BoredPanda.com article.

Hey guys, this website from Lithuania reached out to me with some questions, because they were putting out this article about the Troubled Teen Industry. It's pretty rare for me to do interviews or articles but for some reason I answered. Anyways, I linked the article but also thought it could be cool to show you the questions and my full answers. Please don't take my criticism of the pharma industry too seriously, I know a lot of people do get help there (it just hasn't been the case for me) and I already feel kind of bad for bashing it.

As a bonus, if you read the answer to question #2, you'll find a very recent and interesting side story about my mother.

Here you go:

I'm writing an article about a story where a man snapped at his mom for saying she was happy that she sent him to rehab with hard drug users for three months at 13 y.o., saying that he got help there and it prevented him from becoming “a junkie”. All of this happened after they shared one joint with friends.

I found your website and was wondering if you wouldn't mind answering a few questions to make the article more in-depth?

1. Although the storyteller’s experience is nothing like yours, you must’ve learned survival tricks for preserving your individuality and sanity at Elan. What were they?

JOE: 

Survival tricks were definitely needed to maintain my sanity, the biggest one for me was finding something "larger" that I could speak to (through my thoughts and actions). In my case, I called it "The Great Energy" because I never really subscribed to organized religion so calling it "God" just didn't feel right for me. In Elan, I didn't have ANYTHING, so having this very personal "higher power" allowed me to feel like I had something and wasn't completely alone.

Many times in these programs you spend your entire day being bossed around by the staff and students in higher ranks. You basically become a slave. It becomes very hard to be treated like that and your natural response is to rebel and do the things they demand in a very half-assed way. I spent a long time with that attitude and it only worked to bring me down even lower because I was constantly being yelled at and punished because of it. At some point I realized that I was in control of how well I did things, even if they were things I was being forced to do by people who treated me like garbage. So, for example, if someone demanded that I spend all day washing kitchen pots and pans, I began to have pride in my work and I would accomplish a task like that as best as I could for my abilities. This was very important actually because it allowed me to feel some form of "control" and that is crucial when you feel so powerless.

I couldn't do many things in Elan, but at some point I "earned the right" to read books or to run in circles during our "outside time". I think these two things saved my sanity. I could get lost in a book and be transported into another world for a while. As far as running and pushing my body to its limits, this became another great escape because I was focused on my breathing and putting one leg in front of the other. This also helped me to have a better appetite at mealtimes (and eat the food that was soooooo bad) and it made my body tired so I slept better at night.

Unsurprisingly, a lot of people who end up in these programs do the opposite of the things I listed. They stop believing in a higher power because they are losing their hope in humanity. They don't want to read books because it's hard to focus and give so much attention to something when your mind is in such chaos. They don't want to run or do exercise because they are already tired and depressed and don't want to put themselves through any more physical pain.

But in my case, even though these things were hard to do, they ended up saving my sanity both in Elan and in my life after I left.

2. I haven’t gotten to the part and don’t want to spoil myself, but what was the reason you were sent there? What did your parents say about it? Did they ever apologize for what they put you through?

JOE:

I was basically sent to Elan for having a lot of marijuana in a car that was driving across US state lines. We had about 4 ounces, scales and baggies so it was obvious we were drug dealers. My friends who were with me hired lawyers and basically ended up on probation (just don't get in trouble again for a couple years). My parents were manipulated by a social worker before the case went in front of a judge, they were told that I could go to prison for many years and it was better to sign papers to have me sent to Elan. Unfortunately, my parents were very naive and from a generation where everything "official" has to be true because the world is a fairy tale and people in power never lie and would certainly never abuse kids for money. After Elan, they refused to listen to me (because there was almost no evidence online or anywhere else about Elan) and decided to double-down and convince themselves that they did nothing wrong and I was just exaggerating and being dramatic. My mom actually apologized to me a couple months ago, ironically because she found out about the webcomic. Yes, after decades of disbelieving me and pretending it never happened. My dad still hasn't and will probably die still believing his fantasy.

3. What would you suggest to people who have been sent away to traumatizing rehab, reeducation facilities and trying to deal with and make sense of their experiences?

JOE:

As an artist, it is probably easy for me to say, but I found that making ANY kind of art about the experience helped. Poetry, pencil sketches, making a collage from ripped up magazines, creating guitar melodies that spoke to the pain... all of these things helped me a lot. I know many people would say therapy but I found it was way too hard to even get a professional therapist or psychiatrist to understand what I went through. So it actually made it worse because I would get frustrated trying to explain it and then feel even more alone. I know many people (especially in the US) would recommend various drugs or medications after such a horrible experience but I personally do not think that putting chemicals into your brain designed by a for-profit pharmaceutical industry is very wise. I do not think that industry wants to help you, I think they want to keep you as a customer.

Smoking marijuana helped me, A LOT. Although it did have a lot of negative side-effects on my life as well, it was still more of a positive. I also think it is worth doing some research into various "psychedelics" because there are a lot of studies showing that people who survived trauma are many times profoundly helped by a "trip" experience.

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Thanks again for reaching out. I know some of my answers are a little bit on the edge of what is normal or controversial to print, so I understand if you cannot use some of what I wrote. Use whatever you life from this email or from the comic (quotes/images) for your article.