Fornits

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An open discussion about the troubled parent industry

I for one was in AARC. Lately, I've been talking about it a lot; with my sisters who were there on the sibling side and with my S/O Paul who was not. Thinking about it so much is taking its toll. I've felt panicky most of the time and I've kind of regressed back to this small, meek, terrified little girl that I used to be when I was 15. It's like all the years between just fell away, and I'm just as helpless as I was then.

Last night, I'd been speaking with one of my sisters about AARC. Just little things like the jargon they used, what open meetings were like, how Christmas and Thanksgiving were, songs they played at homecomings -- really, nothing especially painful. But what we were talking about, I've been pushing away for years. Describing all the little details of AARC essentially recreated the environment in my mind, I was back there again.

After I went to bed, I couldn't forget, couldn't push it out of my head. I was back there. It's like I always have two realities - the present: the life I'm living, my partner and daughter, and myself, confident, intelligent, compassionate and strong; but on top of that reality is the past where I am still there and it never stopped happening. For the past year or two, reality number two has been weak and far away. It doesn't bother me most of the time, except for when I'm sleeping. But last night, reality number one lost and I was almost completely back there. I curled up in a little ball and hid under my duvet. I took Paul's ipod and tried to drown out my head with Kid koala. But I couldn't make it go away. I was clutching so hard to stay here and believe that it was over and long ago, but I couldn't. I didn't see my room around me anymore.

I don't know how long I was like that, but Paul came in to go to bed and found me tightly curled up, shaking, crying and generally freaking out. He was talking to me for some time and I remember nothing of it. He managed to get me up and dressed and put our daughter in my arms. I started to come back to here and be able to at least see what was going on around me. I was still seeing images, scenes from the past in front of me as if they were real. We went outside and walked along the river, and I came back. Things I was seeing went back to being passive memories that I could control. But I felt so weak, not scared or anything else. Emotionally, I'm just blank. But it feels like there is nothing left in me.

So Guest... I have a right to criticize.

I was just looking at the expansion link on AARC's site (http://www.aarc.ab.ca/AARC_expansion.html). Towards the bottom is this interesting statement:

The funding breakdown of AARC’s annual operating budget is:
50% donors (individuals, corporations, community groups), special events
30% client fees
20% government

Now, client fees are $150/day ($160 for out of province). And AARC has at any given time about 40 clients. So that means $6000 per day comes from client fees. If that is only 30% of their income then they are pulling in about $20 000 per day. Considering that AARC's only expenses are lunch for clients, rent for the building, and electricity - those are some pretty heft salaries for the 20 or so staff especially when the front office is staffed by volunteer parents.

Huh....


Rachael

Quote from: ""Eliscu2""

Quote from: ""exhausted""

Eliscu

I bet they made you pay for that (not abusing your peers)

What is wrong with these people? I won't even change the names of my animals for fear of mentally confusing them - but like Psy says, it has to be a build up of lots of little mind manipulations to make the whole thing work, you can only chip away at a person for so long before hitting the weak spot that makes them crumble into teeny pieces. So sad.

I like to think I mind manipulated them right back, I was hell and I never stop being a rebel, I never let them break what I knew was right and wrong. I got lots of Physical Abuse, but what killed me was watching all of the Brainwash around me. I mostly lived in a corner.
Only the people I like were allowed to watch me in the end because I was too "real" with anyone else. Vile disgusting just to entertain myself. I went nuts in my own way. :rofl:  :rofl:

that's actually one way to make it.. though it only works if you can suceed at making a complete farce out of everythign.  I know one kid who did that.. and only one... sounds a bit like you.  He never took anything seriously at all, he knew exactly what was going on, and he wouldn't give them anythign to work from, giving them blatant ... and i mean really really blatant bullshit for writing assignments (type of stuff like putting:  I used to have sex with thousands of women, and i feel so ashaimed on his dirt list).  Sure he was on bans most of the time, or isolated.  but he never followed bans, and when they isolated him, he always, always, found a way to amuse pretty much everybody else but the staff...  Kid was literally a super-genius.  He could take apart a car and put it back together.. crazy savant like intelligence.  We both figured out the program.. but i never realized the actual wisdom behind his blatant absurdity...  I thought it was easier to play it safe and try and fake it..  I guess he knew where that lead...  He lasted about 4 months before they exiled him permanantly to motel...  Well until his parents stopped paying that is.

But hey,, he can get a job in the motel right?  right.. and he has to put benchmark down on the address and phone number of the applicatoin, and let program take his interview phone calls "benchmark young adult school how may i help you ("oh shit.. it's one of those kids from that school for fuck-ups")"  And hey. if you manage to get a job...(and they know if you have one and dont' tell them since they check on you three times a day.) you gotta sign the check over to program... so you won't buy drugs.. roight... then when they yank you're level after a few months of work, and yo're back to level 1 (we heard some rumors... write a dirt list)... and they make you write and rewrite a dirtlist until you confess to somethign... they don't care what...  If you refuse?  You must leave....  without your money of course...  When you're knocked back to level 1 they can fine all your hard earned cash away for things like "breaking bans / isolating" while simultaniosly telling your parents how you "relapsed" into  bad bahavior.. mixing AA with CEDU, Synanon, and a large dose of BS...  But hey... when you run out of cash, they can always fuck your parent through the "revolving fund" which is supposed to be refilled by parents when it is empty according to the enrollment conract.

Oh it's a well thought out system folks... and that's a little more on how they can still fuck you with you even after you're 18...   shit..  Some of those kids spent their entire teenage life in program.  Robbed of perhaps the most influencial, precious part of their lives..  But hey... I had those years.. It's just college they borked for me...

Yeah, in AARC there was this amazing guy who subtly mocked his way through the program. He pretended he was narcoleptic for months - falling asleep in the middle of telling an incident or standing in line for food. He also pretended to be on some permanent acid trip. He would talk about "the aliens" and how when you feel an itch "it's really the aliens touching you" and then he go on about how he could see the aliens right now.... "oh my god, there's one right behind you!" It was awesome, he lasted like that for a while, eventually cracked and "got the program". But out of everyone there, he was the only one who would talk to me about real things. He kept my mind working a little while longer; he'd come up to me and ask a question like "What's the closest star to earth".... funny but that was the nicest thing anyone did for me while I was there. Just giving me the chance to think about something.

Rachael

In another recent topic, someone wrote the following to me:

Pray you are well [...]

In this case, it is entirely possible that this was meant sincerely and genuinely. Chances are, it was. And in writing the following, I mean no affront to the person wishing me well.

That being said, in most cases on this forum or in the outside world when I've run into an AARC grad/staffer, it is not meant in such a nice way.

The implication underlying this type of statement is that since I have not graduated AARC and embraced the AARC way, I could not possibly be doing well. The belief is that us poor AARC strays must be having such a hard go of it being "dead, in jail, or in the gutter".


So, having heard this one too many times, I'd just like to say:

I'm fine! I am happy! I love my life and the people in it!


I am doing well, at one point a year or two ago I listed some of the things I've been doing since escaping AARC, maybe it's time to do so again...

I work for an Oil and Gas company playing on computers and making more than any other person I've met my age (and it just gets better with pending raises). I absolutely love my job and the people I work with; I can't wait to get to work in the mornings. I spend my day fixing complicated technical problems, responding to emergency situations and speaking with interesting people from across Canada in French and English.

My partner and I celebrated our three year anniversary on Boxing Day 2006, and we are expecting a baby girl to be born anytime now (due March 3). We are both completely ecstatic to be starting a family together and it's all fallen into place just at the right time. Both of our families are closely involved and also very excited about the first grandchild/great-grandchild.

I am a semi-professional athlete and spend part of my summer every year traveling across N. America going to races with my partner and also my youngest sister who's just started competing with us. I compete in speedboarding and streetluge.

I'm on the Board of Directors for a non-profit organization that promotes safety and our sport. As well, our non-profit is now in the second year of putting on an event with a budget of just over $110 000.

And of course, the only point which most AARCites seem to care about... I have not used any mid-altering substance since two weeks before I entered AARC. That is to say, I have not used any drug at all, with the exception of the very occasional glass of wine or beer (never more than one, and certainly not at all since I've been pregnant). I didn't smoke before AARC and still don't, and I even stay away from caffeine, save the occaisional tea that may have a bit. Of course, before I entered AARC I had already decided not to use drugs again (and stated so on many occasions), so take that as you may.

So... that being said, thank you all for your concern, but I am doing marvelously.


Rachael

(posted earlier on the AARC Survivor Forum)

Alright, to address your post "Buck" bit by bit:

I remember when you were in AARC those few days before you ran away.

You may be saying one of two things here. (1) You were only in contact with AARC in the last few days that I was there. Or (2), you think I was in AARC for only a few days before I managed to escape. If (1), that's fine and I wonder who you are. If (2), your cognitive abilities may be lacking a little as I was in AARC on Step 1c for six full months before I ran.

How does a new post regarding light bulbs and centering around your perceptions of AARC's sharing of the outside world strike you?

This sentence doesn't seem to make much sense to me.... perhaps the subject matter of the post is not the most stimulating and intellectual, but that was not the point. I just remembered from far out of the distant past a very weird moment brought to me by AARC, and I commented on it.

That "strikes me" as being perfectly in context.

I suspect that you may have been trying to get at something else here, but I really can't figure it out. Feel free to elaborate.

 

A little odd as an off the cuff vent perhaps.....maybe they had a point....to see if you could reason on your own and stay focused on building a more centered psyche.

I agree with you! This was a very odd event. However, I don't believe as you seem to assert that the motivations for it were so innocuous. AARC's entire structure is based upon destroying a person's natural ability to reason and function normally and replace such abilities with a complete reliance upon AARC and later AA and Alumni groups to perform all reasoning for them. AARC intentionally removes all contact with society at large in order to be most able to influence the mind of the "client" undisturbed. They do this by restricting access to anyone not in the program (including family members) in person, by phone or any other means of communication; preventing access to all news media; disallowing going out in public in any way; restricting communication between "clients" such that conversation about outside events is strongly discouraged or completely forbidden; etc, etc, etc.

And one other means of cutting the ties between the individual and society is by promoting strange little lies like this one; thereby making the world as given to them by AARC different from that which actually exists outside those walls.


At least, that's my theory anyway.

[...]building a more centered psyche

And "building a more centered psyche" is certainly not either the stated purpose of AARC nor anything close to what I recall happening there.



Finally,

Pray you are well and hope to hear from you soon.....

I've heard this line so many times from disapproving AARCites. Right now, it particularly irks me, so I've created a post dedicated to it:

http://www.fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?t=20672

Just remembered something odd...

When I was in AARC, they told us all sorts of random stories from the outside world; some true, some not so much.

I just remembered one thing that mildly disoriented me after I left.

The entire time I was in AARC, Dr. Vause and other "counsellors" told us that light bulbs could no longer legally be sold off the shelves in grocery stores as too many crackheads/meth junkies were stealing them to fashion into pipe-like devices.

When I finally was able to go into a grocery store many months later, I was shocked to realize that you could still buy light bulbs without having to explain yourself to a cashier.


Why did they make that up? I have no idea.


Just one more of the inexplicable little things from that place.

As per the following:

On 2006-06-22 08:07:00, TheWho wrote:

"

Quote

On 2006-06-22 08:00:00, Anonymous wrote:


"There are questions about Who's employment on about 3 different threads.  He came in here a few minutes ago but ignored all those, made an inane comment to TSW and left.  Wonder why he won't answer the questions?





At first I really gave him the benefit of the doubt and chalked the talk of him being and Ed Con or such just Fornits paranoia but now...hmmmmmmm.  





Who?  Anything to say?"

Okay, why dont we start and Employment thread and all tell our stories and what we do."

I'll start:

I'm a professional geek for a big oil company. I do executive, bilingual (French/English) tech support, and various sys. admin things.


Ok, now you go the Who:





Where do you work?

Smashing my delusions on the rock of truth. (bet the crack heads will like that one)
http://fornits.com/wwf/viewtopic.php?topic=13737&forum=7&start=0#169198' target='_new'>dragonfly

For the Who...


From the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:


Article 3.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

>>>> I was not free, I was not safe.


Article 4.
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

>>>> I was a slave, I was a servant to the every whim of my "oldcomers".


Article 5.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

>>>> I was subjected to torture, to very cruel, inhuman and degrading TREATMENT and punishment.


Article 6.
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.

>>>> I was hidden from the law, I had no lawmakers, or protectors to turn to. I was kept outside off the reach of the law. I could not ask for help from the law, and those who hurt me were not punished under the law.


Article 7.
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.

>>>> I was punished, ridiculed and humiliated for the audacity of claiming that I had rights.


Article 8.
Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.

>>>> This will come, I will have my day.


Article 9.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

>>>> I was taken into a place of detention arbitrarily and kept there until I ran for my life without the ability to even challenge it.


Article 10.
Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.

>>>> I had no trial.


Article 11.
(1) Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.

>>>> I was presumed guilty before I even committed a crime!


Article 12.
No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

>>>> This was the very nature of the "treatment" that was leveled against me.


Article 13.
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.

(2) Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

>>>> I didn't even have freedom of movement enough to go to the bathroom alone. I could not move an inch out of line. I had no freedom.


Article 18.
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.

>>>> My beliefs were stripped from me. I was broken, completely and utterly so that someone could put there beliefs where mine had been.


Article 19.
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

>>>> I could not speak my opinions. I could not read, I could not write, I couldn't listen to anything but "the program".


Article 24.
Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

>>>> I had no rest; I was regularly denied even the necessity of sleep.


Article 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.

>>>> I was denied medical care when direly needed, I was harmed and denied care.


Article 26.
(1) Everyone has the right to education.

>>>> I was taken out of school, denied the right to attend.









I had all my rights denied me. I did not need to earn them. I am a human, and thus I "deserve" them.  


Go fuck yourself.

I tried not to work for, you know, anyone who ate children with their bare hands. I won't pretend that I was ideologically consistent.


--Dick Morris; Political consultant for Bill Clinton, Trent Lott and Tom Ridge