always independent with a strong sense of self and this is probably why I dont feel as harmed by the seed as many. I had hiked over 1,000 miles of the appalachian (sp?) trail alone when I was 12, solo and in one trek. Something I remembered everytime staff told me I couldn't make it without the seed for even a day because I had no where to go. I had moved many times in my life and had therefore had learned to adapt to varied environments. I had learned languages and assimilated myself to different cultures around the world. I had older hippie brothers and was well versed in sixties mentality, well on my way to my own hippydom. My enthusiasm for wilderness trekking had me off on adventures that often kept me away from home for extended periods an I'm sure it worried my mom. Combined with a bad and illeagal habit of joyrideing in the neighbors car got me a free ticket to art's vacation retreat for out of control druggies. I was 15 and had been in juvie for a while as my case was shuffled around to get me to my home counties court(was busted while adventuring far from home as was my want at the time) and everyone kept talking like I had a choice when I knew I didn't. I remember my intake and billy the midget trying to be intimidating and me trying not to laugh at that. Heck I had dealt with bears in the wilderness alone at 12. He didn't too scarey to me.(I'm starting to feel like I am in front of the group "hello, my name is Chris and I have consumed this many rehabs....one more twelve step program and I'll be freeeeeee at last") I remember more about the changes I saw in others than any change I saw in myself. I remember I thought libby was a hottie. I wondered about art barker alot. How could he reconcile his supposed humility with a crowd of people singing at the top of their lungs how they worshipped him? Why weren't we allowed to think that we had any good in us at all before we got there? Many had obviously done good but had to deny that they did it for the sake of goodness. I was and am certain they didn't want to hear that dureing a trip on lsd I had decided to be a good person and repect life/become a vegitarian, seek a kinder gentler relationship with The Great Spirit and all creation ect...ect... treehugging hippy stuff. All of which I have centered my life around ever since and to this day even. Eating the baloney sandwiches was painfull to that part of my being all those months. I had to tuck that part of me away and try to play the game or I would never even be trusted enough to have an opportunity to escape. Most of my time there was a blur though I still feel I learned a great deal about how people work. This was the ft. pierce seed and it was mid to late 73(my time line is fuzzy sometimes, this stuff happened over 30 years ago and thoughts of it havn't come up that often before I found this site, after my mom whined about how I should appologize for not calling after my escape) I often felt I was just watching a really long uncomftable and boreing movie. I remember felling alot of compassion for people who had such a hard time as some obviously had some serious problems and needed help. Others obviously didn't need help and couldn't understand why they were abandoned to this daily mistreatment. They felt the world should be a place that was secure and you could count on people not to be so mean. They came from sheltered lives where no one had ever cursed in front of them and they were sitting on the group W bench with the father rapers and mother stabbers. I remember what a roll of the dice it was who you went home with. After over a year on my 10 to 10 liveing with old timers the whole time I saw a wide spectrum of how seedlings lived and live with the cult of their affliction. From trailor parks to mansions. Mac and cheese day after day to fine cuisine every day. Never any sign it would end and I had braces on my teeth so splitting was a difficult concept or I would have found a way. I am an imaginative and resourseful person. Always have been, it's required of the youngest sibling in a family I think. Well at least if you want to keep your fair share of cookies in your posesion. When my braces were removed I said I had to use the bathroom and out the back window of the bathroom I went. I was impressed how hard they tried to catch me. Cocoa Beach was a small community still back then. Ron Jon's was just an A frame building in a sand lot back then. So I guess the local constabulatory(cops) had nothing better to do. Cop cars everywhere and even a helicopter. I still wonder how I rated a helicopter. I got away but stupid me I went home to get some wilderness equipment to make it easy to just disapear into the woods until I could make my getaway last. Alas I was caught there, I was just a kid after all. So back on the front row I went in the lowliest position, the seedling gone bad. Everyone tried their best to make me feel bad about it but the truth is I never really respected any of those people. I saw alot of good intentions but that was never enough in my book. My pop had good intentions but he was obviously a drunken bigoted insesitive self cented ..... you get the idea. Still doesn't mean he wanted to do harm on the contrary. In my experience very few people do harm for the sake of being a bad person. Even the most soulless manson follower thought they were doing good and so it is with art barker and his spawn. I often wonder how many of mansons followers had been abused in theraputic communities like of even the seed. I have know a few and many seedlings had that same look in their face as they gave over the fabric of their being for someone else to decide the fate of. I have compasion for even them though I'm not gonna invite them over for dinner. It was another long blur of sitting in that metal chair 12 hours a day. I have considered that I may have been kept around to the extreme because my mom was still giveing them money and they needed it bad. After reading a bit I see in 1974 the shit was hitting the fan about government funding and the institution need every penny they could get to contuniue their brand of saveing the world. I wonder if I was spared some of the mind fuck to be kept as a cash cow or if my sense of self was so well established the incompentent mind fuckers were unable to change it. That will remain one of those mysteries in my life I suppose. After ft. pierce closed and everything involved a long drive from brevard county it drove my mom to have to sell the house and eventuall sleep with the judge that sentanced me to have me forceably made an at home old timer. School was wierd albiet brief since I split pretty quick once home. I didn't have any freinds really. I had been to 12 different schools by high school and so no long term freinds. I've always been a loner type. Now I'm a downright hermit. I carefully planned my escape gathering supplies, maps, survival manuals, food, clothes and a bedroll of wool blankets and disapeared mysteriously looking much like Kwai Chang in the popular at the time tv show -kung fu- . Three and a half days later I was in San Diego California climbing over the fence to amuse myself for the day at the zoo being very glad to be free. Being only 16 I had to live life on the lam as it were so the seed din't stop influencing my life for quite a while. I just didn't have to look at it. Or hear it or smell it or all those other sensations that were forbiden if they didnt have to do with getting straight. After all that sensory deprivation. Every mental spritual and physical sense that had been deprived decided it was time to check things out. Teen years are very formative so I know all those blurry memories are really doing stuff but it's hard to pin down what. I spent alot of the time at first working in labor camps with migrant worker where I could get some cash without any ID, rideng freight trains and eating in missions waiting to turn 18 and have even more freedom. By then all dilusion of the seed being any good or ever going back faded(yes,I had a few going back thoughts though, even as I had them I remember thinking what a stupid idea that was. Yet I couldn't stop myself from thinking them.) Nowaday I find myself thinking of the seed like many unpragmatic idealisms. Like communism or hitlers dream of a perfect world. If everyone was the same maybe they could work if they were the right people but jeeepers it would be a boreing world. The reality of the world is we aren't all the same and one size does not fit all. Heck the seed wasn't even the same from year to year or even the same for each person there at the same time. All the mud slinging in these forums has no context if there isn't even a common vocabulary amongst the people useing it. Makeing most of it laughable if it wasn't rooted in so much pain. Some good communication does happen here and I'd like to thank Ginger for putting this together. It has helped me answer alot of questions that have, every once in a while, crossed my mind as I examine my life every once in a while. As it is healthy to do. I don't know about this daily searching and fearless moral inventory stuff but a life without introspection leads to repeating alot of mistakes. I want to make fresh new mistakes. Experamentation without a method is as dangerous with peoples psyches as it is with drugs or bombs or any number of things that should be dealt with with reason and purpose. The seed had no set method. Everyone just went about with their ideas all willy nilly without regard for the consequences. Liveing in the wilderness I notice mother nature does not offer good and bad, right and wrong or virtue versus evil. There is only actions and consequences. They had powerfull tools which used well could have done great good. You can have a tool like a hammer and build a house with it or you can beat your neighbor in the head with it. It was all done incredably ineptly and at the cost of great suffering. In many ways it goes on still in the 60B a year rehab bussiness started muchly by the seed and it's spawn. Still it is hard to have animosity for anyone involved. Even the most venomous mud slinger. Well maybe a little animosity for the bush family...well and sembler...an dupont. I said it was hard not impossable! I think this post has gone on long enough though I I'll be back an answer any inquiries. The last few days reading here has given me a bit of mental mastication material so I may take a little break. Thanks again Ginger for putting together my new cyber theraputic community( :mad: ) I hope you all are happy.
