Fornits
Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform => Straight, Inc. and Derivatives => Topic started by: Anonymous on August 25, 2006, 10:58:00 PM
-
I just started reading this forum about two months ago. I was in a secondary Straight program in Atlanta. The first time I found TheStraights.com and saw a drawing of a group room chair, I had to take some time and digest that there is an actual website and forum based on my own experiences. I have read tons of the different post and I hate that it seems to be a dumping ground of hatred and curses but I do not know what else people are supposed to say about these "treatment" centers. I have, that I know of, lost three friends and a ridiculous husband that was in there with me. The one I was closest to blew a whole through his head instead of relapsing. The only sense that I was able to make out of his suicide was hearing the graduate staff's words echoing, "You will die if you relapse, You drink a beer and you'll wake up laying in your own vomit, You will DIE!" I think that is what my friend thought about when he decided to shoot himself instead of taking a hit but who knows. Anyway, I guess I am just wondering if anyone who has lived through the Straights are alive and well.
-
Yeah, a whole bunch of us alive and enjoying life as much as any human has any right to expect.
-
Yep. 'Cept it sucks cause it's raining like all hell right now and I'm supposed to be out playing.
I'm sick of addressing that point though. If people can't figure out that most of us vent here and aren't miserable in our everyday lives then fuck 'em. I've got a great life......now. Took a damn long time to get here but I'm here. Fornits is the one and only place though that I can talk about the thing that probably effected my life the most due to my dad's fanatical involvement and deep immersion in the philosophy, even to this day. In my everyday life I'm pretty damn happy, but it's nice to be able to come here where I don't have to explain how I'm feeling. People just get it.
-
Didn't mean to offend. There is only about 2 or 3 of us out of Phoenix, that I know of, out of about 75, that actually live a productive life. I was just curious if that was how most of the "phasers" ended up.
I was seventeen when I got out. I stayed so involved though with other graduates and even went as far as to go stand in back of group for some of host-sisters graduations. It didn't seem to matter that I had this reoccuring nightmare of the staff keeping me after a graduation. I even went as far as marrying this moron I was in there with. I think the only reason was because I did not feel like I could be part of the normal life. I felt alien compared to anyone who did not understand phases, being aware, cop outs, etc. etc.
I told my father about the forum and all the information I now know about the Staights. He just said he knew about most of the abuse stuff from graduates and their parents but didn't know where else to put me. I think a cheaper more sensable solution would have been to try loving me instead of making me feel unwelcome in my own family.
I even find myself treating my kids like I did my newcomers. I stayed distant and loathed the day staff would make me cover there mouths for cussing and then much to staffs' dismay we would be in a restraint in my own bedroom, on my home. I just wanted out. I can't believe I bought into any of that. I had thought about sitting until I turned eighteen but after six months I realized that my quickest way out was to "work" the program.
I live for the day that I wake up and feel normal and not like I where some sort of sign that reads "freak".
If anyone is reading this from Phoenix, I am so sorry for anything that I did or said.
-
I told my father about the forum and all the information I now know about the Staights. He just said he knew about most of the abuse stuff from graduates and their parents but didn't know where else to put me. I think a cheaper more sensable solution would have been to try loving me instead of making me feel unwelcome in my own family.
You father knew about all the abuse and yet KNOWINGLY put you in harms way?!?! Wow that is fucked up! I agree, being a parent would have been a much more sensable solution.....
-
I am NOT a phaser! LOL..
And I'm doing ok, imo.
~WD
-
I am NOT a phaser! LOL..
And I'm doing ok, imo.
~WD
You'll ~always be a phaser to me! ::rainbow:: :wave:
-
I don't think we'll ever wake up one day feeling normal and unfreakish. What happened to us all is part of the uglier side of human behavior. The curtain has been lifted, maybe just a corner of it, maybe just for a brief moment in time. But there ain't no unseein' that shit. And that makes us very different from them others who live in a largely imaginary world where people just don't behave that way.
Some people have frat bros or sorority sisters, others have fellow vets or folks they hung with at a dead show. We have each other. Welcome! Now let's go visit Tim Mantooth and stuff some votive candles up his ass after lighting bong hits with them.
:D
-
I don't think we'll ever wake up one day feeling normal and unfreakish.
What a hopeless philosophy!
-
I don't think we'll ever wake up one day feeling normal and unfreakish.
What a hopeless philosophy!
Yeah, I like to think that I'll be able to put Straight behind me for good someday...is that cool with everyone?
-
Cool with me. After the meorial service I hope to take a loooooong vacation from these boards, it weirds me out reliving this shit all the time.
-
Hey (whoever you are) maybe we could get some sort of 'board abstinence pact' together...whaddya think?
-
Yeah, I'm in. Check your PMs.
-
I don't think we'll ever wake up one day feeling normal and unfreakish.
What a hopeless philosophy!
Just a realist. I sometimes envy people who have never had their fond illusions shattered. I tried hard for a number of years to drink enough to induce enough brain damage to join them in their blythe oblivion. Didn't work. So yeah, I gave up hope on that strategey just like I gave up hope on catching a glimpse of Santa Clause as soon as I got old enough to realize he didn't exist.
Onto plan B. Given the fact that most of human social interraction and happy get along is based on a fiction that I can't believe, what do I do? Hang w/ ppl who don't hold those illusions? Try and find something to respect about them others who are immersed in them and learn how to tip toe lightly around their illusions so as not to disturb them? Or just give the fuck up and make peace with knowing that my children and grandchildren will be slaves and chattal cause no mother fucker in my world is willing, consistently, to acknowledge and respond to what's going on?
Some other plan? Anybody? Can I get a 50 gal drum of Fuckitol from WalMart and make it all go down easier?
-
I suggest hard drugs. Really, they work, but they won't if you keep immersing yourself in Straight survivor stuff, it'd be like picking the scab off a wound.
I don't have kids, so I don't give a flying fuck about the future of the world or whatever, I mean, I try not to make things worse for anyone, but I'm tired of the bullshit. I just want to get wasted and forget about it, like that line in the Dylan song, I wanna go somewhere where "no one has to think too much/ about Desolation Row".
Eventually, I want to be on a tropical island surrounded by naked women, but failing that, I'll take an overdose in a cheap hotel room over constantly thinking about Straight all the goddamn time, any day.
The whole "survivor" mentality, although preferable to one of "victim", is still influenced by Straight, I want to move beyond that or die trying, I'm really really tired of the whole thing, and after the memorial service, I intend on taking a long respite from these boards, it weirds me out too much, coming here all the time.
-
Eudora,
You had the pleasure of knowing Mantooth too? I knew he was a Straight graduate before being our wonderfully, loving Phoenix staff member. It makes me ill, actually. There was another staff member who ran away with Tim a few years (maybe 8) ago, her name was Gretchen. He tried to start up a Baptist Straight in Phoenix's new building in Marietta. It didn't take long for him to be tossed out becuase of his life decisions (infedelity). The Baptists are not to keen on that :).
As far as the dying high... I wouldn't give the "program" that satifaction. I have a lot of living to do even if I have to feel like an outsider the whole time.
-
Et tu, my dearest illusory friend? I'm not talking about Straight, except as the major impetus to find some logical, believable substitute for my early shattered illusions. Hell, Straight wasn't even that big a deal to me, what with having watched my whole family gradually taken over by the Seedling pod people from around the age of 5 or 6.
I'm talking about the harsh reality of $200 barrels of oil, the fact that everybody knows the facts that portend such and those that, with very little--shit even lazzy minded--extrapolation should impel us all to quit the illusion that life here in Middle Earth will never change and we'll always be able to drive on down to the local branch of Monsanto's food conglomerate (grocery store) and get all the grub we need.
But we don't. We go on pretending, just as we pretended that something like 9/11 could not, would not ever touch our sacred soil.
I shit you not, that was the most frightening thing I've seen in my lifetime. Not the event itself, that was predictable enough. But the response. I foolishly thought that when it happened, and anybody who's ever read a book more sophisticated than those published by McGraw-Hill knew it would, that Americans would finally connect the dots and realize that this ludacris lifestyle of ours is not sustainable because it depends on subjugation and exploitation of the majority of the world's population. Weak, hungry and fucked up as they may be, they do outnumber us something like 1000/1. When we finally reach the tipping point, it's game over and so fast it'll make the stupid dempublican rank-n-file's heads spin. Cold comfort, indeed, that they'll be able without trouble to convince themselves that it's all the fault of some bediapered brown dude in a cave somewhere on the other side of the planet.
Sorry, I'm just really fucking dissapointed in the human race right now. Back to looking for a pack of dogs that will take me in.
-
I hear you, but for some it's entirely beside the point whether the program is 'satisfied with that outcome' or not. Some folks just like drugs, period.
-
Ooops, my reply was to Phoenix05's post..
-
I hear ya. I think by not being able to control anything while I was held hostage, I have a hard time with anything messing with me in any form. Whether it be a battering ex, drugs and alcohol, or even having to stay on medications too long. I do not trust anything in this world, even the hick grown weed down the street. Also I try to give my kids everything that I did not have. Being "impaired" would not help me accomplish this. To each his own though.
I do enjoy the pack of dogs idea. They have leadership and if they do not like you... they just bite and get on with life as they know it. Politics plays no part.
-
As far as the dying high... I wouldn't give the "program" that satifaction. I have a lot of living to do even if I have to feel like an outsider the whole time.
Just sayi' it would be preferable to being continually stuck in a mental loop of "Surivor" self-identification forever. If I knew I had incurable cancer, I'd do the same thing.
In no way did I mean to imply ODing in a cheap hotel was my deired end.
ODing in a 5-star hotel, laying on piles of money and fan mail from freaks the world over, while a big-titted Swedish hooker is giving me head, now that's more like it.
-
I am NOT a phaser! LOL..
And I'm doing ok, imo.
~WD
You'll ~always be a phaser to me! ::rainbow:: :wave:
Pfft! I can't be on Day Zero and be a ~phaser at the same time! lol
Permanent Day Zero 4tw! :P
-
i did.....i remember Tim Mantooth well......i should.he and i came in the same day!....yes,he is the ONLY person i ever saw or know,to make 2nd phase in the advertised time 14 days!!! he asked for it on day 14,but wound up getting it on day 17......there were kids that had been on first for a long time,and heres ol'tim getting sent home on day 17!...he never "talked" about himself like the rest of us.....i can't remember a confrontation he ever really got{i have a pretty good memory}.....this is how i realised that some get "groomed for staff" and some don't......i noticed that some ppl sat in group with us and had perfect programs.....but most of us were on the phases{each} a long time {2 months or more} Tim was just about on 4th when i finally made 2nd-3rd........it was just unreal to deal with........then they left for Atlanta.....but i knew he was being groomed for staff.......
then one day as i was either on 4th or very early 5th,he came back 7 stepped trainee/jr....not sure.......i believe i was on 4th phase......i don't remember talking to him.......and on 5th,i could've,so i believe i was on 4th.....{i'm buzzing}......everyone i saw treated like Tim was,made staff!...........
tim's treatment started when he CAPTURED his OLDCOMER and the other NEWCOMER on his 7-8 day and RETURNED them to str8! he asked for "home " on day 14,but got T&R instead......on the following OMR day 17,he made it to 2nd phase.......this dude was from out of state and he made 2nd phase in 17 days!.....for that one thing,Tim flew through the program......he used to tell ppl that were on thier lower phases for a long time {especially to the newcomers} how the reason he made it so fast on his phases is because "he applied his program blah blah blah" he was never on 1st long enough to know what it was like! i swear to that.......! tell me more about ol' Timothy......i'd love to know.......just kinda wondering if he told you guys how hard he had it.......so he went out and tried to become a little Miller?......a reverand "drug counselor".......at least thats what the last picture of him i saw when he was much older,looked like.......very wierd,huh?....hippie
-
Tim Mantooth = Penis Face
-
It is a shame that these people kept recycling themselves through these places. We had so many staff members that were never in Straight that the only way they would know how to utilize the abusive crap would be for people like Mantooth to come back and "show them how it was REALLy done". When he was our staff member he was very cold to everyone. He seemed like he was always about to go postal. Maybe it was just his face. He appeared much older than he really was. He had a hugely receding hair line etc. etc. He was married and had two boys, I think. Soon after he came in another graduate staff was hired named Gretchen Durden. She was in Straight with him. They were good friends and she was also the youth leader in his church. After they hooked up and left their church and the new Baptist Straight, I have not heard of them since. For the kids that trusted him and looked up to him, it was a huge let down. We always had about 4 or 5 that went to his church every Sunday. You know at seventeen days, I still did not know what planet I had landed on. I couldn't imagine knowing enough to "work my program". What the hell was the "program" at seventeen days? Learning how to arch your back enough so a strange girl would not drill her fist into the small of your back? Or maybe it was learning to ask before you ever picked up anything. OR my personal favorite... getting used to someone watching you go to the bathroom. Maybe he just did this better than the rest of us. Or maybe his parents raised more money than the rest of ours. I had a second phaser push me against the wall and cuss me out. What happened? NOTHING. His dad it turns out, donated most of the money for Phoenix to build its new building. Had I attempted such things, my seventeen months would have been much, much longer.
-
I remember him well . Miller loved him I think he went home in 14 days. they moved him up quick to have staff ready for Atlanta.
-
Boy have I enjoyed this thread (not the fact that others are still suffering). It's so funny to think about all those crazy staff members. Most truly were unlikable! I love the comment about Mr Mantooth being on the verge of losing it. YES!
-
I should probably read dates before I post things...