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du -hast posted:More stories! I know about syanon and daytop lol, didn't expect to hear those names when I clicked this thread. Back in the day when I was a teenager went through a place that had some connection to those programs (albeit slightly watered down, but still completely loving insane). For anyone wondering wtf those things he's listing are, they're a super-extreme type of residential therapeutic addiction program that was generally addicts treating addicts through extremely harsh confrontation and insane over the top 'therapeutic consequences' and poo poo like that. Like imagine people getting screamed at in waves for hours at a time by every other person in the program about how they're a fuckup who is going to die in a gutter and people being forced to wear 3' by 6' signs saying 'i'm a whore for male attention' The Elan school which is its own massive handful of insanity also came out of that tradition and famously featured problem kids getting the poo poo kicked out of them in school sanctioned 'boxing match' beat downs. If the kid could fight, they'd just put him up against a progression of bigger, older kids until he got the poo poo kicked out of him. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 11:21 on Feb 21, 2018 |
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Feb 21, 2018 11:16
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Almost nothing in that industry is ever actually about helping people. When it is, it often is utterly, completely misguided. He probably legitimately believed that feeding troubled people psychedelics and some appropriated spirituality was a valid treatment. The corporatization of treatment programs made the whole industry a lot more soulless, but likely a lot more effective, too. And it definitely helped cut back on wild abuses that were just part of the industry.Several Goblins posted:This was mostly hearsay and me seeing the remnants of it, as the change happened around 12 or 15 years before I signed on to work there. I'll see if I can set up a bit of a timeline, but there will be some gaps that even I seem to not really understand. In the end of the 90s and early 2000s there was a major push to shutdown or transition the 5,000,000 different 'joe's rehab and treatment shack' places that were running and I'm guessing that's part of what was going on here. A lot of it was motivated by insurance companies who were giving huge cuts in insurance rates for every college grad on the payroll (which was probably partly to drive out as many of the old-school addicts treating addicts places as possible). That and a couple major corporations buying up every facility they could get their hands on changed the industry substantially. For all their failings, Joe's Rehab Shacks often hired actually decent people in their communities who frequently had many, many years of experience. Instead they got replaced with (typically) fresh college grads who were going to be worked so hard that they'd quit in a year anyways. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 18:45 on Feb 22, 2018 |
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Feb 22, 2018 18:40
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Yeah success rates from all types of drug/addiction programs are ridiculously low. The lineage of programs du hast is talking about had supposedly higher rates of success mostly because they drove away a major fraction of all the people who walked through the door so the people sticking around long enough to become part of their success statistics were the ones who took to the program more than most. Interestingly, the efficacy of such programs was completely in spite of their therapeutic approach (I mean calling it that gives it too much credit). Pretty much every serious study done on combative confrontational psychotherapy showed that it basically just makes people better at blending in and pretending to be normal, any therapeutic progress was in spite of the so-called therapeutic methods, not because of it. Granted for some people that was in a way success, certainly a lot of prominent families that had children that were troubled just wanted them to appear normal without really giving a gently caress how they actually turned out. The other caveat to the success rate is that it neglects the significant casualty rate of the programs. From suicide attempts (which are shockingly common at that style of program) to people who ended up traumatized by the entire experience (which, when you consider a lot of the confrontational places were facing 30-75% drop out rates, that was effectively the majority experience). It's also really hard to over-emphasize the extent to which that style of program taught people to act like everything was alright simply as a survival method. Sleep deprivation, deprivation of food, excessive or total deprivation of human contact was something 100% of people involved were put through at semi regular intervals. Those places were literally so torturous that people regularly chose to go to prison over staying. btw du hast you can email me at herstorybeginsnow at gmail if you want to chat. I know less about the adult side of these places so no clue if I even know of where you went, but I def understand a bit of the experience and the shock of reintegrating back into the world. Aside from occasionally talking to people who work as activists against abusive residential programs, I've had zero contact with anyone in those worlds in like 15 years. I always felt like I got lucky because I ended up at a place that was terrible, but no where near as bad as a lot of the other comparable places. I had friends who had been to Elan, Tranquility Bay, desisto (google any of those if you want to read crazy stories) and a bunch of other places that got shut down for insane bullshit, but even the somewhat tamer form was completely loving batshit. Several Goblins posted:Jesus Christ. My place did some really dumb poo poo, both on a competence level and on an ethical level, but nothing even close to this. I'm so sorry you had to go through all that. gently caress that place. Thank you for sharing. I'll definitely read anything else you want to post, but I'd totally understand if you didn't want to dredge up more thoughts about that kind of experience. Feel free to PM me if you ever want to talk. One thing that was true across both the good and lovely programs was that people often experienced a relatively stable environment for literally the first time in their life. Not stable as most people would think of it, but consistent. Even eating at consistent times, getting some amount of physical activity regularly, having to regularly process their thoughts and feelings and actions etc. contributed some real insight and def was something that even people who resisted everything else often took away. It's really similar to the experience of prison (or being in the military for that matter) where people often come away with somewhat better habits almost inadvertently ingrained. It doesn't fix anything of course, but all that stuff makes a meaningful difference. TBH good and bad programs both have absolutely garbage success rates. I mean success is generally defined as 'sobriety after x months' which I personally think is a pretty poo poo measure and the very best places in the country have ridiculously low rates of sobriety after 12,36, or 72 months. Ironically, I think the better run places are a lot more successful than simply looking at sobriety rates imply and that most people in a bad enough spot to end up in a residential program are absolutely going to have the quality of their life improved by the experience of some consistency and therapy. Personally I like the idea that people should try to get away from addictions, but addictions are so random and functionally irrational that who knows what is really an optimal outcome. Most of the people I've known who struggled with addictions to hard drugs eventually either got incarcerated, overdosed, randomly gave it up for no apparent reason, or just became potheads or social drinkers. People who succesfully worked AA or NA steps are a pretty tiny minority. Obviously #3 is ideal, but as far as I can tell a not insignificant amount of people are just going to do drugs every day of their life and all you can really do is hope they steer away from the harder, life destroying poo poo. If a couple joints a night keep someone from feeling like they need heroin or meth, tbh I'd tell them wholeheartedly to smoke a fuckton of joints. That view is why I could never work in that field. I think the all or nothing view of sobriety is idealistic and impractical, albeit it's also true that most people don't end up more mentally healthy by regularly getting hosed up. Peculiarly, of all things, eating disorders seemed to have the most totally intractable grip on people. Statistically the long term prognosis on eating disorders is insanely grim (mortality rate is like 6% annually) and average duration of eating disorders is 30+ years. That poo poo is terrifying. quote:Now, if you want some interesting anecdotal statistics, I'll talk more in my next post about age, gender, and a few other things that cause interesting stereotypes in recovery. People are different, problems tend to be very samey across all of us. Many of the veteran staff could see a new client and know which house he would be assigned to, what his issues were, if he'd be a problem or a chill client, and a dozen other little details just from a quick chat. It's like the weirdest sixth sense ever and we were very rarely ever wrong. The extent to which this develops is really peculiar. Addicts are really distinct, even down to the classes of drugs, people who's poo poo was some kind of out of control, poorly/untreated depression or chronic anxiety are extremely distinct, bipolar is visible from like 10 miles away. sex offenders, or people with some kinda sexual conduct bullshit are often apparent because they don't immediately, obviously fall into one of the other categories (unless they have wildly bad boundaries, but most of those people get straight up incarcerated). People who have been through various kinds of abuse absolutely have their own vibe and you can can completely see how it is something predatory shitbags learn to pick up on. For a long time it was kinda depressing to be able to see that stuff, but I now mentor high risk people getting out of prison so it's been useful to be able to draw on that perspective. Honestly people are probably more similar in how and what they struggle with than just about any other aspect of life. Herstory Begins Now fucked around with this message at 11:07 on Mar 1, 2018 |
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Mar 1, 2018 10:01
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