Substance Abuse Treatment for Adolescents

They'll be quite convincing because they are, indeed, quite sincere. But don't believe them. They're lying, especially to themselves! Here are a few destructive mind cults that I know of that are operating to this day under the guise of adolescent substance abuse treatment: Growing Together, Lake Worth, Florida; SAFE Recovery, Orlando, Florida; Turn About, Tallahassee, Florida and Kids Helping Kids of Cincinnati.

As a 35 year old mother of three, the oldest being a bombastic and beautiful 16 year old daughter, I understand the stark panic of watching your child take foolish chances in life. If I didn't know better, I would very likely have allowed local law enforcement to use trumped up charges to force my daughter in one of these places. But I do know better because I spent two years as a client of Straight Incorporated; first in St. Pete, then transferred to Sarasota, Florida. Please allow me to fill you in on the other side of the story, the part they won't tell you when you inquire about their treatment program.

First, most importantly, they're lying about their success rate. Post traumatic stress disorder is a far more common outcome than abstinence from illicit drugs, let alone successful living. And there are other options available for an adolescent in need of counseling or substance abuse treatment. If you're considering an establishment named above or similar to the one I'm about to describe to you, pass them by! Go on to the next, and the next. Doing nothing would be far better than turning your child over to one of these cults.

When I was 15 years old, my parents brought me to Straight, Incorporated on Gandy Blvd. in St. Pete Florida. I was led to a windowless room not much larger than a walk-in closet and bare except for a couple of chairs. This is what they call an 'intake interview'. For roughly four hours various staff and clients came in and out of the room, tag-team style, each taking their turn at interrogating me, berating and threatening me. I don't remember much of the content of the discussion and I don't know where my parents were while I was in that room. We really never talked about Straight very much while my father was alive. And I don't speak with my mother to this day. But according to later accounts of other program parents, they were likely kept in another room nearby and periodically updated with new (mostly false) information about the confessions they'd been able to get out of me and asked for information that might help break me down.

I do remember one guy saying that he could tell by some mysterious physiological signs in my eyes that I'd done cocaine, and lots of it. Well I'd never even seen cocaine, but that didn't matter. They'd already decided that I was a druggie, hence unreliable. I'm pretty sure it was Miller Newton who spun that particular outlandish lie, but it's been 20 years and that the intake interrogation was all made up of the same malarkey as each and every day of the next two years of my life. It all sort of runs together. I also remember their trying very, hard to convince me that I was terribly ashamed of myself. I had, after all, run away from home, smoked pot, stolen one of my mother's Miltown pills and even had sex. But I wasn't particularly ashamed of myself. I remember arguing that I had never hurt anyone, made good grades and such and so I had no cause to be ashamed.

So they began to make threats. They told me that if I didn't sign myself in, my parents wouldn't take me back. And I knew that was probably true. Our family had been involved with The Seed down in Ft. Lauderdale since the very early `70's. My mother was thoroughly indoctrinated in the Tough Love mythology. But that wasn't very compelling either. I'd already decided to leave home and thought things might be a little easier if I had some sort of sanction from my mother. Maybe I could go live with my aunt and uncle or something. Then they told me that if I didn't sign myself in for two weeks, they would get a judge to issue a court order to keep me for two years. What did I know? I was only 15 years old and beginning to get a little fatigued and confused after all the constant brow beating. And, in fact, they probably had the political ties to pull it off.

So I finally decided there was no way to talk my way out and I just wanted the interrogation to stop so I signed the damned meaningles paper. Next thing I remember, I was led into a large room with rows of teenagers sitting in straight-backed chairs, boys on one side separated by a wide aisle from the girls on the other side. I don't know how long I was on first phase, but I was still a newcomer seven months later when I escaped for the first time. It took that many months of being shuffled from one foster home to the next before I found myself in one where I was able to find a weakness in the security and the courage to attempt an escape.

In the mean time, neither I nor any of the other newcomers were allowed any contact whatsoever with the outside world, including family, newspapers, television, radio... even reading billboards on the way to and from the building (usually in the dark) was forbidden. The only time I saw my parents was across the room at open meeting, twice a week, where they would stand up in their turn and berate me for not working my program. They were not permitted to have any information about me, either. If I had a black eye, they could ask about it in writing and send it through the chain of command. But that didn't guarantee an answer, even a flippant one. They were not allowed to know where I was living or anything else. If a foster parent broke that rule and told my parents that I was staying with them, they would be severely rebuked and threatened with their kid being terminated from treatment. Of course, by the time they were allowed to have newcomers in their homes, they were thoroughly brainwashed and believed without question that termination of the program meant death to their child. So the parents were no less intimidated than us kids. And they weren't getting any more sleep than the rest of us, either.

Every day we were taken to the building for 12 solid hours of 'raps', though there was very little of any real rapport going on. In fact there were strict rules against it. "No talking out in group", "Pay Attention" and "No newcomers talking to newcomers" meant don't even look at other members of the group unless they were recognized by staff to speak, let alone try to communicate. "No getting into your head" meant, quite literally, no self directed thinking. Any infraction, or perceived lack of enthusiasm was "corrected" by brutal confrontation by staff and group (the whole world as we knew it, in other words), loss of "privileges", such as regular use of the bathroom, decent and adequate food, sleep or sanctions such as being made to dress funny or humiliate oneself in some way. Anything even resembling active resistance to the rules or to any decree or indictment arbitrarily handed down by staff would be dealt with by what they euphemistically called "restraint." I was once restrained by 3 - 5 girls for 2 hours on the cold concrete floor for refusing to admit that I had a drug problem or to apologize to group for having tried to escape. Hey, I wasn't sorry. I was only adhering to the first and most important rule, Honesty.

Another form of punishment was a few hours or days in time-out. The time-out rooms were just like the intake rooms, but they were located right behind the Group room. So from inside, you could always hear the group yelling, chanting, singing and motivating. From the outside, you could always hear the screaming. Time-out (or TR, for timeout room), was where the really brutal stuff happened. Staff would sometimes issue orders to literally beat hell out of a kid till they decided to get straight. But most often, the routine involved very loud, provocative confrontation by a tag-teem of other group members. It might go on for hours or days. Sometimes the victim was not allowed to eat, drink, sleep, sit down or use a bathroom for the duration.

Mind you, we're not talking about hardened junkies who'd fallen off the wall. Most of us were rebellious children who'd smoked pot and drank beer with friends. None of us had any access to drugs inside the program even if we'd wanted them. This special treatment was given to children simply for refusing to confess, to eat when told, or who complained when denied use of a bathroom or for any other reason. Disagreeing with Staff or questioning the Program in any context was a sure ticket to TR.

I was fortunate. I had some idea how to play the game going in. My goal was not to win or to resits, just to tough it out till it was all over. Some others were not so fortunate. I really didn't understand at the time the significance of all of the self mutilation and suicide attempts. It happened all the time, though; the carving being most common on the girls' side. They'd take anything they could find and carve shapes into the skin of their hands, arms or ankles. Since there was no such thing as privacy, we were literally watched every moment, even on the toilet, these children did this to themselves while sitting in a row of other girls in adjoining chairs during raps.

The people who run these programs will tell you that this is common behavior associated with marijuana withdrawal, and they may even cite research by one Dr. Richard Schwartz. Don't believe them. Richard Schwartz was a pediatrician before he became the clinical director of Straight, No. Virginia. He had no prior substance abuse training and, as far as I know, still has none outside of what he's learned over twenty years in this cult. The basis of his assertion that his research subjects suffered from substance abuse at all derives from the 'diagnostic' method described above as an 'intake interview'. No peer reviewed research supports these claims. The hopelessness and deep depression that I endured and witnessed during my two years at Straight are attributable to the peer pressure or 'perpetual stew' treatment modality used in these programs.

There is, however, some well respected, peer reviewed research on this treatment modality. Senator Sam Ervine cited it in his 1974 Congressional Report "Federal Role in Behavior Modification". His findings forced the National Institute of Drug Abuse to withdraw expansion funding from The Seed unless they altered their program to eliminate those elements that made it just like thought reform tactics used on American POWs in Korea. They refused, and continue to operate in Ft. Lauderdale as a life-long commitment cult without, as far as I know, any federal funding.

But laws are like spider webs. If some poor weak creature comes up against them - it is caught. But the bigger one can break through and get away. Straight Incorporated set up shop just two years later using half a dozen former Seed staff, a few Seed parents and some well accomplished and politically connected business men and exactly the same methods. The cult spread through the late `70's and `80's and continues to operate under various names throughout the country. It is their habit to either recruit or install their own occupants of strategic posts within the communities in which they operate. They nearly always have at least one juvenile judge, officers within the local law enforcement agency and, very often, officials within the public and private schools singing their praises and dismissing the constant allegations, even the successful multi-million dollar civil suites, as just grumbling from disgruntled druggies who couldn't handle the program.

Before you commit your loved one to one of these places, insist on peer reviewed long-term outcome studies. Don't rely on the word of the advocates. The harm done to families and individuals by these places is permanent and often deadly.

The menu on the left lists some informative web sites and discussion forums where you can learn about these outfits and, hopefully, avoid becoming a victim. If I had one wish, I think it might be to be able to send this information back thirty years in time so that my father could have seen `em coming.

Sincerely, Ginger Warbis WebMistress@Fornits.com