Please don't ever be sorry for asking questions. That was a part of the cult conditioning- never question anything, just conform.
During my intake I told them that I was gay/bi, I can't recall what label I used.I told them that I had been sexually active with my priest and a music teacher and other adults for three years.
Unfortunately I also told them that I had sampled leftover drinks at my parents parties when I was 12, and so the false belief that I had been an addict from that point forward was instilled on day one.
The guys doing my intake asked me if I thought it was possible that those men were only sexually active with me because I had manipulated them in order to gain access to drugs or alcohol. I was immdiately taken by this viewpoint, to blame all of this confusion on a simplistic addiction theory was very comfortable, and meant that I might not be gay, and maybe I could go about life as a 'normal' guy. Of course it doesn't really work that way- The world is not black/white.
My parents were not informed of the sexual abuse until I told them about, couched in the terms of it being my fault, four months later during my first Talk.
I tried to deal with issues of my sexuality while in group, but most often I was confronted for doing so and told that I was 'not here for a sex problem, I was here for a drug problem'. Alicia was particularly fond of telling me to just 'put my sex issues on a shelf, and deal with them after you step'.
When I self-withdrew the first time, I dove headfirst into the gay community in Atlanta, eventually moving into an apt with five gay men. Though I was not active with any of them, I did go out and pick up one night stands etc.
When I came back to the group I cried and sobbed about how I felt dirty etc. because I had been using sex to get drugs, even though it was not true, it sold well to the group, and it meant that I would recieve the acceptance of the group, which was vital to my ego.
There were some people in group or on staff who said that it didn't matter if I was gay or not. There were others who said that gay sex was dirty and immoral and tried to convince me that it only happened because I was an addict.
I internalized homophobia, hated myself, blamed myself for being abused, and spent a long time self medicating because of my confusion. My sexual abusers went free without being brought to justice, partly because the program convinced my parents that it should be left alone for my own good.
Sadly, as I have become 'awake', I realized that I did not use drugs for two and half years after my abuse started. While the program convinced me that addiction caused my sexual 'problems', the hard cold truth was that I had started self medicating because of the pain, shock, stress, trauma and embarrasment of being sexually active with these adult men and trying to keep it a secret as a teenager. So much for addiction being 'primary'.
This is perhaps the hardest issue for me to forgive about- the people who told me that I was to blame, that my alleged addiction was to blame for these adult men breaking the law and raping me.
I first smoked pot when I was 16 years old. I was first sexually molested when I was 13.
Between the time of that first abuse and my intake, I was sexually molested by four different adult men. I ran away from home three times, as far as California twice.
I was already deeply into a case of PTSD upon my intake, and I boasted and lied about drug use, in hopes that the program would accept me (I had read the brochure that said only the worst teen addicts would be admitted). In retrospect I know now that I was simply trying to escape the molestations, but I sure ran to the wrong place.
I think that many many kids in the program were PTSD upon arrival, from sexual abuse, physical abuse and other issues. I believe that many of us only self-medicated to kill this pain, that we were never 'addicts'. But, in a totalist environment, where doctrine rises above person, such issues are moot.
As I look back I believe that at least two foster homes asked that I be moved out of their homes because of my openness about my sexuality, they were concerned that I would rape their children, or 'turn them gay.
There were at least four other guys in Atlanta who openly discussed gay issues while I was in the program, and I had shallow relationships with two of them in the years after we left the group.
There were two guys who admitted to being sexually active with each other while on their phases, they were confronted, started over, and they both stood up and shared about how their addiction had driven them to this 'relapse'. I recall them being terrified of being 'terminated', as sexual activity was a termination offense. Hormones had nothing to do with it, and the torture of being in the group, that was irrelevant- this was about a twisted need to feel good- something that an ideology based in guilt and shame could not tolerate.
It was all so sick and perverse- addiction does not make people gay, indeed it is not even a disease. most of the scientific community has already accepted this, it is only a myth that is promulgated by the therapy/treatment industry.
But the program was not really about addiction, that was just the "loss-leader' that drew people in. The program was about changing people into what the founders idealized as 'good' people, and that included rampant homophobia, hatred of modern music, disgust with non collared and T-shirts, long hair, facial hair, tattoos and most anything else that did not conform to their own lifestyle- a kind of upper crust, social climbing, politically active(republican), prejudicial, circle the wagons against social decay viewpoint.
The entire thing was so sick it still makes me puke to think of it. I deeply resent the executives, the so-called clinicians, who passed themselves off as experts on addiction because of their own brainwashing in the cult, who refused to notify the authorities of serious sexual crimes.
They allowed sociopathic sex offenders to go free, and I know for a fact that the clergyman who sexually molested me went on to rape several other kids in the New Orleans area.
The music teacher was still molesting kids several years after I left the program, I went to visit him once and he tried to be sexual with me again- I refused, but could never bring myself to go to the authorities about it- I was still in deep conflict, and believing that it was my fault for being an addict.
I did not begin to escape my own internalized homophobia until I moved to California, SF to be precise, and submerged myself in a postive environment. I did not fully understand how the program had used and manipulated me, how they robbed me of justice until just the last two years, starting with the death of the clergyman who abused me.
Those bastards lied to & used us all, and they will eventually be exposed for the nazi's that they were. I guess I find it sickly ironic that they sit on the board of trustees for the Florida Holocaust Museum.
I guess they forgot that gay people were also victims of teh genocide of the third reich- where do you think the pink triangle came from- it was what my people had to wear as they were shuffled off to the ovens.
Isn't it odd that a Jewish couple would end up founding a program that blamed gayness on drug addiction, much the same way the nazi's blamed inferiority and feeble-mindedness on being Jewish.
But then I have always said that when the opressed become the opressors, the war crimes only become worse in the light of retribution.
Gays, addicts, people with tattoo's and long hair, those who dared to wear black teeshirts or perhaps choose to live their lives free of guilt and shame were always a threat to these totalists- and they did their best to 'ethnically cleanse' us from American culture.
They failed utterly. I hope that answers your question.
