My name is Aya Inoue. I was at MMS from 1998 - 2000.
I sit here and read other people's experiences, and I am overcome with gratitude but sadness. The fact that so many people had negative experiences with MMS fails to surprise me, but I struggle because of the persisitng hostiliy people feel towards the place. I understand that MMS was not the right place for everyone. I do not think that it ever claimed to be... a lot of selectivity wentinto students who were accepted there, and I honestly believe that the administrators tried their best to admit girls they thought they could help. But everyone makes mistakes, and I do not believe that this happens in a vacuum. Parents had every right to pull their children from the program at any point. Educational consultants were often used to aid parents in their decisions. Is it necessarily John Mercer, or Mike Finn's fault that MMS wasn't the right fit for some of the students? It is true, there were many girls who left MMS and returned to their old ways immediately. Some hung in there for a while, but inevitably returned to drugs, alcohol sex, eating disorders, etc. However, I have had the luxury of getting back in touch with so many students who left MMS - some graduated, some got kicked out, some left early. The bottom line is: no matter how much we might have swayed from our paths of success, a whole bunch of us have managed to get our lives back together again. MMS never claimed to be a "cure" for addictions. The founders had emotional investment in the lives of their students because they were in recovery themselves. It is understandable for some people to resent their approach to treatment, but I do not think it is fair to undermine the amount of lives that the staff at MMS did save.
Take me, for instance. I landed at the gates of MMS in March 1998, just barely 90 pounds, covered in self mutilated cuts on my arms, and with little will to live. It was the toughest decision for my parents to ever make, but they sent me away from home (Japan) in order to save my life. Through my therapy at MMS, I learned to have a voice. I learned how to enjoy life free of materialistic things. I learned to distance myself from my dysfunctional family, and to be independent. I learned how to create strong relationships with other girls who were from diverse backgrounds. If I had never left Tokyo, I have no doubt in my mind that I would either be dead or hospitalized today. I needed that environment to survive. I needed to be monitored because I had no intention of monitoring myself. I needed to learn how to cry, and how to be happy.
Every day continues to be a struggle, but it has been seven years since my last binge/purge. I continue to have a hard time facing my body and taking care of myself. But I'm alive. And for that, I will always be grateful. MMS didn't directly save my life - I did. It ultimately came down to a choice that I had to make about myself. What MMS did was provide a medium through which I could learn to respect myself.
I understand that some people are angry with their experiences there. But the truth of the matter is, we can't go back and change time. We cannot blame any of the decisions we made after we left MMS on the institution. The truth is, WE are responsible for our own decisions. It is not fair to blame other people for the mistakes we make in life. We can be angry at the situtation in which we found ourselves, and everyone is entitled to their opinions. But we must be careful not to use MMS as a scapegoat for our own issues. I am sorry that MMS was not a positive experience for everyone, but we do not live in a utopian society. If it was a bad time for you, accept the fact that it wasn't the right place for you, but understand that it WAS the right place for a lot of girls. Everyone is different. Take what you like, and leave the rest. Its ok if you left it all behind, but please don't forget that there are many students who needed MMS during that point in their lives. I, for one, will forever be grateful to my Montana experience because it is where I like to say that "my life started over again."