Category: Troubled Teen Industry
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Life After a Behavior Modification Program
In my junior year of high school, I was woken up in the middle of the night at about four in the morning by two strangers who escorted me to the airport. From there, I was flown from Houston, Texas, to La Verkin, Utah, to a place called Cross Creek Programs, also known as Cross…
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Supporting Someone Who Has Survived Seclusion or Restraint
I first started experiencing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder around a month after being restrained for the first time. I was at a long-term residential treatment center (i.e., a “troubled teen” facility) in Utah at the time. I noticed feeling anxious around the staff who had restrained me. I started avoiding the places where a restraint…
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The Lost Years of “Treatment”
My experience in the troubled teen industry began when I was 12 years old and was unnecessarily sent to rehab. There, I was regularly interrogated and pressured into admitting to drug use and forced to identify as an “addict.” Despite knowing that I didn’t belong there initially, with everyone around me telling me otherwise and…
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The Places That Stole Me
have a unique way of leaving reality behind them. A child playing dress-up puts on a cardboard crown holds their plastic staff, does a royal wave, and becomes a queen or king. A child opens a box of crayons, colors the green of jungle leaves, the blue of a running river, the yellow of a…