Fornits

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An open discussion about the troubled parent industry

I was only there 6 months.  I left there feeling terrible.  I could not believe what I had witnessed.  I couldn t believe that I had spent time occupying the same space as these people.

I could not believe how full of shit the counselors were. I could not believe how parents bought into it. It's all in the name of a cause.  It amazed me how taken people could be with it all.

I could not believe how easily most of the kids were crushed and sold out.  I could not believe the way they went after one another, and attacked each other, just as they had been attacked.

the whole thing... time after time, I watched people break.. I could not believe how weak they were.. how easily broken...

I would walk and look at the people in the hall who had been there for awhile.  They had no life in their eyes.  They had all the right things to say, and functioned perfectly, in the program environment, but they were dead inside, and did not even pretend otherwise.

They were their death proudly.  I watched brave people turned timid, and smart people turn dumb.

I wanted my freedom back so badly.  I feared that someday, they may break me. How long could I hold on?

Towards the end of my 6 months stay, something happened that I never would have believed possible.  I started seriously considering.  I could not let these people have me.. I would not become one of them..
That was a low point in my life.. I could not believe that I was considering suicide.  How did all this happen so fast?

I was there 6 moths.  I should have been "Expediter" or at least, " strength", but I had not even made out of "inductions", to be a full-fledged general worker.
It looked like I would be there forever.

One of the guys there, could see in more, that I was losing it.  I was having trouble holding it together inside, so he figured he would make a score for himself, and said," Paul you have guilt.  We both know it."

This was the first time, I ever dropped guilt, without being forced.  Most of the kids dropped it every single day.  I never did.  I use to say that I would feel guilty about claiming to be guilty about things that I am not.

He saw ripe for the picking.  I said, " you know what.. i m gonna hook you up man.. I got a ton of guilt.  "

They probably got a dozen sentences out of me in 6 months of my staying there, guiltwise.

That day, I gave the aspiring coordinator 3 pages of guilt, and my last line was, " IF I am not out of here within a week, I will plunge a knofe through my chest."

i wasn t the type to fuck around, and they took me seriously.  They sent me to the one actual psychologist in the entire building, and she determined that I was not fucking around.  I was losing it.

See, it was staring to look all to easy to give in, and every so often, I would fantasize about it, and that scared the shit out of me. the way that I thought back then, was that I would be better off dead, then to be one of them.

I was out in 2 days.  I may have told some of this here b4. I am not sure.

Paul St. John

PS I wasn t perfect but I didn t deserve this and neither did any of those other kids.

Re: Four Winds Hospital in Katonah NY
by DannyB II » Fri Jun 04, 2010 11:46 pm

Danny Says:
Paul you keep confirming to me precisely why I think you are not qualified to be in any of these discussions with me. You can not read and comprehend my posts and your judgments of me just overtake your sense of thought.

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To which I respond:

No... You just can't respond to anything reasonable.. Anything that requires you to actually come out and say what you are saying. You prefer to argue. You have no foundation, though, so you cannot defend anything you say, once it is put to even the least amount of scrutiny. I am wrong sometimes, Danny.. but I ll admit it if shown.. and I ll live with it too.. because people make mistakes... they even fuck up words like ,"wane".
Not Qualified? Who the fuck do you think you're fooling dumbass.?

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Danny had also said:

No your not Lill` idiot qualified to say anything because you have nothing. You say I argue, hmmm.....I put out on this thread my reasons for backing off Sad. Read my posts.....dumbfuck.



I will say this one more time for you lill`idiot.

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Which I did not particularly like, so I said:

Watch what you call me Danny.. I warned you before.. I will bust you up right on these fucking boards.

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But now this is my favorite part.  Out of the whole thing that I wrote Danny only replies to the above with :

"Listen you little twat you will not do a damn thing so STFU, Lill`idiot."

Out of my whole message, and there was still more, this is all that Danny replies to which bring us back to:



]No... You just can't respond to anything reasonable.. Anything that requires you to actually come out and say what you are saying. You prefer to argue. You have no foundation, though, so you cannot defend anything you say, once it is put to even the least amount of scrutiny.


And so now my response to danny's single sentence response, to my mini essay..

Little twit  huh?  Ya know.. No matter how many times you say something, it doesn t make it true.. I m really not all that little and I am certainly not a twit.  I am far more man then you, and I have had much less time to practice...

Paul

This is a really good movie if anybody wants to check it out.  It's called, " Evil", and it's I think, Swedish subtitles.

It's about a kid who gets into trouble a lot at school.  He's mostly lashing out as a resuylt of getting his ass kicked all the time by his mom's mate.  Anyhow, he starts out seeming like a dickhead.  he gets sent to one of these fucked up boarding schools.  They send him there as a last resort. Everybody's pretty much counted the guy out.

The story goes on from there .. but it shows what goes on in some of these places.  There is even a "ring" sort of thing, and the kid ends up actually being the hero of the story.  It's actually one of my favorite movies.  It really is a good story.  The funny thing is the kid does end up experiencing personal growth, but not by using the program, but by fighting it, and through his association with other decent people there.

The story is cool.. the ending's really cool.

... and it kinda illustrates, in my opinion, between being good at core, but having some issues, and real evil.

Even if I had never heard of any of these places, I still think this would be one of my favorite movies.  

For me, it was a feel-good movie.

One of the coolest things, too, is that it's actually based on a true  story, and it is written and directed by the main character, Eric Ponti.

The place where he went was a lil' different from the ones spoken about here.  It doesn't seem to be geared towards drug-users, and it was more academic- more of a school.. But the dynamic is the same.

A hierarchy of students and members rule, and have all sorts of pointless techniques to break people.
In the end, the hero of the story, Ponti.. just wins out on so many different fronts.. It gives a real sense of justice.  Also, throughout, the way he deals with the attempts to break him are pretty cool, too.  Straight and to the point, cutting right through the bullshit.
It's funny how this cat Ponti, hoes in as an actual violent bully, but even he cannot stomach that sort of bullying.  His character is too strong for it.

Even if the place ya went t was much worse, or not as bad, it's a cool story.. I really liked it.

Paul

Anyone been to a T.C. (therapeutic community)?

I attended one called Daytop for a shot while when I was 16, as I got caught going to school a bit inebriated..lol..( hey, I was young)
Anyhow, I was very suprised by the things that went on in this place. To me it seemed like a cult. I've spent some time looking around the net and found that there are a lot of TC's. Some are "Straights", "Elan", and there are a bunch of others, and they all seem to have some really messed up practices- most worst then Daytop. I was just wonderring if anyone else had had bad experiences with a TC.

This question is on Yahoo Answers at :  http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 806AA2VC8Y


Here is a good opportunity for anyone who wants to to tell a bit about their experience and put it in a place where other people who are looking for answers about TCs will find it.  let's say that you were considerring going putting your child in a TC, so you go to yahoo answers and search the questions.. Sure enough this question comes up, along with a bunch of answers about the horrors that people have experienced.  You still gonna send your kid.. At the very least think twice.


If you have a yahoo e-mail , or are a part of any yahoo message group, you can sign in to yahoo answers.  If you wish to be anonymous, you can make up a yahoo ID just for this purpose. It only takes about 5 minutes.

You dont have to go into extreme details.  I think it is a good idea to include the name of the program in your answer.

Paul

Anyone been to a T.C. (therapeutic community)?

I attended one called Daytop for a shot while when I was 16, as I got caught going to school a bit inebriated..lol..( hey, I was young)
Anyhow, I was very suprised by the things that went on in this place. To me it seemed like a cult. I've spent some time looking around the net and found that there are a lot of TC's. Some are "Straights", "Elan", and there are a bunch of others, and they all seem to have some really messed up practices- most worst then Daytop. I was just wonderring if anyone else had had bad experiences with a TC.

This question is on Yahoo Answers at :  http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 806AA2VC8Y


Here is a good opportunity for anyone who wants to to tell a bit about their experience and put it in a place where other people who are looking for answers about TCs will find it.  let's say that you were considerring going putting your child in a TC, so you go to yahoo answers and search the questions.. Sure enough this question comes up, along with a bunch of answers about the horrors that people have experienced.  You still gonna send your kid.. At the very least think twice.


If you have a yahoo e-mail , or are a part of any yahoo message group, you can sign in to yahoo answers.  If you wish to be anonymous, you can make up a yahoo ID just for this purpose. It only takes about 5 minutes.

You dont have to go into extreme details.  I think it is a good idea to include the name of the program in your answer.

Paul

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 00062.html

I've changed the names in the sories below.
For the record, none of them are me.



Coordinator: Julia Connoly
- a theif- stole from people while in Daytop
- A bully   - angry and stubborn
- A well known liar


No Status( Often Shot down): Bill Moranis
- a nice kid    -an overall honest guy
- Intelligent - never attacked anybody, but always defended himself

Daytop is society on drugs.
Backwards and unearthly.

It turns people's minds against themselves, making a person their own enemy, but also their own greatest controller.

The more you watch, The more you start to see. They steal from others and give to themselves.

They are not capable of making a genuine living, and so must steal one.



Sam Jordan-
Drank 'Christ's Blood' at easter mass with family.
Got screamed at by about a dozen different people in front of a crowd of over fifty.

He then was given the assignment to write an essay about how wrong he was in hios actions, and read it to the entire 'family', along with an apology to the 'family'.  It was never asked if he actually thought he was wrong, but he did indeed comply.  Where had his mind been changed?  I talked to him before the public humiliation, and he didn' think that he was wrong.  Could it be that he had suirrendered to the threat of further humiliation, and so agreed, and carried out the actions of first renouncing his own self on paper, and then publicly renouncing himself before the etire 'famil'.

Daytop considerred it a 'cleansingf'.

I considerred it 'disgusting'.


Chad Zackarocki-

A nerdy sort of guy, who was very honest, and had a good conscious.  I liked him.  For the most part, he did what he was told, but having a strong beleif in Christain ethics, always stayed midway in status.  He was pretty obedient, but did not have it in him to be an ambitious bullshit artist.  I swear he took all the good out of Christianity, and made it his moral code.

He had gotten into an argument with his mother who had told Daytop.  I do not know what the argument was about, but surely he did not mean to harm his mother in anyway, and had noticed he had seemed upset about something.  He really was a good kid.

Daytop's Response-

Chad had to scrub every garbage can in the facility 'til they were clean, throughout the whole morning meeting.  It wasn't until he finally broke down hysterically crying, that anyone inquired if anything was botherring him.  Until then everyone just soaked in the scene in morbid enjoyment.

Are humiliation and degredation really a productive form of treatment?  He was never even asked what the argument is about.  Maybe he was in the right, or maybe something had been botherring him that led to the argument..  When all is said and done, it is not even their business, which is why I never even asked, even tyhough I was curious.  But if you are going to be judge, jury, and executioner, it would help to have some of the fact.. Hell, maybe, even at least one fact, but no.. As they beleive in Daytop, that they are above reality.

and when mom says, " I am paying good money, and my child, still doesn t agree with everything I say, rather then act with consciousness, they act with haste, to keep mom hapopy, and the cash coming.  they don t care what the fight was about.  Chad was gonna learn his lesson.

So when mom says, " I'm paying you for a perfect son.", Daytop says," Cahd, you better break, or we will break you!"

It's not psychology.  It is bullying.
It's not therapy.  It's conquerring.

If I was in their place, I might not hace suspected that the actual problem might have been with Chad's mom.  Afterall, if you are to assume the role of a responsible advocate for child welfare, a little responsibility wouldn't hurt.

But put simply," THEY COULD CARE LESS ABOUT THE WELFARE OF A CHILD.  THEY CARE ABOUT THEIR PAYCHECK, and that's it! "

How hard of a job is bullying and conquerring really?  You just keep thinking of more and more fucked up things to do to a person, until a person fibnally gives way.  The person is a sitting duck.  they cannot leave.

Compare this to the world of actually creating something, and the difficulties, and effort involed in actually doing something productive, and beneficail.  Yet somehow, they have so thoroughly pulled the wool over everybody's eyes, that they are veiwed as saints, benefactors of society, and athorities to all.

-The mailman or the engineer is just another cog in the machine, but conselors answer a "calling".
They are specail people, who give up their own lives to help others. -

 I think people some times forget that these counselors are being paid.  They didn't give up shit.  they are taking an easy way through life, and many teens, myself included, had to pay the price fopr their laziness, and society's ignorance.

Drugs do their damage slow.  Daytop does it's damage swiftly.  Drug usage is a choice.  daytop treatment is suually forced.  A person can choose to stop doing drugs, while person usually cannot leave Daytop..

People say drugs leave you powerless.  Bullshit.  A person always has the power to change or continue in their current direction.. whatever they opt.  But a person has very little power to do anything at all of will, when in living a totalitarian structure such as Daytop.

For me, Daytop was hell.  I fought each day to maintain my  idea of self, and my convictions, but as a result I can tell the story better then any former Daytopian,whom I have met so far.(Not to say noone can, but just that I have yet to meet anyone who has as of yet.)
 At the time I seemed a glutton for punishment but today I am more then happy that I persevered.

I never accepted that it was my fault, or that I belonged there.

Paul St. John

At Core: Too Much Ado About Nothing


Daytop was created by a Monsignor from Brooklyn.  He would send youths to the synanon, which he believed in strongly, for addictions. ( mostly heroine addictions)
When the synanon was shut down, and it?s organizer were arrested for conspiracy to commit murder, the monsignor responded ny creating his own program based on the synanon.  That program was Daytop.

The syanon was an extremely violent, vulgar, and abhorrent organization.  Such a place is not the type of place that most would expect a monsignor to condone, and one might ask why a seemingly well intentioned Monsignor would not only send youths to such a place, but also create his own off-shoot in it?s absence.

The answer to this question is the key to Daytop.  To understand a system, you must go back to it?s source.  If you want to understand the actions of a Nazi, understand Hitler.

The answer is this:

Although, he may not have agreed with all aspects of the synanon, at the time there were almost no treatments for heroine addicts available for heroine addicts.  Society, as a whle, quite simply, couldn?t care less about them.  When the monsignor saw a person become addicted to heroine, more often then not, they ended up dead, basically living dead..  the monsignor felt he had no alternative, and right here is where the monsignor created an idea that is the backbone of Daytop philosophy today.  It is the rationalization, and justification for al the wrongs perpetrated against individuals within the walls of a Daytop center today, no matter how wrong these wrong may be at any time.  

The idea the monsignor came up with, and which is the foundation of Daytop today is:

If one does drugs, one will end up dead, and so any action against another in an attempt to get them sober or keep them sober, that does not actually the person is always okay and even warranted.

His error in judgement started it all.

To them:

   Sobriety= Life

It is an absolute in the minds.

Also, being that a person is a drug user, the person?s life is nullified before they even walk in the door.

In their view, a client would be dead, if not for them, and so ought have nothing to say on any matter.  In their veiw, it is entirely within their rights to bring a client within inces of their death in a quest for sobriety, ands so long as the client does not actually die, their actions are both moral and just.

What about human rights?

What about the fact that drug usage is not the only thing in the world that can kill a person?

What about the right of the individual to either live or die on his/ her own terms?

What about the reality that the ends do not justify the means?

What about the fact that not all drug users will die form their drug usage in the near future?

What about the user who would probably quit on their own in the very near future?


.. and here do they get the right to decide that a person should be sober, or even that a person should live.  How did they obtain this authority over others?


Even if their ideas that [ Drugs=Death], and [ Sobriety= Life], they would still be grossly wrong for their actions.

( It is senseless. ? Sobriety? is the higher power because it equals life, and so it is always right.  Sobriety is good as a constant, so let?s achieve sobriety at the cost of life.  Let?s achieve life at the cost of life)

But besides the idea that they would be wrong anyway, the whole idea itself is based on a fallacy.

When I was in daytop, they often said ? Notice, you never see or hear about a forty year old drug user, and that is because they are all dead, and if not dead, then they are homeless, or in jail?

I must say that I don?t know what world they live in, because, here on this planet, I know, personally, more people then I can count who are in their 40?s, and beyond, who use some type pf drug, or another, are very much alive and healthy, have very nice homes, making far more money then a Daytop counselor, and are not in jail, and most of whom never have been in jail.  As many people as I know personally, I know of probably thousand times more people who fit this category.  I think we all do.

So really what?s all the here and now, life or death in this second fuss about?

Paul St. John

Life is versatile.  These maniacs need to chill.

Daytop is like living inside the head of a person who is having a perpetual panic attack.