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Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform => The Seed Discussion Forum => Topic started by: GregFL on May 31, 2002, 10:51:00 AM

Title: My Parents
Post by: GregFL on May 31, 2002, 10:51:00 AM

WOW.

Title: My Parents
Post by: Antigen on May 31, 2002, 03:40:00 PM

I think (hope) my dad understood when he went on to bigger and better things that I forgave and fully understood the whole thing. But our dear friend, my childhood babysitter... hell, my common-law step-mother sometimes forgets. Before we left So. Florida, we had some time to kill between the final walk-through and the closing. So we decided to spend it visiting with her. We talked about everying; 30 years of friendship between our families and all that entails.

At the end, the conversation turned to the Program. Not sure, but I think she brought it up. But she got very agitated and, with tears welling in her eyes, asked me "Don't you know we had to do it, the Program saved your lives?" I've told her before that I understand. Told her about my buddy, Wes... and she certainly knows (or I thought she did) how I regard my father. But I've just had the hardest time making her understand that I fully understand and forgive it all just as much as she's long since forgiven me for a whole littany of mischeif and thoughtlesness over all the years she helped me grow up.

Make them understand that if you can; that they're only human, and among the best at that. That's the definition of growing up, I think; to take the best that our parents had to offer, leave out the mistakes and go on to improve on their work.

Tell your parents I certainly forgive them as well.

Title: My Parents
Post by: marcwordsmith on May 31, 2002, 11:46:00 PM

Wow. Freedom and Ginger, you guys are remarkable. I have to admit I never did forgive my parents. They just got into it so much; they just loved it, they just reveled in the whole Seed culture. Years later, I could never quite buy "We did what we thought we had to do. We were brainwashed too." Anyway, my stepdad has passed away, and I haven't talked with my mother in about nine years. That's not because of the Seed; it's about many many things, many problems and abusive behavior. Still, the Seed seems emblematic of it all in a way, and I'll never forget her victorious smirk. But maybe I will forgive it, because I know I have to, and as long as I don't, I'm still trapped. It's my heart that hurts when there's people I don't stop blaming. It doesn't mean I'll contact my mother; I probably won't ever again. But at least I can forgive her and wish her well, truly. She's suffered plenty too, I know. Thank you guys, for your sane and thoughtful words.

Title: My Parents
Post by: GregFL on June 01, 2002, 12:02:00 AM

Welcome to our forum, Mark. Where did you go to the seed and what year?
I myself didn't speak to my father from 16 to 20 and only recently got to where we are somewhat on the same page, but he still justifies it.  My mother cries when we talk about it.
You still haven't spoke to your mom?  Unreal. Do you blame the program, or is it a combination of things. I hope that you can work it out with her on some level, and once again, welcome. Tell us a little about yourself..

Title: My Parents
Post by: GregFL on June 01, 2002, 12:12:00 AM

ok, I reread your post, and I think I understand what you were saying about your mom.  I felt similar  about my father for a long time. He angered me in so many ways and his attitude about the seed and the callous way he would say he saved my life and shit just really to me represented everything wrong with him. I have since got him to admit that the Seed was weird and  a bad thing to do to a 14 year old, but then up comes the "you needed help" bullshit. I look at my kids and wonder how in the hell they could have done that to me and my sister. My daughter is only 1.5 years younger than I was, and she is a baby, my son is 19 and I would never have done it to him. Yet, my father not only did it, he seemed to revel in it, to celebrate the torture we were enduring, and then for years later just dismiss my efforts to heal as druggie or counterculture behavior.

Title: My Parents
Post by: GregFL on June 01, 2002, 12:21:00 AM

now i reread it again and figured out who you are. oops.  Sorry, and how you been?
I hadn't seen your name strung together like that before.  Im a dumbshit.

Title: My Parents
Post by: marcwordsmith on June 01, 2002, 12:24:00 AM

Hi Greg. You know me; I first posted under "The Seed Sucks" thread, but for some reason, even though I did sign in under "Marcwordsmith", I was assigned the name "Anonymous" at that time. Anyway, just to clarify: My problems with my mother go much much deeper than the Seed. They both pre-date and post-date the Seed. For the record, my sister does not have any contact with our mother either. And speaking of my sister, she's one of the few people who actually escaped the Seed and made it stick. She was only 16 (I was 14) and she got away, and she was hitchhiking, and somebody picked her up and heard her story and kindly took her to a girls' halfway house in Perrine called Genesis House, where my sister wound up living until she was 18. Genesis House was a humane place.
Hey here's a trivia question. Who said this? "There will be those  who hate you. But those who hate you do not win, unless you hate them back. Then you destroy yourself." Who spoke those words of wisdom?

Title: My Parents
Post by: marcwordsmith on June 01, 2002, 12:27:00 AM

Greg you are most definitely NOT a "dumbshit." That's mean. Don't call yourself names, buddy. You're not in the Seed anymore.

Title: My Parents
Post by: GregFL on June 01, 2002, 12:29:00 AM

Yeah, I figured out it was you in between posts.  Sorry about your situation with your family.  
I can't place that quote and I give up, tell me.
guesses-churchill
        Hitler
        Lincoln
        Oprah
        Libby
IGIVEUP

Title: My Parents
Post by: marcwordsmith on June 01, 2002, 02:09:00 PM

Greg, I'll give you a clue. This person was a major national public figure at the time you and I were in the Seed. For what it's worth, I believe his words were sincere, though reasonable minds may disagree. And I think he was speaking to and about himself as much as to anyone else.

Title: My Parents
Post by: Somejoker on June 01, 2002, 04:30:00 PM

Richard Nixon?

Title: My Parents
Post by: marcwordsmith on June 01, 2002, 05:48:00 PM

Yup! You got it, Somejoker! It was Nixon. Kind of poignant coming from him, isn't it? Or ironic, depending on how you look at it, I guess.

Title: My Parents
Post by: GregFL on June 01, 2002, 06:25:00 PM

me again. Good thing for your sister to get away.  I wanted to so bad, but I was forteen and terrified about running away at night, which was the only opportunity I may of had, and then my oldcomer lived in some trashy part of Largo in a bad neighborhod, and his parents would padlock us in the room from the outside. Also, he had a dobie under the window, and it was made clear to me that he would "tear me up" if I went out the window.
Plus, they would tell you if you ran, the police would bring you back, then you would be court ordered back in and have to stay as long as they wanted you to. Suzy Connors used to scare the shit out of me the smug way she would say that, and I could look around me and see examples of it everywhere. it was not an empty threat, at least in St Pete.
I remember one day being in the back of a pickup truck, about 5 newcomers sitting flat on the bed,and 4 oldcomers, all sitting up on the higher wheel wells. We came to the corner near tyrone and the driver, a father, stopped at a traffic light. We weren't allowed to even look out of the truck at anything, but I almost sprang out of the truck, and then chickened out. Later, as an oldomer, I helped catch and return two or three escapees. This was nothing short of kidnapping, but it was condoned by the Seed, our parents, the police, and the courts.
Part of the culture of the Seed was to make you an integral part of the madness, of the corruptness and meaness they heaped on you,to give it back to others.
Have you told your sister about this forum? if not, tell her to check us out and post her escape story. Those are some of the most appreciated stories floating around these message boards.

Title: My Parents
Post by: Antigen on June 01, 2002, 09:58:00 PM

Hey there Marc,
Thanks for putting it just so. I've finally started to come to terms with the fact that that's pretty much the way my family is, except for my father, who passed on a few years ago.

He and I always got along just fine. So, he cussed a lot. Some dads are like that. I was a wise assed kid, some kids are like that. It all ballanced out. Even when I was in the program, though he damned sure made me stay in and even tried to have me falsely arrested one time when I'd split, he never enjoyed it.

No, long before the Program, he used to refer to the six of us alternately as a pit of vipers, a pack of savages or goddamned kids (that last sometimes with a smirk and obvious pride if, for example, I'd just insulted some stoooopid school administrator type, who was being petty to begin with and I'd done it in just such a way as he and I were the only ones who understood exactly what I'd said)

All these years I thought it was my having split the program that made them treat me as they do. Know what? Dad was right. The whole damned family IS a pit of vipers. They were before the Program and nothing changed excpt that they got some legitimacy from the Program.

Title: My Parents
Post by: Anonymous on June 04, 2002, 03:26:00 PM

Didn't mean to post anoymously, I must have forgotten my password. My name is Thom McNulty, I am Ginger's Brother. One of the vipers.

This is my 4th attempt to post here. The system seems to find ways to block me.  I have learned to save my work every once in a while, and the following is my latest attempt. Maybe this one will get through.

Hi Ginger and all,
   Viper4 here. From Ginger's posting, one could conclude that the viper gene ran out right before she was born (the youngest of six)
  A slight correction:
The expression Dad often used was actually  "pack of God-damned savages". One of the many colorful expressions he shared with us. One of my favorite tyrades went something like:
 
 JUMPING JESUS GOD DAMNED CHRIST ALL...
(some siblings, aka vipers, insert 'MOTHER FUCKING' here...I don't recall that personally. Besides, I don't use language like that:) ...MIGHTY"
   I miss him too. He was my hero. Sure, he had his faults, but I'm convinced that he and (may I mention the name Mom here) did the best they could raising us with the the limited training they had in parenting. Both came from alcoholic homes where emotionaland spiritual growth and maturity were not modeled. You can't give away what you don't have.
   My experience as a 'Seedling' was a bit different from most of those I've seen shared here. I attended meetings off and on from about '72-'76, and was there voluntarily.
   I kind of drifted away after deciding that they were wrong about alcohol being a drug. Maybe it was a drug for most of them, but I was 'different'. I remember stopping at the 7-11 on US-1 just south of the New River Tunnel and celebrating my uniqueness with a 16 ounce Bud. This occasion marked the beginning of my drift away from my friends at The Seed. After all, I was 'different' from them.
   Another way of looking at my gradual withdrawl from Seedling status was that I now had a secret. Something I would not have felt comfortable sharing with anyone there.
   Over the next 15 or so years, I got REAL 'different'. I pissed away lots of money and 2 marriages and contemplated suicide largely, but not entirely, as a result of my drinking, drugging, and gambling (another drug for me, at least).
   When I came up for air in '91, it was in a 12 step program. Those steps were still alive and well when I was on my last legs. The valuable tools which were generously shared with (pounded into) me during my years at The Seed would finally begin to be put to use to start building a life based on personal accountability, that is, taking responsibility for my own actions, aka, growing up.
   I figured out where I got confused. I mis-interpreted step 11 (look it up) to say:
 
"SOUGHT THROUGH BEER AND MEDICATION TO REMOVE A CONSCIOUS CONTACT WITH GOD..."
 
I worked this step thoroughly.
 
  Anyway, to make a long story short, life is good today. Finally got a handle on the real step 11, and by God's grace, I have enjoyed over 10 years of freedom from all that crap. He has relieved me of the obsessions to self destruct with drinking, drugging, gambling, smoking, and equally as important, my former tendancy to blame others for my lack of living skills and for my spiritual and emotional condition.
   I'm glad this forum is available! It's good to have a place to express this stuff.
   I remember when Ginger told me about her site, Anonymity Anonymous, (then called Anonymous Anonymous, I think) and asked for feedback I told her I thought it was a good idea, and that it might be therapeutic for her to have a place to vent her anger. That pissed her off. She angrily denied having an anger problem. Hey, she asked! Anyway, I'm glad she has found some friends to validate her stuff. Sorry your experiences with 'treatment' were not positive ones.
Peace to all, Thom McNulty, Viper4

Title: My Parents
Post by: GregFL on June 04, 2002, 05:30:00 PM

Glad things are going well for you Thom, and welcome to this forum. Your opinions and comments are welcome and appreciated here.
I understand that some people do need help with addiction problems, and perhaps later in life you were one  of them, But what the hell purpose did going to to Seed for 4 years as an adolescent when you had no substance abuse problem serve?
Also, maybe if Ginger does/did have an anger problem, it resulted in being rejected by her family by not embracing the cultism of the seed/straight that was so ingrained in everything you people did and said. Perhaps she just wants to be accepted by her siblings and parents for whom she is, which is incidentally, a brilliant webmistress and well respected researcher/writer, and a very family oriented homebody.
I don't know, and can't really say, only can comment that you are perhaps one of hundreds of family's I know whom were torn apart by the Seed, and that DECADES later, still haven't completely healed the division.  That is unfortunate.

Title: My Parents
Post by: GregFL on June 04, 2002, 07:47:00 PM

"The seeds of recovery were planted. I added the fertilizer later. That's where they came up with the name, catchy, eh?"

Thom, you really are welcome here, but....YECHH!!!! That is so obnoxious it is almost rancid.

And how do you know, from my one posting, and having never met me, that I had no substance abuse problem as an adolescent?
Well Thom, from your post, I made an assumption that you started drinking etc, after you left the Seed. If I am wrong, I certaintly stand corrected. No one is trying to diagnose you, calm down a little.
But all inference was made by you that your problems occured later in life after graduating the Seed, which incidentially, is VERY common.

" OK, now I really feel welcomed and appreciated, thanks. I haven't felt this welcomed since the last time I tried to visit Ginger......
You are welcome here irrespective of differences in views. Again, Thom, how unfortunate that this issue still divides your family to such a great extent 20 years later.
 "You seem to know alot about my family for someone who knows nothing about my family. Please allow me to enlighten you a bit...... FYI,  I was the only 'Seed Freak' in the brood.... 3 others attended, but were never really into it, as I recall. When Ginger left (escaped)....... against the wishes of both of our parents.  We have all tried to bond with her.... her siblings didn't do anything to her, yet, we are blessed with the honor of feeling the full force..... We were not torn apart by The Seed If anything, it slowed some of us down a bit, so we could make it to adult-hood without suffering too much brain damage. Yes, Virginia, there really was a drug abuse problem in our family.
Well Thom, I hav spent hours talking with Ginger, and your reality is different from your sisters. You call her all kinds of names in this post like paranoid, etc., and seem to refuse to acknowledge that she may have been harmed by her experience. I think perhaps if you put the gauntlet down, tried to UNDERSTAND what she went thru, how whe processed HER experience, and dropped the defense, maybe you guys could heal. Than again, unfortunately, Maybe not.You seem to also have retained some of that confrontational style of communication so prevalent in that nuthouse down on 84th st.
Thom, I wish you nothing but the best. No one is trying to diagnose you, and I am not challenging your assertion that the Seed somehow was good for you, in spite of your self admittance that after graduating you became an alchoholic,a gambler and whatever else.  If that is how you wished to spend your childhood, motivating, singing zippydedodah, staying up all night, eating P&J, sitting in a 100 degree wearhouse and hanging around Artie & Co, and watching young people's will break under the weight of "Treatment", than more power to you, Thom.
 
Final thought, some people go thru similar things and view the outcome and experience far differently.  I am willing to start communicating with you on that premise. Try it with you sister.
Thom, I look forward to your future posts and hope that they are in the spirit of good communication. I will try also.

Title: My Parents
Post by: Scott Free on June 05, 2002, 12:04:00 AM

Thom - After reading that lengthy diatribe, I have come to the conclusion that if your sister talks to you at all these days, you should get down on your knees and thank your God you've GOT a sister like her.

I wish I did.

Title: My Parents
Post by: marcwordsmith on June 05, 2002, 01:38:00 AM

Thom, I remember, in high school, a year or two after the Seed, some of the other former Seedlings said things like what you said. "Well, it just kept me from falling on my ass; that's all." This they said when they were smoking weed again. And they also seemed to feel that it had been no big deal.

So to me it's still a mystery. There are so few ex-Seedlings on this site; it would be very interesting for me to understand what a wide range of others' experiences were truly like, for them. My own experience, as I have shared, was awful, and I am very grateful to Ginger for providing this space. But I'll acknowledge that I learned a thing or two in the Seed, perhaps indirectly . . . such as the price you pay for not being true to yourself. (Or for being forced to be untrue to yourself . . . which in later years, I didn't ever let happen again.) And I'll also acknowledge that I was doing some things at age 14 that were probably not particularly wise (skipping school, smoking dope, etc.), though it must also be said that I was one of those kids who did A LOT MORE drugs once I got out of the Seed, and went through a terribly self-destructive, self-loathing period for some years. Yet, in an odd way, I wouldn't trade the experience now, because I'm happy with who I am and where I'm at today, and if what I've been through brought me here, then I'm grateful for all of it, and that's the bottom line.

I truly do hope you post again, Thom, and I also hope that you and your sister find some way to appreciate each other's gifts, or at least respect each other's integrity and intelligence. Maybe you two have been emailing since your respective posts; I rather hope so, and I hope it's been civil. Vipers, savages . . . whatever it is your father called you, you're obviously one heck of an articulate brood. You've clearly got brains, and I think you have heart too, and I hope we'll be able to converse together in a way that's truly respectful and loving, even when we have different opinions and interpretations of events. Insofar as we slice each other up, I think we're really perpetuating the legacy of the Seed. And Thom, if that isn't how you remember it . . . like I say, though it's a big mystery to me, I have no doubt that there may be others who also remember it more benignly than I do.

One more point though, and then a question. I think you might concede that Straight, and some of the other programs described in this forum, were/are much worse than the Seed. And Ginger did go through Straight, so I think her experience may have been much more severe than your own.

Question: Why were you at the Seed for 4 years? You said you "went to meetings" there for 4 years. Do you mean oldtimers' raps? Or did you have to start over a number of times? Just curious.

Title: My Parents
Post by: Anonymous on June 05, 2002, 02:36:00 AM

Thom,
   
   Before I start, I would just like to say that all you post are appreciated, and welcome here. There are may people that even more misguided then you that post here. Just because you opinion differs does not mean we don't appreciated you. You words of "Wisdom" will be well read and thought over, after all that is what we are here for. After all if we all agree it's no fun and a dull conversation.
   
   I don't usually post to these boards. I leave that to those who would get the most out of them, I am more of a lurker, but because of the kind of guy I am, I just have to set the record straight.
   
      First of all, your last visit, the first in several years (even though you had driven past our door steep many a time without uttering a word or saying hello, which I guess is your way of "reaching out") was pleasant, at least I though so, until the discussion got heated when during your recantation of The Seed (which had no substance what so ever, imagine that) you were stating, and continuing to support the idea that alcohol is not a drug. You did not like the fact that Ginger would not concede on this point and left the house in a huff. No, you did not hug the kids, as a matter of fact you had one foot in the car before you wife could make it out the door. I never saw a "disabled" guy move so fast (I guess ppl would have gotten their mail on time had you moved that fast as a postman). And coincidentally alcohol is a drug, so get over it!
     
      BTW: You are not the only sibling to be within a mile of our doorstep and not bother to stop or even let us know you were in town until you had returned home. You all did it, and so often, I can't even keep count. I guess that is what "Reaching Out" is all about!
     
      And the term Tag-team, I could have not come up with a better term my self for what you 5 other siblings do to Ginger. All any of you can do is berate, ridicule, and slander her not only behind her back (yes, I heard may a things during some of those family get-togethers that others thought they said in quiet), but in her face as well. Now you want to lay it out in a public forum under the guise of "reaching out". I'd tell ya to buy a clue, but you would know what one was if it jumped out your ass and pimped slapped you upside the face!
     
      For a family that is not broken it seem weird that when you father died, all you could do is Burn all of the most valuable shit he had, his books and writings which he had collected through the years. There was tons of knowledge there for you to learn from, but they would not have scored any brownie points with "MOM", and just seem worthless to you all. "Dad was a great man", you all would say, then spit on the ashes of that we had collected for you. You showed him no real respect, I heard it all "Yea Dad what ever, talk to ya later". The fact is that you resent Ginger for having what I think was the closes relationship with your father then any of you. She respected and revered him, not just because of his fight with the post office, but for the many other things that he said and did. All the while you and you kin were standing in the back and snickering, saying "The old man is crazy". The only difference between him and Ginger is that you didn't have the guts to say it to his face. Oddly enough, even though scoring brownie points with mom seems top priority, nobody seem to really like her either, they are just hoping to some day inherits what ever the Seed/Straight hasn't left. And don't give me that shit like "well I go to see my mother", yes you drive there, then do everything you can to avoid really being with her. ahhhh the sounds of a loving family!
     
      And not every one feels the same as you about your family. Jack has said on many occasion that he feels like an outcast in the crowd. And for a family that is so happy why is there not one sibling within 2 states of another?
     
      You have also stated that since your father had not gotten any "Love" he did not know how to give it in return, well..... I feel sorry for your kids, because profits live their fortunes.
     
      I have never been to a Straight/Seed meeting, but from what I've heard and read, your posts make me feel like I have been to an open meeting. It seems that all you can give is hate and resentment. Take my advice; Be less condescending, listen more then you will get respect and love instead of the resentment and hatred that you spawn now.
     
      You are not addicted to drugs, alcohol, or gambling, rather you are addicted to addiction. Or should I say the treatment of addiction. I think you problems is that instead of fixing your own life, you feel the need to be with people that make you feel superior, and that you can berate them without guilt because you are better then they are.
     
      I know the truth hurts, and by this point you are really pissed. So kick back, pop another Prozac, relax, and give me your best shot. Show all these nice people what a real ass you can be, I already know, I've lived it.
     
      PS: Just so that you know that I am kind of heart, I could go on and on and on and on about all the bull shit that Ginger has had to put up with in this family. An how often you attempt to make her feel like a pariah, a total worthless out cast, and some time with excellent results, As Loie would say "Good For You".
     
      But first, how many typoes can you find? I got the preperation H.

Title: My Parents
Post by: GregFL on June 05, 2002, 08:43:00 AM

Well Thom, one more lesson learned at the Seed, take the self rightous approach, and if people don't agree with you, don't talk to them.
This was/is a real opportunity to get past this nonsense with your sister and her family and put things back together.25 years is a long time to harbor these feelings for a loved one.
 Like a said in a earlier post, how unfortunate for your family that you still embrace all that Seed nonsense and can't see that it is prohibiting your family from healing.

Title: My Parents
Post by: Anonymous on June 05, 2002, 09:34:00 AM

On 2002-06-05 03:27:00, Thom McNulty wrote:
Hi Bill,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts...I don't happen to agree with many of them, and find very little accuracy in your recollections, but I do respect your right to express them.
It would appear that my presence here is disruptive. That was not my intent. Sorry if my posts have offended anyone.

   I don't have any real hatred for you, but I can not stand by and watch Ginger get slandered once again with the guise of "reaching out". God, that term pisses me off when it comes from a sugar coated, poison pen. And it is also funny (funny strange not funny haha) how people remember things in a way the benefit them most. However, from your programming, sorry, I mean Stair Mastering, that you would remember things differently.

I truly wish you all well, including you, Ginger and Bill. I hope you find the peace of mind and self acceptance we all seek. I enjoy a fairly high level of both, thanks in part to my Seed experience, but more significantly through step 11 (the real version).

      I am glad that you think you feel good about your self, but by the way you keep going on about your STEPS, it would seem to me that you are trying to justify them to your self, not me.

If anyone would like to share with me about any positive results or memories from your time at The Seed, I would very much like to hear from you. Plenty of room here on the boards for the negative stuff, (and I don't discount it's worth).

My email address is:
[email:3im2kzzr]aathomic@comporium.net[/email:3im2kzzr]

 I hope that you were not posting that email address for mine or Ginger's benefit, as we both know that you have blocked all email from us quite some time a go. So now, there is a discussion with a view that differs from your own, and all you can do is bow out? Your farther would be proud (NOT!).

Take care, and, again...thanks for your input.
I will bow out now, and consider what I have learned here.

Some how I seriously doubt that you will consider anything :sad:
 At least you are not leaving as abruptly as last time I saw you, so you must be growing some.

Take care, Thom

[ This Message was edited by: sysadmin on 2002-06-05 07:09 ]

Title: My Parents
Post by: Antigen on June 05, 2002, 10:05:00 AM

Scott, thanks for that. Truth is, I would probably still talk to Thom, but he blocked my email address through his AOL account and this is the first time I've seen his new address.

Greg, thanks for your kind words. And you're right. My brother was no skidrow junkie at 14. For the most part, all his olddruggiefriends who didn't go through the Program are just fine these days.

Bill, I'll thank you later. :wink:

Thom, first your posting here is not disruptive. Take a look around, there are a lot of threads far more heated than this one. All are welcome to Fornits' Home for Wayward Web Forums (WWF, where the acronym is no coincidence!)

One thing I remember, I was in on one of his first 'earned' talks with my mother. Dad wasn't there, I don't think, because he wouldn't take the kind of insult Art and his tennie-bopper followers dished out during the requisite checkout. While Art was holding forth about your father having chosen his drinking buddies over you, dad was out raising money and donations from his drinking buddies to help get those kids straight. Ask Louie one day about all the cold-cuts he sent down there and the Christmas turkeys.

Here's what I remember. I had a question for you about your druggiepast. It was about that very first, shiny new bike I got for Christmas. You'd promised to teach me to ride it (and I think you would have) and I let you take it to Argo to spend some cash that you'd gotten for Christmas. Well the bike got stolen. At that talk, I wanted to know if you'd sold the bike for drugs. I'll never forget the look on your face, you were devistated.

The thing is, you never were the kind of person who would steal your little sister's bike and sell it for drugs. Art put that in my mind, not you. Invite me to hang out with you cause chicks dig cute little girls? Sure. But that was fun! Cute little girls like being fawned over just as much, so that was a win-win situation. Tell me it was nap time and make me stay in my room ALL DAMNED DAY! when you babysat? Ok, that was a little mean, but not outside the scope of normal sibling mischief.

But you never were so messed up BEFORE the Program as after. And that's typical of Program graduates.

Art did always say 'if it helped one kid...' (but destroyed some and seriously complicated the lives of hundreds or thousands??) it was worth it. You ask if you could possibly be the only kid helped. Well, who are you still in touch with? Jim and Kathi don't talk about it. Jack hasn't got anything nice to say. We're not exactly overwhelmed with Seed supporters over here. Where are all these grateful beneficieries? And why DON'T you stop in at The Seed whenever you've been in Ft. Lauderdale over the years?

As for Jack being 'my latest casualty', ok, you just keep on telling yourself that. He took this family for a ride on the last project. Can't wait to see that $25k barn! I won't even go into all the reasons why we're done with him. But I guess you'll be finding out for yourself if you spend any real time with him as I have over the years.

Don't worry about my self acceptance, brother (lol!) I have plenty. It's your condescending attitude and outright abuse that I won't accept. As for your 'reaching out to me', the only time this family has ever reached out to me with any real energy, you were reaching for a pile of cash, which got.

I wish you and yours all the best. Don't spend it all in one place.



[ This Message was edited by: Antigen on 2002-06-05 11:54 ]

Title: My Parents
Post by: Anonymous on June 05, 2002, 10:24:00 AM

Thom wrote:
Greg, it's really the anti-Seed nonsense that's getting in the way. I devote very little time even thinking about The Seed. Ginger builds websites to worship and perpetuate that part of her life. A matter of perspective, I suppose.

Thom,

I am guessing you had no "bad" experience in the Seed. Did you spend any time enrolled in Straight? If you were to be forced to go without sleep, or food, or water, or mad to stand /sit for hours on end. Forced to show happiness about your treatment, would you not be a little pissed off. If everyone in your family told you to quit whining about it and butch up, would you just clam up, and go away? Would you not want to seek retribution on your captors? It is your (and other siblings) insistence that "everything is all right" that causes the problem. You do not want to hear anything bad about you Idle Art, that would be against.. um can you refresh my memory, what step was that?

It is a shame on one that instead of a constructive conversation you would rather insult people when they "hit a point", but I guess that is the response of a graduate. Congrats bro, you are about ready to be a "program" counselor.

[ This Message was edited by: SysAdmin on 2002-06-05 07:26 ]

Title: My Parents
Post by: Antigen on June 05, 2002, 10:56:00 AM

Ok, I just have to throw this in one more time. Thom's not the only one who has a mental highcough every time I (we) answer the "Why, oh why can't you let it GO" question.

Well, the truth is, for almost 20 years, a lot of little things that I saw going on around me sort of creeped me out; DARE and Peer Counseling along with random piss tests and drug sniffing dogs in the schools, neighborhood watch programs (which remind me very much of Soviet-style block monitors... or chain of commands, for that matter), Multijurisdictional Counterdrug Taskforce (see The Shield or The Wire on tee vee), Safe and Drug Free Workplaces/Communities/Shools... now homes? (with the 'self' test drug screening kits available to parents who just can't trust their kids... that come with a brochure refering parents [with good insurance] and who's kids match the checklist for substance abuse [or puberty] to places like Growing Together and SAFE) Then Brother Jeb! took office as the governor of my home state. And among his first actions was to promise $100M in funding for juvenile rehabilitation?!

Ok, I knew there were strong ties between the Program and the Reagans. And it was more than obvious that the first Bush presidency was a mere extension of the Reagan administration... so I had to look... just to find out.... like looking under the bed to make sure there are no boogie men there. Unfortunately, they're there and their names and faces are familiar.

This is why I do it:

The Governor's Sub-rosa Plot to Subvert an Election in Ohio (http://fornits.com/anonanon/Forbes/ohio/) Prominently featuring Straight founder, Betty Sembler, current DFAF Exec. Director, Calvina Fay and some executives from Phoenix House; the largest Synanon based rehab in all the land.

I have been interested in drug policy reform for some years. And I was fairly well familiar with the big players. But I thought it was just my own paranoia, left-over from my days in Straight and childhood in a Seed family that made me think they were making good on their stated goal of turning the whole world into the Program.

I think I liked it better when the world was more-or-less OK and only I was a little paranoid. But there's no unseeing once you take the blinders off. So I'm trying to make everyone else see it too. If enough of us see it, maybe we can put our heads together and figure out what to do about it before we have a full blown American Gulag Archipalego.

BTW, Dad didn't spend a lot of time worrying about things he couldn't change. He spent a lot of time thinking about how to win back the America he and all his childhood friends went to war to protect and which, of those from his home town, he was the only one to return. He did a lot for us kids, but he had other legitimate obligations. And now that he's gone, I'll do my best to carry on that part of his work which he was able to impress on me as being worth the effort.

Title: My Parents
Post by: Anonymous on June 08, 2002, 08:22:00 PM

Title: My Parents
Post by: Somejoker on June 11, 2002, 12:52:00 PM

lol.
Anonymous got cold feet, but Thom, you are wanted back on another thread.

Title: My Parents
Post by: Anonymous on June 11, 2002, 11:52:00 PM

OH My....and I thought it was just my family!

It has been really interesting to get back on line (my computer was in the hospital very sick...now recovered!)and read through this dialogue.

I too was in the Seed in St Pete, as soon as it moved there from Ft Lauderdale. And yes i did graduate, after starting over a few times.

I did learn to play the game.

BUT, I always knew I was playing the game as I needed to survive the experience.

I stopped going to Old Timers meetings following an episode at the Elk's Club Pool.
I was there with an exseedling (who was at the time in another rehab and was sober in fact), YET when other seedlings came to the pool they shunned me.....

Yet these are the same people that had been telling me for close to a year that they "loved me", they "trusted me"...I went to an Old Timers Rap that evening, and when I started to speak about me experience, I was shut down....It was not the "subject" of the rap that evening. I still remember what the topic they thought was more important than "my feelings" was........the topic was about getting other people into the Seed....
I never went back.

Shortly after this I started using more drugs than I had ever thought about before.I am NOT blaming anybody for my choices, I just know that my home was not a safe environment for me (abuse of all kinds took place there) and I had lost faith in people's words of love and respect and caring.

I certainly did not hear words of support, encouragement, love and praise from my father and stepmother. I did hear things like what a slut I was (even as a virgin), how stupid I was (even as an A student), and lived on "restriction" simply because he KNEW I was doing things just could not catch me so I'd be grounded (following my beating) for the sake of his principles.

I had thoght i had earned a group of friends within the Seed that would be my emotional support.....they sure showed me didn't they?!

Well the night my father dragged me out of a sound sleep at 3am to start beating me because I had "snuck in" (although I had been home since 11pm right after work, cleaned their dinner dishes, did my homework and went to bed...the truth never really mattered in that home)....It was the best night of my life.....He told me I could leave,and I did after spending 3 hrs at the emergency room....

I guess the thing I really remember is being in Gibbs High School and still being cursed and spit on for being a "seedling" even though I had been out for 2-4 years. I remember high school as a time of pain and much loneliness.

I remember very few names of the people I was in there with, perhaps my God is being good to me helping me to let those things go.

My father died several years ago...I am still waiting to hear officially from my stepmother about his death! I recently had to set some boundaries for my mother; perhaps our relationship will recover, perhaps not. But I needed to make sure that I am safe from her harm.

I have been sober for about 20 years now. I have a son (soon to be 18 Ugh!) who knows about my life, and has chosen a different course for himself (Thank God).

I also know that my son did not have the type of life I had; because I worked very hard to ensure that I did not continue the cycle.

I am married (4 1/2 yrs now) to a wonderful recovering addict (16 yrs sober) like myself.We did not meet in "the rooms", but did date for 7yrs because I was still not comfortable believing that I was "loveable".

I wish that my younger brother and sister were closer to me, they were not a part of my Seed experience as they are 7 & 9 years younger than me and lived with my mother. My brother is much like the "viper" I read about here, very judgemental. My sister and I are truly reaching out to each other and learning about each other. I am very happy about that.

I guess the real reason I have just written this "book" is because I wanted to remind us that each child within a family experiences that family in a different time with a different perception. NONE of those differing perceptions are better or worse than the others. JUST DIFFERENT!

I submit that the realtionship I have with my mother,as the first born child of a 15yrold mother is different than my brother's, as the last child of 4 to a 26 yrold mother.

The economics,the expectations,the fathers,and the emotional experiences were different. This is true, I believe for all families---functional and dysfunctional.  

I think that setting some boundaries is healthy for all....even though some times the boundary means that you have no contact at all. I have a brother 1 yr younger than me that I have neither seen nor spoken to in 25 yrs. For my own sanity it has to be that way.....sometime people are very unhealthy for each other---family or friend---whom ever is harmful should be removed from a person's reality.

Title: My Parents
Post by: Anonymous on June 12, 2002, 12:11:00 AM

for some reaon the last post read ANONYMOUS even though I was logged in, but it won't let me log in again.Oh well things happen.

I did write the last post.

So I just wanted to say that my name is
Debi White, I currently live in Sarasota with my husband and son (and my 2 German Shepards (lol)....

I am sorry I was rambling so much...I guess those posts between brother and sister (and husband?) struck a chord in me. I guess I just wanted to say that sometime we do just have to accept what we can not change....and sometimes other people's perceptions just won't change to include yours no matter how important it is to you....it is unfortunate but altogether too human....

Title: My Parents
Post by: Antigen on June 12, 2002, 02:15:00 PM

Thank you, Debbi. I needed that.

About that login problem. You're not alone in that either :wink: Could you post over in Web forum Hosting about that? Thanks.

Title: My Parents
Post by: escaper on June 13, 2002, 01:25:00 PM

I`m a seed non-graduate who escaped after only 2 months in October of 1971.  I was 19 and had done a stint in the Army so was less disabled by the experience than most.  Five of us sibs had different levels of exposure to the madness, all with varying degrees of damage.  There is no rational way to explain the fact that your own parents give you over to a bunch of crazies and consider the percieved problem to be solved. All my sibs have lives and families that are at least as happy as the Cleavers seemed. I slowed way down on illegal drugs after my experience in the experiment, but used alcohol because it was legal and available for 20 years.  I then jumped on the wagon for better than a decade to remove some cobwebs and started a small family. I`m generally happy with my life, but regret the rift that was undoubtedly caused by our experience at the Seed and Straight. I haven`t spoken to my Mother for 7-8 years and don`t plan to open myself up for any more of her damaging abuse. She has tried many times to sabotage my life and success and I just grew tired of it, after having more contact with her than any other sib for many years.  As far as everyone`s differing perceptions of the same basic experience, I think we all have to decide what works for us in life, or "whatever floats your boat".  Some people bail it out and others fix the hole. The Three Stooges drill another hole to let the water out. That would be akin to joining another program to fix any percieved problems that were probably perpetuated by a program in the first place.  I love you all in a way much different than Art demonstrated.  He was and probably is a megalomaniac who may or may not have evaluated the damage that he did to hundreds of families while pretending to repair them. Thanks for the opportunity to explain my experience. I thrive on the evidence that there are so many articulate survivors, and feel great sorrow for the many who did not come away from the madness. 30 years is half a lifetime and a princely sum to pay for our parent`s lack of ability to solve the problems they imagined in us all.

Title: My Parents
Post by: Anonymous on June 13, 2002, 01:26:00 PM

Title: My Parents
Post by: escaper on June 13, 2002, 07:54:00 PM

I was in Ft. Laud.  apparently one of the first 100 victims.  Went to school at Pompano with Libby, and never understood how such a smart girl was so taken by the program.  Probably the parent abandonment thing, who knows? I actually thought very little about the experience, as they never had me for a minute, I was just biding my time till I could get away and leave town. I`ve been reading the various permutations of message boards and am taken by the stuff I don`t often read about, success and actualization of the torn-apart lives that filtered through the mill over the years.

Title: My Parents
Post by: escaper on June 14, 2002, 12:50:00 PM

Hey, Debi and Freedom.  I live in Bradenton.  Small world.  Came here to get sober and succeeded for 12 1/2 years, then used my free will to try to drink again. Had some success for months, but found again that the cunning, baffling and powerful legal drug takes tons of resolve to manage successfully.  I`m now involved in trying to climb back on the wagon.

Title: My Parents
Post by: MommaDebi on June 14, 2002, 10:55:00 PM

Dear neighbors...
feel free to contact me, perhaps we could have our own reunion...
debi
[email protected]

[ This Message was edited by: MommaDebi on 2002-06-14 20:03 ]

Title: My Parents
Post by: MommaDebi on June 14, 2002, 10:55:00 PM

It is truly a small world!!



Freedom~~ it is unbelievable to me that my "neighbor" has experienced the same thing I did. It is so hard to explain to those people who did not have the "fortune" to be there!



Escaper~~ following my stint in the Seed for mere pot smoking, I decided to make my list real this time and did every thing I could get my hands on. Luckily I was able to do so without ever running into legal issues and without totally killing my self. I have been sober for almost 22yrs now, I like my life now without all the insanity. I wish you well.

[ This Message was edited by: MommaDebi on 2002-06-14 19:58 ]

Title: My Parents
Post by: MommaDebi on June 14, 2002, 10:56:00 PM

For some reason this posted more than once, but each time telling me there was aproblem... and that it would not post...amazing! LOL
_________________
"...every five years I look back on my life and have a good laugh..."

[ This Message was edited by: MommaDebi on 2002-06-14 20:01 ]

Title: My Parents
Post by: escaper on June 15, 2002, 05:29:00 AM

No kidding anonymous, your experience is so similar to so many others that it hardly deserves that surprised look on the face of all your correspondents. Brother and 25 years are an unthinkable equation unless one or both of you is a total asshole. Just a guess, but I`m thinking you were close enough to only fight once a week before the program happened into your life and I`m further guessing that your parents decided it was necessary to save the family that you have lost for decades.Don`t be angry at my brash description of the aftermath, but rather use it to understand what went on back then. My personal opinion is that this forum is about healing alot more than vengance. Love is just as important as John Lennon hinted it might be before a jealous person murdered him.  I aint mad, just enlightened by the people that post here. Thanks for yours.

Title: My Parents
Post by: Anonymous on June 15, 2002, 07:41:00 AM

If you percieve your own family to be a pit of vipers, without the rest having thought or heard that phrase, perhaps you wallow alone in the pit. Slither out or be endlessly deluded. In other wise words, SMARTEN UP!!

Title: My Parents
Post by: Antigen on June 16, 2002, 01:10:00 PM

Nah, I just realized fairly recently that, after 20 years of trying to please these people or wait for them quit projecting Art Barker's myths of druggiedome on me and to accept me as I am, it's just not a club I really want to be a member of.

Thank you for your "kind" concern. But no thanks.

Title: My Parents
Post by: Anonymous on June 16, 2002, 01:17:00 PM

Quote

On 2002-06-14 19:56:00, MommaDebi wrote:
For some reason this posted more than once, but each time telling me there was aproblem... and that it would not post...amazing! LOL
_________________

"...every five years I look back on my life and have a good laugh..."
[ This Message was edited by: MommaDebi on 2002-06-14 20:01 ]

Yeah, I had the same problem. But only in this thread.... I'll try to figure it out and will post any info about it in the web forum hosting forum (any time you find something funky, please post there or send email to [email protected] Don't worry, it's tech support, not therapy or anything :wink:)

As far as posts going in anonymously when you put in a username and password, that can happen if you typo the username or password or if you don't have cookies turned on. Everyone's welcome to post here without cookies. Just leave the username and password blank and sign your posts however you want to in the body.

Title: My Parents
Post by: Anonymous on October 27, 2003, 09:09:00 PM

I know I shouldn't, but I just can't stop myself: this is too sad......but also funny....

MCNUTTIES: I'm a ghost from your past who lives in another state now and has forgotten all about your weirdo family and the seed and all that crap until I came across CLASSMATES.COM and then wandered to this page because I think I knew Greg quite well from Lakewood, though I can't be sure. I recognize his name, and he seems like he's healed from his childhood trauma and I may even email him personally to tell him how happy I am for him

BUT YOU PEOPLE!
Hell, I wouldn't even go near your neighborhood.

I was never taken to the seed. MY parents would NEVER have done something so draconian and drastic to a 13 or 14 year old. But I watched sadly from the sidelines as many of my good friends went to the brainwashin warehouse and came out looking as spooked as concentration camp victims. And no wonder. That fucking seed swept through town like the Nazis rounding up Jews in Poland.

Frankly, I wasn't one to harrass anybody that had gone to the SEED or to STRAIGHT. I felt that you'd endured enough torture. I saw the hollow eyes and terror on your faces. I wished there was something I could have done to help. But it was your fucking FAMILY THAT PUT YOU IN THAT PLACE.

I knew you people before AND after the brainwashing machine, and nobody changed one bit in my opinion: You were fucked up before, just rotton little rich kids, bitch and moan. moan and bitch.....never doing anyting productive like taking advantage of the good education your dad provided you at all those private schools.

Nah, you all were too spoiled, and had it just TOO DAMN GOOD. I knew your family well enough to know to stay far, very far away, so that I wouldn't be swept up in the MCNUTTIE MADNESSS.

You know, of course, that that's what even your friends called all you siblings. You were the laughing stock of every school you attendedg. and I know, because I was there!

And now, it seems, the McNutties haven't changed one bit despite decades and one of you going into a 12 step program, which I too belong too.

NOW YOUR TAKING YOUR BITCHIN AND MOANING OUT IN A PUBLIC FORUM BECAUSE EVERYOINE HAS BLOCKED THEIR EMAIL ADDRESSES. FOR heaven's sake, stay away from each other if you people are so toxic to each other.

I knew your family and I always marvelled at how fucked up everybody was. ALL those kids. the weirdo mother. the jackass alcoholic father.  I had your number by the time I was 12. I followed your sick family through several schools. And I can only say this

MCNUTTIES: PEOPLE, this was 30 years ago....Apparently those brainwashing programs either worked too well, or didn't work at all because you people are STILL AS CRAZY AND FUCKED UP AS YOU WERE AS KIDS!!

Ive only got one more thing to say and it's serious:
MCNUTTIES BOYS AND GIRL: LOOK AT YOUR CHILDREN. DO you want this nonsense to tranfer to them? because it will. You all have a great chance to break the self destructive tendencies that I ALWAYS saw in your family. But is anybody delivering? It doesn't seem so.

Thom, good for your for getting sober in a 12 step group. But haven't you been around long enough to know that you can't control crazy people, espeically when they're in your family.

Ginger: DO whatever you want. You always were the smartest of them all. ALl your brothers reminded me of sheer stupiity. I figured your family got rich through some means of illegal means, because all of you were to stupid to do it the normal way.

MCNUTTIES: I find this hysterical, and this is the BEST laugh I've had in a long time, chancing across this post and seeing that your people are just as fucking mean and rotten as you were as kids.

Taking after Daddykins, I guess.
I just know: He's proud as hell, and he's just a cussing away....

Signed: Someone who knew you people way too well and knew better than to get too close.

Title: My Parents
Post by: kaydeejaded on October 27, 2003, 09:54:00 PM

:flame:

If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson

Title: My Parents
Post by: Anonymous on October 27, 2003, 11:26:00 PM

I posted the mcnutties email a few hours ago and feel like i need to clarify one thing. I knew ALL of you from somewhere, in some school, one way or another. none of that rant was intended for anyone but the McnUtties. I knew them all too well, and they're still up to their old games. Ginger may be a key player in this post, and I'll probably not come back here, because I don't share the common bond of being abused in those programs, though many of us who DID NOT GO were wounded and confused as well.

Shit, we were kids in a big man's scam.
I'm sorry to come down so harsh on the McNulty family. It's just that I knew them too well, and this sound like the same shit they put out as kids. What makes me the most upset is not them. It's that they are, in my opinion, putting a bunch of crap on this site that is supposed to be a healing place for all of your ex seedlings or straights or whatever name you've decided to call it. I see a lot of familiar names that are posting quite serious attemtps to REACH OUT and HEAL from that horrible trauma.

Their blabber, with Ginger saying she's fucking with John Ashcroft and calling it work and then starting, what was it Ginger, Anonymous Anonymous? Is that some sort of snide joke you're attempting to play on your family or the rest of us. Because I ain't buying it sweet heart. That's just your "fuck you" attitude and your "You stole my new bike" squat girl jibberish.

And Ginger, I really hope that you discover soon that you can't fix the world or rid it of all its problems. Free and open expression of politics are fine; yours just rings of self absorbtion.

Sorry hon, just an old telling YOU to come back when YOU can grasp the truth.
And BTW, have any of you fricken creeps ever really moved on with life and gotten a real job? Or are you still holding out for all the money when Mama goes too? Again. sorry to sound so hateful and mean. It's just you and your families ugly Karma coming back to spit venon back in your rotten faces.

To all my other old friends out there who got sucked into the SEED and spit back out as zombies, I truly hope you have found a way to deal with it and PUT IT BEHIND YOU.

I know you can never forget, and I know some of you will never forgive, and I don't blame you.

But try to put the thing in an adult perspective , if that makes any sense.

You all -- you, your families, your friends -- were conned by a snake oil man than sleazed into town in the dead of night and set up a shop of horrors in some rundown warehouse on the other side of town.

You were victims. It's the parents voice that I keep missing on this site.

Good luck and God bless, even to the McNutties

JG

Title: My Parents
Post by: Anonymous on October 27, 2003, 11:33:00 PM

and by the way, did any of the Hobby kids get out of this thing alive or fairly unharmed?

The last time I saw phil was in the early 80s. We ran into each other at bar and got shitfaced drunk and coked out. Hope they found real recovery. I liked them and wish them well. Just how involved in this mess did their parents become? the mother was a drunk, swigging gin from the bottle at noon as she chain smoked Salems and screamed at her kids. Sorry to talk bad of the dead, but she was a
screeeeeaaaammmmm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (sorry phil)

Title: My Parents
Post by: kaydeejaded on October 28, 2003, 09:40:00 AM

You know you vile piece of shit you never met me because I never was near your Goddamn redneck town and I am nowhere near as old as you so when you are pushing up daisys or pissing in your depends I am going to be the person deciding that you really don't need that social security check. And you fucker are going to be to weak to do anything about it. Beacase yeah the program fucked me up and guess what who's going to pay for that not me baby you are

And as to the purpose of this site Ginger sets it and lets us do with it what we will so if you don't like it thats because we the Straight seed ect survivors don't want to "heal" all new agey right now maybe we want to bitch for a fucking second before we heal or maybe just maybe we don't need to do anything but talk

blank hollow eyes? You saw how about that Wow I have never been so happy in my life to have been in Straight I can tell you that bastard fuck I would much rather be the one with the empty eyes and a rallying spirit a cause and a purpose and a true pioneering soul trapped then a pathectic weakling behind a bush watching. Thankful that it wasn't me cowering and shook

you are nothing you could not handle what we went through you are spineless and feeble

You didn't get to close

Who would get close to you NOT ME NOT GINGER
We only like people with power in their convictions not insubstantial little peons who would watch people get tourted and stand their.

You are a nothing nothing nothing

I would go to Straight for you because I can and still come out shaken, scared but standing you would roll over, even though you make me sick, you are too weak and I am too compassionate and I would still do that for you because that is the type of person I am and when I got out I would spit on you.

Fuck off stop taking about Ginger you are not fit to walk upright. Kiss my feet.

If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit  people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good?  Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race?

--Frederic Bastiat -- 1801-1850

Title: My Parents
Post by: GregFL on October 28, 2003, 09:45:00 AM

I think you got the wrong family here....

The Mcnulties were in The Seed in Ft Lauderdale and all lived there.

The Other family you are speaking of was a St Petersburg family, No???

If so, perhaps you owe Ginger a little apology here.....

Web pages are like babies -- creation involves a level of enthusiasm that does not necessarily carry over into maintenance.
--Joe Chew

Title: My Parents
Post by: GregFL on October 28, 2003, 09:48:00 AM

Ease up there Kaydee....He made an identity mistake.

No one is perfect, give him a chance to come up for air.

I would rather be exposed to the inconveniencies attending too much
liberty than to those attending too small a degree of it.

--Thomas Jefferson, 1791, in a letter to Archibald Stuart

Title: My Parents
Post by: Antigen on October 28, 2003, 01:02:00 PM

Wow! Now I'm piqued. Who are you? Don't worry, I don't bite anymore, even people who call me McNutty, McNutButt, whatever.

I'm glad you stayed away. It sucked for me as a kid, of course. It was like the iron curtain coming down. Lots of other kids had fucked up families. That was not a death kiss. But The Seed was! I envied all of you who's parents were too sane to fall for that. And I deeply admired and apreciated those who passed on the chance to join in on all the teasing. Thanks for that.

I don't know anything about lakewood, though. I'm the only one of us who ever lived on the Gulf, and that was only for as long as it took me to get free of Straight.

We never were wealthy, buddy. Don't know where you got the idea that we were. My grandfather had some cash, but he wasn't handing it out to anyone. He got it the old fashioned way; by kissing wealthy asses. As far as I know, most of what he left to my mom went to The Seed, Straight and, finally, the Billy Graham Crusade.

I suppose you should be extremely proud and happy for Thom's sobriety. It's cause for celebration every couple of years, as that's about how often he suddenly figures out how to use the tools good old Art gave him. And that's also about as often as I talk to any of my family any more. Thanks for the advice, but I'm way ahead of you on that one.

The old man mellowed out quite a bit as he got older. He passed on back in early `97, though, so he hasn't been laughing about anything much lately. Good old Crazy Mac. I miss him so much. He was the sanest of all my family, I think. And trust me, you'd cuss like a deranged Popeye too if you had to walk in his shoes. Oh, and he quit being crazy back around `83 when he shamed the post office into giving him his job back on national TV. From then on, he was known as merely eccentric Mac.  :lol:  

Finally, I don't care about what happened 30 years ago except to tell the story because it's still going on today. Those sadistic lunatics who started this cult get millions in public funding to make the whole world as much like being in the Program as they can. I'm glad you dodged that bullet 30 years ago. But your kids aren't getting off so easy. Just peek into who's setting up those 1-800-BEA-SNITCH hotlines, DARE programs, neighborhood watch, area drug taskforces, drug courts, piss testing everywhere you turn, private prisons and prison industries, etc. It's these same clowns. That's the story that really needs to be told.

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that
they don't like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don't expect freedom to survive very long.
--Thomas Sowell

Title: My Parents
Post by: Antigen on October 28, 2003, 01:29:00 PM

JG. Hmm. One name springs to mind.

You're mistaken about the purpose of this forum. I'm not a shrink and not trying to heal anyone. And I don't think I'll ever concede that you can't change the world because that's not consistent with my experience. All of the western states plus Maine and Hawaii are in open rebellion against federal marijuana prohibition. And it's spreading. Now... how do you suppose that happened? The Teen Help industry is under so much scrutiny these days they're starting to snipe at eachother. Every couple of months, another one gets shut down. How do you think that happens?

I don't know what my family ever did to you. Knowing them as well as I do, I'm guessing it was something. But it wasn't me. I was too little to do much harm to anyone. So no hard feelings, OK?

This site is not restricted to people who were in these programs. Not at all! I hope you will drop in from time to time. I welcome anyone who has any opinion or info on these programs and, especially, on the people who got filthy rich from them and what they're doing now.

Finally, it's not hard to imagine another big and thoroughly fucked up family by the same name on the other side of the state. In fact, I knew a Thom McNulty over there. He was a little younger than my brother and I don't know anything about his family except that they were the type of people to send their kids to a very cultish little Southern Baptist school where my mom sent me. Oh, the stories I could tell! Suffice it to say that there are damned good reason why we all live in different states.

But yeah, some of them still seem to be hanging onto the hope of getting some cash out of the old lady. The only money in the family, though, is with my uncle, who's been quite successful professionally on his own steam and way too smart to flush his wealth down his sister's ever evolving fanatic vortex. I know she was broke as a church mouse a couple of years ago, having given all she had to some evangelist who had this church sell their builing and chip to the collection plate from chairs set up in an empty lot for a couple of years before he split town. As de dawg chases his tail.

 

People who are willing to give up freedom for the sake of short term security, deserve neither freedom nor security.

--Benjamin Franklin

Title: My Parents
Post by: GregFL on October 28, 2003, 01:57:00 PM

Ginger, I am QUITE SURE he has you confused with another family.

This guy went to Junior high and High school with me. I know who he is because he emailed me...There is no way he is discussing you as He really just went off on a tangent about the wrong family...I apologize for him because there is a chance he may not come back.

I have a couple of posts on Clasmmates.com that has brought a lot of people from Lakewood here that were not in the seed but observed neverthelless the effect it had on their friends including, as this guy suggested, the hollow look on our faces. For those of you that are here and lurking, POST SOMETHING. We want to hear from  you. It is very interesting to hear your perceptions of us back when we were decribed by everyone as "robots". You may remember three distinct large groups at lakewood, "the Jocks" "the Freaks" and "the seedlings" Those that know me also know that at first opportunity, I jumped ship and the seedlings would no longer talk to me and the jocks were kind of standoffish, so BACK TO THE FREAKS FOR ME!!!

 :smile:

The lust for power, for dominating others, inflames the heart more than any other passion
Tacitus

[ This Message was edited by: GregFL on 2003-10-28 11:00 ]

Title: My Parents
Post by: Antigen on October 28, 2003, 02:26:00 PM

Well that's just spooky, Greg! This means that there are at least two large and hostile McNulty families with a Thom and a Ginger. If you look back in this thread, there's quite a lot of detail. That someone could read that and still mistake the one pack of savages for the other pit of vipers is somewhat unsettling.

Clancy's Law: The perceived role of governments is to deploy ever increasing resources to the attainment of  ever diminishing end results.
--Home Page (http://ozinfo.com/)

_________________
Ginger Warbis ~ Antigen
American drug war P.O.W.
   10/80 - 10/82
Straight South (Sarasota, FL)
Anonymity Anonymous

Title: My Parents
Post by: Froderik on October 28, 2003, 02:38:00 PM

Quote

Their blabber, with Ginger saying she's fucking with John Ashcroft and calling it work and then starting, what was it Ginger, Anonymous Anonymous? Is that some sort of snide joke you're attempting to play on your family or the rest of us. Because I ain't buying it sweet heart. That's just your "fuck you" attitude and your "You stole my new bike" squat girl jibberish.

I really don't get what you were trying to say here at all. This makes no sense to me. How would anon/anon be a "joke" on anyone? "Fuck you attitude?" Please explain before you disappear into oblivion...

Title: My Parents
Post by: GregFL on October 28, 2003, 02:46:00 PM

[quote by Ginger]
"That someone could read that and still mistake the one pack of savages for the other pit of vipers is somewhat unsettling."



now THAT is funny Ginger...thanks for injecting some levity into this topic. When we let people who largely don't understand upset us, we lose.

I know you know this...

Those who control the past, control the future; and those who control the present, control the past.

--George Orwell

[ This Message was edited by: GregFL on 2003-10-28 11:47 ]

[ This Message was edited by: GregFL on 2003-10-28 11:52 ]

Title: My Parents
Post by: Antigen on October 28, 2003, 03:26:00 PM

Actually, AnonAnon was a poke at my brother. Before it morphed into what it is today, it was going to be a satiracle thing. The intro at the top used to say something like "Anonymity Anonymous, help and support for people who've become dependent on support groups." I even entertained the idea of running those free classified ads in local papers announcing AnonAnon meetings at a local Dennys on the evening of April 1st just to see if anyone would show up.

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

Title: My Parents
Post by: GregFL on October 28, 2003, 04:58:00 PM

Quote

On 2003-10-28 12:26:00, Antigen wrote:

"Actually, AnonAnon was a poke at my brother. Before it morphed into what it is today, it was going to be a satiracle thing. The intro at the top used to say something like "Anonymity Anonymous, help and support for people who've become dependent on support groups." I even entertained the idea of running those free classified ads in local papers announcing AnonAnon meetings at a local Dennys on the evening of April 1st just to see if anyone would show up.

I always understood that from the first time I saw it. Many people in 12 step programs cannot see their compulsion has just switched to the group.

Example. I just met a guy the other day in an airport. He told me he was a recovering addict. I said "really, I was in drug treatment at a very young age..tell me..what were you addicted to"

He said "many things..I was dying and had been in jail..my addiction was killing me" and then the expected "all my old friends are now either dead or in jail".

I said "that is interesting, what exactly were you addicted to"  He then changed the subject to treatment. Later on, he said that he hadn't "Used" since the late 70s early 80s and that he drank and like qualudes (who didn't???).  I really sensed that this guy had never been addicted to anything but just had made bad choices and found a group somewhere to think for him.

Addiction treatment is serious and if done properly a valuable thing.

Addiction treatment, done improperly or forced upon non-addicts is a travesty.

Addiction treatment addicts that fabricate their prior "addictions"  are a joke...and way to common.

Cops; you wake `em up you gotta dance with `em. They lead.
-- Jack McNulty

Title: My Parents
Post by: Anonymous on October 28, 2003, 09:19:00 PM

Oh. sorry Mncutties, whoever you were. Geez, that little tirade really showed more about you than it did about me. ill stay outa here, that's for sure. I MADE A BIG MISTAKE. Please either accept or don't accept my apologies, I really don't give a shit. I shd have never even opened this thing up and I never will again. I promise. Not take ME off your hate list. Like i said, that email was intended for a family that I new was in the Seed in st pete and I wrong wrong wrong......You know, people are wrong alot of the times. It's just too bad when they aren't strong enough to admit it.
Signed. The sorry ass person who wrote all that nonsense last night. It just dug up ghosts for me too. Who ever I offended, forget it and get on with your lives, just like i am.

Title: My Parents
Post by: Antigen on October 28, 2003, 09:34:00 PM

But now I'm dying to know who this other family is and if we're close kin to mine. Aside from the location and the bit about money, you're dead on about the rest of it. Well, I suppose I'm probably less than objective about the notion that I was ever the smartest. (lol)

No offense taken, buddy. Honest. The ones I know tend to bring out the worst in me too.

Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.
--James Madison

Title: My Parents
Post by: GregFL on October 28, 2003, 10:13:00 PM

HA. If you think that was the worse offense ever on one of these message  boards...I have been called every name in the book, especially on the old forums that are now archived. And the funny thing about your little tirade is it did ring some bells in Ginger's situation, she really does have a family that resembles SOME (not all) of the things you were saying. No harm no foul..


Listen, welcome to our forum. Thank you for taking the time to log on and give a shit. Most people are too scared or just don't care. There is a story in here that we would like you to hear and Ginger alluded to it, and that is, these bastards are still at it and are deeply entrenched in the decisions being made at drug policy level in this country.  This isn't a 30 year old nightmare that went away, it is a nightmare being lived out today by kids in places all across this nation and now abroad as the criminals have found out that it is easier to abuse american kids in places where the laws may be a little more lax. And would you be surprised to know that today, on Orange blossom trail in Orlando...kids still sing Seed songs, talk on open mike, Motivate and talk the same bullshit us seedlings talked 30 years ago? Hard to believe but true...log onto that site anon anon you hit before and view the video on SAFE Inc. Be forwarned, You may feel the urge to throw up...

We are hear to lend a hand to those damaged and to spread the word that it is still going on. That is our sole purpose and You are welcome here anytime.

Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will [America's] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

--John Quincy Adams, Speech to the U.S. House of Representatives [July 4, 1821]

Title: My Parents
Post by: GregFL on October 30, 2003, 11:19:00 PM

Quote

On 2003-10-27 20:33:00, Anonymous wrote:

"and by the way, did any of the Hobby kids get out of this thing alive or fairly unharmed?



The last time I saw phil was in the early 80s. We ran into each other at bar and got shitfaced drunk and coked out. Hope they found real recovery. I liked them and wish them well. Just how involved in this mess did their parents become? the mother was a drunk, swigging gin from the bottle at noon as she chain smoked Salems and screamed at her kids. Sorry to talk bad of the dead, but she was a

screeeeeaaaammmmm!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (sorry phil)

"

no personal knowledge, but found this on the classmates.com website:

From: TROY THOMASON 1978 Aug 17 2002 1:32:15PM
To: KAREN GEE 1976
(8) Class of 76 or77 (in reply to 2)

OK, had to reply, even though I'm too young for your parameters.  

Aww the Oyster Bar, Nepa Hut,,,,,,,

Scott C*** is K9 Marine Patrol in South Florida, Ft. Lauderdale area, I beleive!

Chuck ***** is in charge of Pinellas EMS system, and just won a statewide award, for being the best administrator. We educated him in our hunt club!

That's about all I know about right now, that was on your list. Oh Yeh, Steve and Tish Hobby are my brother-in-law / sister-in-law. They are our neighbors on the beach, too. I married Tish's little sister, Mary Ann (Carrier).

To say the drug war is a failure is like saying the Hindenburg was short a few fire extinguishers.
Carl Hiassen

Title: My Parents
Post by: Antigen on October 31, 2003, 12:44:00 AM

I don't know what happened to the kids or what any of their names were. I was too young to pick up on that sort of detail. Howsomever, the first time I read this, I thought it was about someone I knew of.

All I know is that this woman delivered newspapers for a living. She had a couple of teenaged sons and she drank litterally all the time. She'd carry around a big plastic tumbler full of gin or vodka colored with powdered ice tea. She died in her house on the living room couch about three days before anyone figured out that she wasn't just passed out, as usual.

Now, how fucked up is the world that a detail like that could be so common?

In the 60's people took acid to make the world weird. Now the world is weird and people take Prozac to make it normal.
--Unknown