Wilderness Programs to counter addiction

[svenghali]

SWIM has been sent on a wilderness program before to Utah (during summer before sophomore year, two muscular dudes came into his room and drove him to the airport...), which was pretty terrible, and rewarding in an interesting way, but not interesting so much that SWIM would ever repeat it. However, SWIM's parents aren't satisfied, and they would like for him to go to a voluntary one for a few weeks this summer (fuck that). This leads him to wonder...
How many other of you SWIMs have been on wilderness progams, outward bound, etc? SWIM has a lot of friends who have been on them before, and its beginning to seem increasingly common, especially in the area where SWIM lives (Fairfield, Weston, Greenwich, Westport, Darien -Connecticut).

[rxbandit]

Swim went to second nature in Utah.

[hoodabudda]

holy shit...swim went to provo canyon school in utah not to long ago... knew lots of kids at wilderness programs who messed up and had to go to pcs...those buff dudes dont mess around they told swim if he tried to run "we will fuck your shit up". but those places in utah are like prison camps, if u run from them they hunt you down. but swim and his friend got away for about 20 hours by hiding on the roof of jamba juice,which we figured was the only place they wouldnt look for us...but its all mormons and no one would give us a ride and it was like -10 and windy so we went back...i turned 18 a couple mos. later so they had to send me back home...its crazy out there no child abuse laws or sumptin, cuz a year b4 i went there one kid ran and they found him and he came back in a body cast..the kids were still talkin about it and the staff would tell u when u first got there not to even think of running, and to ask your room mate who bates was(the kid who was in the body cast)

[svenghali]

Ha, it's good to hear that others have been through those little Utah prison camps. SWIM couldn't really run anywhere on his program, as there was nowhere to run to. Food and water came by helicopter a few times a week.

[stoneinfocus]

I´ve seen this on TV.. that´s weird *g* it´s like Hitler Jugend or something ... like a camp as the last chance, before the rotten antisocial breed has to die.

And those conducting the camps and employees, are to me, like they always look like some ugly, overweighed or in anyway else mistreated personalities, which are disabled by that, or by nature in some way, which is generally shown, if they´re allowed to use their force on others and parents, that obviously don´t appreciate their children or are pissed, because they are in some kind too much different,than what they were expecting, or pissed, because theier kid is over ntelligent and has the typical problems, with them being too lazy to stand up for their kid.

It was so much more frightening, as some german teen, with obviously high intelligence and ability to think situations through and the consequences as well as questioning them, was physically forced and tortured to endure bullshit to break him, his charachtere which I thought was the most precious thing on him, it just had to be not broken, but given options and more freedome to develop its nature, thereby getting along with himself in peace and thus with others...

but obviously, these time, mediocre aggressively destroy anything that just might make them look worse a tiny little bit, not that it really does, or anyone who ´s better in something he´s dedicated to, would think so, it´s their own complexies and charachter, that they force onto others to bring them even more down than they are.

[hoodabudda]

^^^^ yeah...at swims conentratio....'school' the first thing the did after squat and cough,was take his clothes and was forced to wear sweats and green T's with the provo canyon school logo all over them swim was supposed to "earn" his clothes back by following all the mormons rules... the first time he got his clothes back he escaped...it was actually a pretty big rush cuz they give the cops your photo and the staff try to hunt you down..like a big game of hide and seek.except with 10-15 300 lb somoan guys with sereous anger issues,3 to a van, and all of them have premission/orders to stomp your guts out when they find you....it kinda raises the stakes a little..none of the staff were smart enough to look on the roof though..if any one gets sent to a place like this and you decide to run hide on a roof.svenghali you better watch out...id sleep with a gun or at least a knife under my pillow sereously!!
i think westsheild is the name of the escort company....

[toe]

Ooo, even worse. Straight, Inc. Well, maybe worse. . . seems like it might have been easier to escape from a WC. But any "treatment" based on brainwashing and torture, in which death of a client is a routine loss is reprehensible.

There's a "survivor's forum" for places like this that I visit occasionally when I can't get up the motivation to slam my head into the wall. I don't have the link offhand, but if you do a search for "Fornits" you should find it.

[Orchid_Suspiria]

This disgusts swim that some parents would willingly send their children to be beaten and broken of all their individuallity over things as ridiculous as smoking cannabis.Something is fundamentally wrong with a society that thinks abuse and cruelty is better for it's young people than mind altering substances.

[ProtectedByTheGods]

I had no idea that such places do exist. I deeply feel for the poor kids that
get sent there. I just got disgusted to a new level by the USA.

[Orchid_Suspiria]

A parent that would send their child somewhere to be abused is not much of a parent in swims opinion.They are too lazy to try and be decent parents so they just do this so they don't even have to try.

[hoodabudda]

Originally Posted by Orchid_Suspiria

A parent that would send their child somewhere to be abused is not much of a parent in swims opinion.They are too lazy to try and be decent parents so they just do this so they don't even have to try.

thats what swim thought at first but after he got home he found some handouts the school(swim uses this term very loosely)had sent to my folks and almost lost it. swim would have sent his kids there too, if all the stuff they said in the flyer was true. it makes him sick...when hes on his death bed hes gonna want those 6 months back..oh and swim just found out that the drummer of the dead kennedys went there back in the 70's... and paris hilton went to the girls campus during the 90's i cnat belive she hasnt payed someone to shut the place down.http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/c...natures-4.html

[Nagognog2]

Which would be better for "Kouncilor-Huntin'"...44.40 or the .308? Hmmm...

[stoneinfocus]

I´d take both of them, a little axe and some nitro and DOB for the fun part for those that actually won´t die.

[Orchid_Suspiria]

Swim was watching some show one of the various talk shows,swim can't remember which one it was.Anyways it was where they had so called "problem"kids and sent them to these camps.Yes some of these kids did smoke cannabis but it seemed to swim there were actual real problems with these kids,problems that would have existed without the cannabis.Yes some of these kids did need some discipline but from their parents not these drill seargant dickheads.They showed a typical day for the kids at this wilderness camp,they weren't as brutal as some of these posts have described but swim thinks the real face of these "retreats"wouldn't have been shown on television.

[zera]

This is really just one manifestation of a much larger trend in this country, where kids have much less freedom to be kids. Studies have shown the amount of daily unstructured free time that kids have enjoyed has dramatically fallen since the 1970s. Nowadays theres all kind of tremendous pressure on kids to be super-competitive (take all AP classes, do 6 extra-curricular activities, and go to SAT prep class twice a week, or youll never get into a good college). In high school swim was constantly warned by guidance counselors and teachers who would preach that one B- would mean swim couldnt go to the school of his choice, let alone a marijuana charge. Parents are constantly bombarded with messages that their kids need to be perfect or their children will grow up to have miserable lives. The scare tactics that fuel desperate measure camps like these and the pressure for kids to behave like tiny professional adult resume polishers is really two sides of the same coin.

This child fear mongering is perpetuated by some very powerful interests, including politicians who use fears about your children to garner votes, churches who can drive up membership by portraying their church as a sanction in a immoral and dangerous world, the media who know that scare stories, especially involving kids, will drive ratings, and moneyed interests like companies that make drug tests, people who run these camps, etc.

Its despicable, part of childhood is the chance to experiment and the ability to fuck up and try again. Swim thinks of a classic novel about adolescent angst, Cather in the Rye by JD Salinger. If the protagonist tried to pull that same shit today, failing out of boarding school, missing his finals and dissapearing for a few days to New York, hiding from his parents; he would probably get shipped to boarding school on the advice of Dr. Phil by his parents today.

Reputation Comments on this post:

well-thought

[x cynic x]

As Swim sees it, when parents send their childen to programs of reform, it is actually the parents who need help. A responsible, caring parental unit can independently resolve problems with their child. When they have to resort on such programs, the parental unit is too irresponsible and negligent to deal with their own child, therefore the parent is mentally deficient and incapable of effective parenting.

The programs themselves, Swim sees as an enormous waste of time. How do they alter someone's view of freedom and hedonism? Its just like discipline through torture when all Swim needs is explanation.

[kailey_elise]

Originally Posted by x cynic x

...the parental unit is too irresponsible and negligent to deal with their own child, therefore the parent is mentally deficient and incapable of effective parenting...

And, at least in the States, more and more idiots have offspring without thinking it through...just, oh, we decided not to use a condom and got knocked-up, la-dee-da...you will see more and more of this shit. Asking "professionals" for help with my "out of control" child (who you never paid attention to, or STOPPED paying attention once your precious darling started, you know, speaking and getting messy), or ship them off or medicate the fuck out of them or accuse the babysitter/teacher/monster-in-the-closet of fucking up your kid(s).

Then again, personal responsibility is SORELY lacking in the USofA right now, so why would it be any different in the parenting arena?

~Kailey

[stoneinfocus]

.. not to mention its a trauma to these kids, proobably a lifelong trauma, I wonder if sometime these bootcamps or parents will be sentenced to pay damages.

[Orchid_Suspiria]

I don't see how these damn things can operate by law.Something needs to be done about them that is certain.Those kids will be traumatized no doubt.Send the poor kid in for smoking weed and the kid comes out and becomes an alcoholic or gets addicted to oxycontin just to escape the nightmares of "summer camp".

[cyndi]

Oh swim noticed you are 18 like swim's son. For some reason swim thought you were older. Wow heard lots of horror stories about those camps. Swim would never subject her 18 year old to that. Swim thinks that parents get frustrated and want the easy way out, so instead of getting help that the child really needs and looking into other things, they send em off. Of course swim is an addict and understands the monster, a lot of parents don't get it. Swim's son is clean today at 18 because swim knew what she needed to do to get him clean. He is also working a good job and going to school. If swim sent him off, he would have been pissed off and still using and dealing. Swim calls him mini me, he is so much like swim it isn't funny.

[cyndi]

Well don't know where the moonlight is but assume it is not USA from the comments. Swim thinks if one looks in each country, there is problems with parenting. Well knows this from speaking to people in other countries. Again shouldn't hate the people of the US, hate the government that created our messes.

[kailey_elise]

Originally Posted by cyndi

Well don't know where the moonlight is but assume it is not USA from the comments. Swim thinks if one looks in each country, there is problems with parenting. Well knows this from speaking to people in other countries. Again shouldn't hate the people of the US, hate the government that created our messes.

Oh, I'm basking in the glow of the moonlight from the good ol' USofA, darlin'.

Most of us here in the States seem to have a hard time with personal responsibility. *grin*

I didn't mean for my comment to be seen as USA-bashing - I just mentioned the States because that's what I have the most experience with. The laws and such sometimes seem a bit saner from my experiences in Canada, but I've only been for extended visits, never to "live" there, so I can't really speak about that...

Just wanted to clarify that.

~Kailey

[ISmokeCigarettes]

Swim knew one of the kids that was on (in England) the channel four tv show ‘Brat Camp’, in which troublesome and / or drug using teens were shipped to Utah and similar places to do wilderness programmes while being followed by camera crew. The person Swim knew who was sent on one of these was actually expelled from the wilderness programme for extreme behaviour and was sent to another because the first couldn’t cope with her. The Americans said they’d never seen behaviour like it…funny thing is Swim knows this apparent hell raiser is actually a caring and decent kid and only reacted in the way she did because of how she was treated by adults. Kids are a product of their parents, of their peers and of society.

This kid was misbehaving because she didn’t feel cared about and she felt she had no one…that no one cared or understood and instead of dealing with that or asking this kid, the kids parents shipped her from England to Utah while TV crews filmed her misery and absolute confusion and feelings of abandonment. Yeah…it really helped this kid. -sighs-…aren’t adults lovely.

When Swim was about 13, Swim’s parent threatened Swim with a wilderness program (after watching the TV show ‘Brat Camp’). Swim panicked because when Swim was a child Swim’s parent had Swim locked up in a behavioural unit to teach Swim better, when Swim didn’t even know (and still doesn’t) what she did wrong in the first place. Swim was locked in cells, watched on cctv 24/7, held down, forced to do things. It was after this happened that Swim stopped trying to please and Swim did start doing as Swim pleased. Being sent there made Swim realise her parent was happy to so easily have her taken away until she did what she was told, no matter how unfair or hurtful it might be.

Swim was also sent to a group when she was a teenager to have drug counselling and to make Swim realise how much hurt she was causing…what about why Swim was doing as she was? No one ever asked Swim why she did what she did. Swim gave up and moved out by the time was a teenager.

There are hundreds of casualties caused by these schemes and programmes. They don’t give a damn about the damage it causes to the kids. It just re-inforces what a lot of kids already feel…that no one really cares.

Swim thinks these programmes are utter madness. Even some rehab programmes seem lunacy. The rehab where Swim grew up was also a mental institute and half of Swims mates were and out of there constantly. One of Swim’s mates, while there, used to sneak out of the rehab on an evening and come for drinks at the pub before returning…others smuggled stuff in, mates even got jobs there to help get stuff in. it’s a joke.

This stuff only works if the person themselves want to change, you cant force someone to and forcing children into units or programmes to scare and brainwash them into accepting values adults have failed to successfully instil in these kids for the first like 13 years of their lives is effing fascist bull….Give a child a reason to trust and respect you and you don’t need to send them away to get abused and screamed at by strangers who get their kicks by torturing children. F*king hell…so its ok to be Nazis these days?

Hell…they say drug users and junkies are zombies, but who are the brain dead when parents cant even muster the intelligence to earn their kids trust and respect?

Reputation Comments on this post:

Don't know if you still come here, but I liked this post, and agree.

[Gozaggss]

Actually Brat camp took place at Sagewalk, which is in Oregon, and i would advise you not to take such a hard stance against wilderness therapy programs because it saved my son's life. he was hooked on meth and was a habitual drinker. he was 15. depressed, attempted suicide twice. me and the Mrs. sent him to Sagewalk for 50 days. he came back completely changed. improved his GPA by 2 whole points, no longer felt depressed, is now an thespian. he's following his dream and has never touched drugs since. it saved his life. so please do not have the belief the Wilderness Therapy programs are cruel. sure. my kid HATED it for the first 25 days, just like everyone does. nobody wants to change. but out in harsh wilderness, they have to change and become less selfish, or else they wallow in self-pity and angst. nobody wants to change, but they do because they need to. they work. maybe not for everyone, but they work.


also, i would like to add one further addendum to Ismokecigarettes' post. the claim that hundreds have died is ludacris. maybe hundreds worldwide. but i researched this. at Sagewalk (Brat camp) there has never been a fatality. i think Second Nature (the one in Utah) has a couple, but only because it's been working for far longer than Sagewalk has.

[toe]

Originally Posted by Gozaggss

also, i would like to add one further addendum to Ismokecigarettes' post. the claim that hundreds have died is ludacris. maybe hundreds worldwide. but i researched this. at Sagewalk (Brat camp) there has never been a fatality. i think Second Nature (the one in Utah) has a couple, but only because it's been working for far longer than Sagewalk has.

Abusive brainwashing treatment programs have indeed ultimately been responsible for the deaths of hundreds- some in program, and many more from suicide thereafter. This site has details on over 40 victims from a single site of the most notorious torture rehab franchise in US history. Many- not all- Wilderness programs are cut of the same cloth. (There are some links on the site for seeking out the good ones, IIRC).