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Straight, Inc. and Derivatives / getting your facts straight
« on: June 09, 2004, 06:56:00 PM »Quote
On 2004-04-09 05:57:00, still doing fine wrote:
"How arrogant to assume that your history is the same as mine!!!! You know nothing about me or my past history with drugs and alcohol. Do people not die from drug and alochol addictions every day? If it were easy to just put drugs down then why don't people do it? Sounds like if they cannot help themselves then someone nedds to help them. We may differ on that opinion. I do know that I was not abused or tormented while in treatment at Kids Helping Kids. "
first off, i didn't go to khk.. i went to this place called cedu. there wasn't as much physical abuse as there appears to have been at these other places (straight and it's offspring, etc.) at cedu with the exception of the restraints that children at the middle skool were put in. sometimes it was just for mouthing off and running rampant in defiance, not really doing any harm to anybody. they would claim that the child was out of control, when, i beleve, there was a bit of a syntactical error in such a statement; i believe they left out the werd 'my'... "the child was out of 'my' control." and why should a staff member be in control of a child by using an ineffective standardized approach? (please don't take this as me stating that the standardized approach is ALWAYS ineffective... apparently, it's not if you feel that it werked for you. i am also doing fabulously now. i never bought into the program (nor did i fake it.. my 3 years were spent in defiance until they realized that they couldn't help me any more with their methods... they didn't even stop to think that perhaps they could take another approach.) but i refused to let it damage me, and i'm not wallowing in my bitterness. don't get me wrong, i still believe they are all unethical; an ethical approach would be to take into consideration the particular needs of the individual rather than hitting them with the standardized aggressive approach. thus, i don't believe these skools are genuinely dedicated to helping children solve their problems and live beautiful lives as much as they are pushing their standards off onto these children and teaching them to be obedient. i am dedicated to exposing this theory; had some of parents known how these skools had planned to execute their mission statements, they would've turned and run holding their child closely and lovingly...) i'm just saying that it was not effective for that child, or else the child would not have been "acting up" in the first place.
anyway, these skools practice what many would consider mental, emotional, spiritual, and/or physical abuse. from what i know, that is the nature of the "synanon" approach; aggressive confrontation and harsh disciplinary tactics implemented in order to encroach on the mind of the subject with a specific way of thinking. perhaps for some people, this type of discipline is a good thing (honestly, i believe this is for those who aren't strong enough to create their own standards) but for others, it can be truly damaging... i've accepted both the positives and negatives of my stay at cedu.... it's a part of my past, and my past has made me who i am today, and i now love myself more than i ever thought i would... i don't think i'd be nearly as strong and militant had i not been put under that type of pressure. on the other hand, there are many others who didn't have the same strength i had to combat the potential mental, spiritual, and psychological damage/trauma that arises from being constrained in such an environment.
i've always had a problem following other people's rules that i didn't agree with (no music? NO WAY! i'm a musician, for fuck's sake... and they wouldn't let me bring my sax; that's a level privilege for complient children. ::puke:: i'm embarassed to say that by the time i got there, (i still have no clue how the hell i got there, considering my "behavior"...) i was too burnt out to even remember how much i'd loved that thing.) i still won't do it, and thank "god" for that... if cedu had changed me, i'd never push the boundaries of what i knew to be my reality; consequently, i'd live a very mediocre, uncreative life which would not satisfy me. i do, however, have my own moral code which i stand firmly behind. i consider myself to be an outstanding person, with a great sense of moral/ethical responsibility.
after all this rambling, i'll make my point: these skools are based on what some people consider abuse. whether this "abuse" helped or hurt you is up to you. you've implied that there is nothing wrong with this program because it helps people. there is truth to that. at the same time, it hurts a lot (i'd venture to say more, but i have no statistics) of people; some end up killing themselves because they don't know how else to respond to the aggressive pressure being placed upon them. in conclusion, i believe that in order to make an optimal change in a child's life, it is the counselors' duty to gauge out the needs of each student, and thus treat each of them differently. unfortunately, i don't believe that this is a part of their job description... i know it wasn't at cedu.
by the way, not doing drugs IS that easy... all you do is stay away from them, and when you're near them, you pass (or as you said, put them down.) what's hard is rewiring your mentality so that you no longer desire them. [apply my statements in regard to optimal change here]
_________________
laura solomon
cedu vet. 1996-1999
RIP[ This Message was edited by: mikehunt on 2004-06-09 16:45 ]