Kim’s Testimony

In the spring of 1998, at age 12, I was sent to be evaluated by a therapist with supposed expertise in substance use problems after my mom found something written in my diary about drug use and was understandably concerned. I was never told the reason for the evaluation or asked about what I wrote, but rather was interrogated with questions about my drug use and, when I answered honestly, she continued to interrogate me like she thought I was lying. Despite there being nothing that should have warranted it, a short while later, I went to my regular family therapist and was told that I was being sent to inpatient rehab at Caron Foundation Adolescent Treatment Center (Wernersville, PA) immediately following that appointment.

At that time, I had only ever drank alcohol a couple of times and had never even tried any illicit drugs. I couldn’t understand what was happening or why, and I felt completely powerless. I was admitted that day, based solely, as far as I know, on the referral from the therapist and my parents’ signatures and despite again having a negative drug test and, by their own admission, not meeting criteria for any “substance dependence”. However, any consideration for a less restrictive treatment option, such as outpatient counseling, seemed to have been ruled out for no known reason. To my knowledge, I was the youngest person ever admitted to Caron at that time.

Upon admission, I was put on a 5-day “blackout”, where I was not allowed to talk to anyone, even my parents. Once I was allowed to talk to them, it was only under staff supervision. I was regularly “assessed” (aka interrogated) by professionals from various disciplines and the assumption seemed to be that, since I was there, I needed to be there, and they had to find out why. With each assessment and the daily groups and lectures, I felt continually pressured into admitting to more and more drug use that never happened and, to appease the staff and fit in with my older and much “cooler” peers, I did. When I did try to tell the truth, I was not believed or was told that I was “minimizing” or “in denial.”

I spent 6 weeks there in total, 4 in Primary Care and 2 in Extended Care. I would have spent longer in Extended Care, which the facility recommended for everyone regardless of the severity of their problems, but the insurance company wouldn’t cover it and my parents could only afford 2 weeks at the time. How Caron justified the need for inpatient to the insurance company, which paid for the first 4 weeks, I still do not know.

While there, my parents and I were “educated” about my “chronic, progressive, incurable, fatal disease” and told that I was “a liar and a manipulator” and that anything I said that contradicted Caron was evidence of my “disease”. I was forced to attend 12 Step meetings and to identify with the label of “addict”, which I proceeded to do for the next almost 20 years. I did not use any drugs after discharge until a little over a year later, when I accidentally overdosed with a friend I had met at Caron and was in a house fire, resulting in being in critical condition on a ventilator for several days due to carbon monoxide poisoning and anoxia. I was sent back to Caron directly from the hospital for a couple of weeks, where I was severely bullied, ostracized from the community, and told by my peers that I was lying about the fire and staff didn’t intervene or correct them. I didn’t feel I could tell my parents what was going on because I could never talk to them unsupervised or out of earshot of the other patients.

When I was left behind on the unit by myself one day, I ran away out of desperation, but was convinced to return to the facility and discharged shortly thereafter. Upon discharge, I started high school and, based on Caron’s recommendations for aftercare and a “family contract” which I had agreed to again in order to get out, I was forced to attend an Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) at High Focus in Sparta, NJ almost every day after school, to go to additional meetings on a weekly basis, and was not allowed contact outside of school with my friends, even though they had nothing to do with the drug use that preceded my return to treatment. Feeling overwhelmed, trapped, and like I was not allowed to have a life outside of school or treatment, in addition to not having the time or space for my brain to heal, I became increasingly depressed, angry, and emotional.

At that point, at age 14, I was sent to Four Winds Hospital (Katonah, NY) to be evaluated and treated. I was placed on a cocktail of heavy psychiatric drugs, including an antipsychotic, which at the time was only approved for use in adults with psychosis but was illegally marketed for use in children, and which is contraindicated for use in anyone recovering from a brain injury. Despite the evaluation determining that I did not meet clinical criteria for ANY psychiatric diagnosis at that time (for insurance purposes, I was given a generic diagnosis), I was sent home on all these medications and continued to be medicated on a constantly changing cocktail from then until almost 10 years later, when I finally got off them as an adult. Throughout the following decade, I experienced numerous side effects from the medications, including having tremors so bad I could hardly write, feeling sedated and emotionally numbed, having increased anxiety and more difficulty with impulse control, feeling suicidal, and having huge gaps in my memory.

I also eventually began to develop the early signs of tardive dyskinesia, although thankfully, that was reversible, and had other as-yet-unexplained neurological side effects, which disappeared after I stopped the medication. Despite the evaluation stating otherwise, I was told that I had a “mental illness” and would likely need medication for the rest of my life. As a result, over time, everyone involved in my “treatment”, including my own parents and myself, seemed to see all my thoughts, emotions, and behavior through the lens of “addiction” or “mental illness”, rather than within context. I felt like I ceased to be a person and became instead a collection of symptoms. I was subsequently treated about a year and a half later at Stony Lodge Hospital (Ossining, NY – now closed) and then KidsPeace Hospital (Orefield, PA) following suicide attempts. At Stony Lodge, I was restrained for the first of many times. I was forced to eat with my hands because I wasn’t allowed to have plastic tableware. I could not shower or use the bathroom in private. I was sometimes forced to wear huge, bulky “mittens” because I was scratching my skin due to eczema, but they interpreted that as self-injury. And I couldn’t leave the unit when all the other patients left for physical activities, meals, or school, because of my “history of running” from Caron and the IOP program. I essentially had everything taken from me, including my own dignity.

At KidsPeace, my treating psychiatrist took me off the antipsychotic drug overnight, which threw me into a psychotic episode that I didn’t come out of for another month and a half. I was an adult before I learned that that episode was not proof of my “illness”, but the result of antipsychotic withdrawal. That following fall, after being rejected by my best friend at the time, I felt isolated from my peers at school, had lost other supports, and was shortly thereafter thrown out of school for throwing water on a teacher. As I felt my life falling apart, my emotions and behavior got more out of control and I was subsequently treated at numerous inpatient and outpatient facilities in NY and PA (including Stony Lodge, Lourdesmont Academy, KidsPeace, Caron, Horsham Clinic (UHS), and others). I continued to be overmedicated and was repeatedly physically, mechanically, and chemically restrained. I would be strapped down and forcibly injected with a drug that would sedate me. This happened frequently enough that I trained myself to consciously relax my muscles as soon as I saw the needle, so that I could later sit and walk without pain.

As things continued to get worse despite, in fact, as a result of, multiple treatments, my parents were threatened with losing custody of me and so, as a last resort, they sent me from Horsham Clinic (UHS) to an RTC, Rancho Valmora (Valmora, NM – now closed), where I was a resident from 06/2002-08/2003 (ages 16-17). Upon admission, I was restrained, strip searched, and forced to shower with staff watching. I was given a number, 755. While there were some helpful and positive things about my time there, I also experienced verbal, psychological, and physical abuse, and medical neglect. I was completely isolated from the outside world. Phone calls, even with my family, had to be approved, were very limited, and were monitored by staff, and all mail was screened. We didn’t have access to television, radio, internet, or news. I did not see my parents without supervision for 6 months and, by that time, they had been instructed to disregard anything negative I had to say about the facility.

There was no privacy, no doors on the bedrooms, only saloon doors on the bathrooms, and we had to do absolutely everything “as a group” with our dormmates, the only exception being once a week individual “therapy”. There were rarely even any exceptions or accommodations made for illness or injury since all medical problems were viewed simply as “attention seeking”. We were regularly forced to do manual labor, mostly without pay, or we would be promised pay for a “work project” only to have it denied upon completion because our work was not up to professional standards. The supposed “treatment” itself was based on group confrontation from peers, was mostly focused on compliance, and, once again, the blame for all my problems fell on me without any consideration for any external circumstances or people that contributed. I was put in “5-point” prone physical restraints almost every day for months on end, which were primarily used for control and punishment rather than safety. Sometimes I experienced verbal or physical abuse while being restrained.

One time, a staff member screamed verbal insults at me while I was restrained. Another time, a male staff member held my arm so hard that I was in tears from the excruciating pain, but when I asked him to just loosen up a little on that arm, he said he would not until I calmed down. Afterwards, I had no muscle control of that wrist for almost two weeks, although I can’t explain why because I was never allowed to see a doctor about it and thankfully it resolved on its own. The vast majority of the times I was restrained, I was not a danger to myself or others; I simply had the audacity to think that I should retain some bodily autonomy and control of my own life. This “noncompliance” was used to convince me and those around me that I deserved this “treatment” and that I brought it on myself. I graduated high school there and discharged a month before I turned 18 directly to Caron’s Adolescent Extended Care program for another 3 months. I returned to Caron once more voluntarily on my 19th birthday and was admitted into their Adult Relapse unit for a month followed by 3 months at Life’s Journey Center (Palm Springs, CA), a highly coercive and exploitative long-term rehab for adults.

Since then, I have not returned to any inpatient facility in over 17+ years and have been off all psychiatric medication for over 13+ years. I am now happily married and have a successful career and a child of my own. However, as a result of all the treatment in my adolescence, I spent a decade in my adulthood in a highly fundamentalist, cult-like 12-step group. I’ve spent decades blaming myself for everything that happened, believing I deserved it all, that I was “ill” and couldn’t trust my own thoughts, emotions, or experiences. In my case, the treatment itself became a self-fulfilling (and arguably self-serving) prophecy. I was “treated” until I developed whatever condition they were “treating” me for, and then that was used as evidence of the appropriateness of their treatment. I was gaslighted by the treatment industry and I now have C-PTSD as a result. But I am no longer letting anyone else give me my identity or tell me my story. I have found healing in speaking my own truth, and my hope in telling my story is that we can, as a society, begin to move away from treatment services that cause so much additional harm, so that years from now, others will not have to recover from the treatment itself!