Perception is a funny thing. Don, I've had a very similar sort of gradual realization of the scope of what had been going on around me all my life. I've realized pretty recently that I've always had sort of a dualistic perception of the whole thing.
On the one hand, The Seed open meetings and volunteer work that I did with my mother every week were just a boring pain in the ass. On the other hand, I remember that 'going to the building' feeling as I gazed out the car window marking off little landmarks along the way. In fact, I wanted so very desperately to avoid going in as a client that at the age of 15 I was willing to walk away from my home, few good friends and everything I'd ever known, even my pets, with no intention of ever going back till I was safely of age.
As I hitchhiked around aimlessly, telling my story to anyone who really wanted to hear it, I couldn't really explain what was so bad at home that I had to get away. But it was that bad. It was like suffocating.
In group in Sarasota, I only remember a couple of events that really shocked my sensibilities. The 'restraints', of course, were awful. But I viewed that as pretty much avoidable and could never understand why people subjected themselves to that kind of thing. All the rest, the daily grind and ritual were, again, just a major inconvenience that I was prepared to wait out till I could finally get away. When I finally did, I still couldn't explain to anyone what was so awful about it all. And yet I had nightmares and insomnia and intense paranoia for years following.
The most unnerving aspect of it all was that I had nothing to fall back on. I had never really known anything but life in a Program family and then in group. At 18, I realized, sitting alone on the rocks of some beach in Sarasota that I had no idea who I was. I didn't know what I liked, what I wanted, didn't have a favorite song or color or a single friend.
So breaking away was like stepping off into a void. But still, without reservation, it was better than being in!
I had no idea, until I started talking with other survivors, that anyone else ever felt this way. I thought it all had to do with my fucked up family and maybe some primal flaw in me. But I've come to realize that, aside from minor trappings, there's no significant difference in the Program from one location and date to another. The basis of the program is to steal one's personality. Whether it's done with more violence and less psychotropics, in a warehouse or a desert or a communal set-up like Synanon makes little difference. There is horrible psychological violence going on every day in these places. People who find themselves caught up in it can either unsee it for sanity's sake or get the shit kicked out of them.
