FireMinstrel

Well, goodbye, then.

The good news is that now that I'm settled into a halfway house, I can consume my time with work, school, and working out at the gym. Working out has always done my mind and body good as well. The only thing that I'm wary about is that they really want you to go to meetings. I mean, that's fine- I do enjoy SMART Recovery, which is 12-step free. I also go to Narcotics Anonymous meetings, mostly to surround myself with people who have been in my shoes. But instead of surrendering my will to some imaginary friend(i.e. "God"), I adopted reality as my "higher power", which is certainly much bigger than my drug-driven whims. At least I don't cause trouble, which automatically makes staff like me, since I make their job easier. I suppose all treatment really does is give you an environment where you're protected from drugs and alcohol while you get your head on straight. It would be nice, however, if they could take that certain element of condescension out of the picture. Addicts already have a lot to deal with.

Two months ago, I checked into a detox facility to get clean from heroin. How I ended up using is a long story, but I've had this problem for over three years. Now, I was finally ready to do what I needed to do to not only stay clean, but to get away from the FOO. However, I don't know if the approach used in the facility I went to is that conducive to recovery. After a few days in detox, I transferred to a rehab facility where you stay until they can find you a place in a halfway house(which I wanted). It was an all-women's program on the top floor of a hospital. There were 20-something women all cooped up in that ward, unable to go outside very often. We were fed hospital food and not allowed to have food brought in(although some staff would look the other way). Since I have a lot of texture and taste issues(and always have), I pretty much lived off of apples and peanut-butter-jelly sandwiches for five weeks. Every morning you'd get woken up by some harpy turning the lights on shrieking "Good morning, ladiiiiieeeees!!". There were several "group sessions" throughout the day, heralded by staff shrieking "Group time, ladiiiiiiieees!!". There was a lot of "female empowerment" garbage. Like we were so awesome because we're women...nevermind that many of these women were virtually MGTOW fodder. Many of them were planning to dump their boyfriends/husbands as soon as they were out of rehab, but in the meantime, had no problem accepting money/gifts/emotional support from their poor white knights. Screaming matches between women were a regular thing, and occasionally, they were able to goad some of the female staff into similar fights. I finally got released to a halfway house, where I'm relatively happy for now. I'll be going back to work soon, and plan to re-enroll in school. But I'm still bothered by my experience in that hospital There's a certain atmosphere of clients being treated like children, which I don't understand for the life of me. Is the belief that because people were abusing drugs, that they lost the right to be treated with a certain dignity? It's a well-known statistic among people in recovery that a significant amount of people relapse early on, and I wonder if it's because of the way clients in rehab are treated? But I don't know how it should be changed. Any thoughts? Are there any other folks here who have dealt with addiction and treatment?

I don't think it was ever supposed to do any of that. Our educational system was based off of the Prussian school system, which was designed to produce obedient soldiers and citizens. I want to weep for the next generation. Seeing little kids glued to tablets while the family is out for dinner...well, that doesn't help. Future media zombies who will buy into all this "special snowflake/trigger warning/self-hating first-worlder" garbage.

I would see kids coming home right after school, with their mothers at home, waiting to give them a snack. It made me feel like a freak, being held up at daycare after school, and not being able to relax. Daycares tend to be heavily structured, and when I wanted to read a book, I had to sit in a circle and sing songs with the other kids or do other stupid things. I would see fathers who were intelligent and compassionate. I had a clown for a father who took nothing seriously and was like an overgrown child himself. I saw kind, gentle mothers, while my mother was constantly stressed from work and I had to walk on eggshells. I became very jealous of other kids who had lives more similar to kids on TV. Then, when my learning issues popped up, TV was often held for a ransom of "Try harder!", which I could not pay. That's okay...since I need to just re-read this post, and get angry again whenever I feel I'm about to sabotage what I've got going for me. It's a good motivator.

My high school was the same way. They had a problem if you were cursing someone out to attack them, but if you were just kidding around, or say you dropped your textbook by accident and swore in frustration, no teacher was going to give you detention or whatever(actually, they didn't have detentions there, but that's beside the point).

Sometimes people decide to film now and figure out what to do as they go along. I did similar things with my camcorder when I was in high school.

The kids in the second comic sure nailed it.

That's an old page. I remember reading it back when I was a senior in high school, back in 2001. I simply thought I was lucky since I didn't go to a school like that, but I didn't realize until much later that my appetite for learning was already dead due to my K-8 experiences.

http://time.com/3698495/kidnap-boy-hoax-denise-kroutil-nathan-wynn-firoved/ This is just disgusting. How can these people NOT think this won't traumatize their kid?

I would check out some videos by Aaron Clarey. He made me realize that a degree really doesn't get you a job, depending on what you major in. You might also want to look into trades, such as plumbing or being an electrician. They could end up paying more than a degree in communications, and at a much lower cost.

If the kid doesn't want to go to college, he or she could use the money for something else after finishing high school(like capital for a business). So long as the parents don't bribe/blackmail the kid with that money, it shouldn't be a big deal.

That would definitely keep the masses from attacking you, but I'll bet you that NOBODY will reply. They'll be just as uncomfortable, but they'll have no basis whatsoever to attack whoever says that. So instead, they'll ignore it and hope it goes away. It's sick, but a lot of parents will justify abuse because the child's reaction to it is "cute". Like, "Oh, my little girl's being a drama queen, isn't that cute?"

I reported it as well.

I'm glad we didn't have youtube back in 1987, as my dad filmed me having a fit as well. It was my fourth birthday, and he tried to shame me into stopping by implying that hundreds of people were going to see the movie and go "Is she CRYING?", and then encouraged me to deny it when asked that. He then tries to change the subject, which I wasn't having. Now, this video was erased by accident more than 20 years ago, so that's how vivid the memory is. The irony is that when my dad discovered the video had been erased, HE was the one who wound up crying. Unfortunately, we didn't actually have a video camcorder back then, so I couldn't try and turn the tables on him...nor would I have had the inclination to do so back then. :/ The comments section proves how we've got a long, long way to go...

True. I was reading a story about Apple giving similar refunds, and a family was interviewed. A little 5-year-old boy accidentally made $2500 worth of purchases. His siblings all yelled at him for something his parents neglected to check, and that he didn't know any better about(apparently hidden costs in a game that his father entered his password so the boy could download the game). The boy is also banned from the iPad, because I guess that's just easier than parents taking time to read things more carefully. He's even quoted as having "felt sad". Still...what do you expect now that smartphones and tablets are the new "binkies"?

http://www.pcworld.com/article/2856272/google-to-begin-contacting-customers-about-inapp-refunds.html This is what happens when you shove your smartphone or tablet in a kid's face so "the grown-ups can talk". I just don't have the words...

I commented on this on youtube, but I imagine my 2 cents was lost in the hundreds of other comments, so I figured I'd post here as well. There were moments where Clair(the wife) would lose her temper with the children and get rather irrational. In two different episodes, she would ask the children a question when she was angry about something they did, and when they would try to answer, she'd interrupt them with lines such as "Don't answer me when I'm asking you questions- keep your mouth shut! You think I'm talking just to hear myself talk?! Answer me!!" Yes, she rarely yells, but she rants...oh god does she rant. She'll also encourage Cliff not to lose his temper(which he does much less often than she does), but if SHE'S mad, god help him if he tells her not to get mad. She'll use excuses like, "But I'M the one who carried them for nine months!" when her husband calls her out on her hypocrisy. In the pilot, when his son tries to plead his case after being in trouble for a bad report card, Cliff insults him with "That's the DUMBEST thing I've heard in my LIFE!! No WONDER you get D's!"(this is probably his most memorable line ever on the show) And the worst examples of Clair's emotional outbursts can be seen in these two clips: (1:46 into the video) and (poor quality, but you get the gist of what's happening. Just look at the daughter's face.)

This is pretty interesting. I'm almost curious about that forum one of the commenters mentioned where bitter parents discuss being cut out of their kids' lives. I wonder if it was one of the FDR "fan" groups...?

Hopefully by the time she writes the code to get around that, he'll either turn 18, or save enough money for a pay-as-you-go phone.

Probably based on their "evidence" of that couple having raised children who don't know how to make choices.

Darn- I don't get out of work until 10 p.m. :/

I'm female, and have teased female friends from time to time. However, I've discovered to my chagrin that they're more likely to take things personally and internalize it until they either explode, or I find out indirectly that I've hurt their feelings. Either way, I stop. With guys, they tend to be more cool with it, and if they are upset, the rest of us see that right away. That's been my experience, anyway.

Too much forced hugging and kissing when I was younger has made me very averse to touch, with the exception of sexual acts and close friends. Kissing is something I do to animals and significant others only.

My dad is afraid of conflict. Occasionally, he'll have a hissy-fit if my mother or I talk down to him, but I'm so full of contempt for him that I don't care. My mother pretty much offered a blanket apology for all the mistakes she made, AFTER bringing me home from the hospital after a drug overdose. I still live with them because I never really learned how to function on my own, and my drug use stunted me for a good ten years. I'm learning on my own(and with the help of these podcasts). Once I get my associates degree in IT, and A+ certification and get a good job, making enough money to move out, I will have the no-holds-barred confrontation with my mother. My father…he's too dumb to ever understand how he alienated me, so I won't bother. In the meantime, I work second shift, so even though I live with my parents, I only see them on weekends. Right now, my mother is helping me with my accounting class(required for either of the degrees I'm deciding between), but I think she also knows not to resort to micromanaging my study habits(which have improved now that I'm older). School was always a major point of contention because I was "too smart" to be getting the bad grades I got. I do have to credit her with her no longer pushing me all the time about this and that, because that always sent me running to illegal substances. Every time I screwed up, my mother would have a conniption, and make the atmosphere around the house absolutely unbearable for the next few days. When I was younger, this was also accompanied by a laundry list of punishments, which she would eventually forget about until the next time I screwed up. All of that stopped once she started going to Nar Anon meetings. Is she truly taking responsibility for contributing to my stunted emotional growth? She still will come up with the "it's in the past" whenever I delve into why I'm so screwed up. Usually followed by: "But look now! See all the things you're doing to improve your life!" motivational speech encouragement. Almost like she's escaping responsibility by trying to butter me up with praise. I just don't know...