Enthusiastic Sobriety LGBTQIA+ Survivor Support
LGBTQIA+ Support Resources
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The Trevor Project
The Trevor Project is the world’s largest suicide prevention and crisis intervention organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) young people. They provide LGBTQ youth with 24/7 crisis counseling via phone, text, and chat.
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Conversion Therapy Dropout Network
The Conversion Therapy Dropout Network is a 501c3 nonprofit and a network of conversion therapy survivors, or dropouts, that have come together to provide support for other dropouts to cope with their trauma.
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Born Perfect
In June 2014, the National Center for Lesbian Rights launched Born Perfect: The Campaign to End Conversion Therapy, by passing laws across the country to protect LGBT children and young people, fighting in courtrooms to ensure their safety, and raising awareness about the serious harms caused by these dangerous practices.
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PFLAG
PFLAG is the first and largest organization for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people, their parents and families, and allies. Our mission is to build on a foundation of loving families united with LGBTQ+ people and allies who support one another, and to educate ourselves and our communities to speak up as advocates until all hearts and minds respect, value and affirm LGBTQ people.
The Insight Program Staff Survivor
I was a victim of conversion therapy in The Group. I was brainwashed by staff to believe that being gay was “part of my disease”. I was told that I was not gay, that being gay would kill me. I went to special meetings with the Director where he practiced conversion therapy on me.
I was exposed to conversion therapy in outpatient, individual counseling sessions and Staff purposes. I was forced to date and have sex with women.
Bob Meehan practiced conversion therapy on me. I witnessed the following staff practiced conversion therapy on others: Joy Meehan, Clint Stonebraker, Wendy Stonebraker, Frank Szachta, Mike Weiland, and Renee Smith.
Conversion Therapy Explained
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What is Conversion Therapy?
Conversion therapy is any attempt to change a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression.
For example, that could mean attempting to change someone’s sexual orientation from lesbian, gay or bisexual to straight or their gender identity from transgender or nonbinary to cisgender.
And it could include efforts to change a person’s gender expression (to make a person act more stereotypically masculine or feminine, for example), or reduce or eliminate sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward a person of the same gender.
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Conversion Therapy Methods
The most common techniques in the United States today include “talk therapies” that licensed or unlicensed practitioners use in attempt to “treat” a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. They may falsely claim that a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity is a result of abuse and childhood trauma, or otherwise a result of the person’s environment and upbringing.
In some countries, public and private medical establishments still provide ‘conversion therapy’. In others, religious organizations have largely taken over this role, offering ‘therapy’ that usually involves prayer – often in publicly humiliating ways – as well as ‘counseling’.
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Conversion Therapy Dangers
LGBTQ youth who underwent conversion therapy were more than twice as likely to report having attempted suicide and more than 2.5 times as likely to report multiple suicide attempts in the past year.
That’s why conversion therapy is widely opposed by prominent professional medical associations including the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, and American Academy of Pediatrics.
An estimated 80% of people who undergo conversion therapy are under 24 years old, while half are younger than 18, the UN reported. Subjecting youth to these harmful practices can result in lifelong psychological and physical repercussions.
Missouri LGBTQ Discrimination
Georgia LGBTQ Discrimination
Arizona LGBTQ Discrimination
North Carolina LGBTQ Discrimination
Colorado LGBTQ Discrimination
Texas LGBTQ Discrimination
A Personal Account of the Program’s Approach to Sex and Sexual Orientation
Staff Survivor Story of Conversion Therapy and homophobia in Enthusiastic Sobriety Programs.
The Insight Program Survivor:
There is a transgender woman that was in another group that I had witnessed getting bullied. She would get called “F——t“ “tra—y” by many group members.
Group members would also talk among themselves or ask her “what is in your pants?” and that “you’re a man.” Some group members would just silent treatment her because of her gender identification.
The Crossroads Program Survivor:
Frank Szachta said he was gay because he had low self esteem and after he was sober he was cured of it. Bob Meehan called him a truck stop f——t.
Complete and total humiliation of gay people daily.
The Cornerstone Program Survivor:
That last one, "Made to come out as straight" hits so close to home. I honestly felt like I was crazy when I was there. Like, I told my OP counselor right away I was attracted to women, and from then on he perpetually coerced me into false confessions of sexual activity with men. Until I literally made up sexual experiences with men and came out as straight when I wasn't...
The Road to Recovery
Riverfront Times - 2023
by Rosalind Early
After being in the program for two years, Reid told his sponsor at Crossroads that he was gay. He remembers he was at one of the many parties that Crossroads sponsored when senior staff told Reid he couldn't be in the program anymore.
"They insinuated I was a threat to other males in the program for overnights and things like that," Reid says. They said it gently because Reid remembers not being sure if he was being kicked out of the program. Then they suggested he find somewhere else to go. "That upended my whole world. I'm left with no friends, right? I went from having 200 friends to zero."
The Love Bomb
The Atavist Magazine - 2021.
by Daniel Kolitz
It was the program’s hostility toward LGBTQ clients in particular that bothered Lanie Murphy. Some of the clients she counseled struggled with their sexuality, and she felt unprepared to help them. Multiple Enthusiastic Sobriety clients, from the 1970s to the present, said they were taught that homosexuality was a symptom of addiction. After Step Two opened, if a kid in an Enthusiastic Sobriety program was openly gay, or was suspected of being gay, they were referred to the center in Arizona for treatment. Meehan himself allegedly counseled some Enthusiastic Sobriety insiders about their attraction to members of the same sex in what amounted to conversion therapy.
The [HATE] Group
YES! Weekly - 2021
by Ian McDowell
Christina Warden also described the Insight Program as regarding any sexuality other than heterosexuality as aberrant, dysfunctional, and confusion resulting from substance abuse.
“Members who explicitly expressed anything other than absolute heterosexuality were invalidated by their ‘counselors,’ told they were wrong or that they needed to overcome that problem by ignoring their sexuality or practicing heterosexual behaviors," Warden explained. "The same thing applies to any nonconformity to the strict gender binary; for example, girls who presented in a gender nonconforming way, tomboys, were instructed, as part of their recovery from substance abuse disorders, to dress and present more feminine. Trans people were even more invisibilized or pathologized. Disparaging terms for any gender or sexually diverse people were thrown around routinely by the top ranks of staff and down, as acceptable jokes or insults. The staff are smart enough to know to deny this informal aspect of their culture to the public, but accounts of it span across decades into present time.”
Pathway’s Problematic Preachings
Tucson Weekly - 2005
by Arek Sarkissian II
Danny Weber had come out to his parents two years before entering Step Two, the inpatient program where some clients are referred to prior to entering Pathway's outpatient counseling service. His parents were more than accepting, he said.
"My mom always told me, 'Don't listen to what anyone else tells you. Just be yourself,'" he said.
Clint Stonebraker, however, was not so forgiving, according to Siri Vikan. She said Weber went through a 45-minute 1-on-1 "bitch out" from Clint Stonebraker on how he wasn't gay.
"I remember him telling me that me being gay was a figment of my disease (of addiction)," Weber said.
Weber said he and Clint Stonebraker had two other conversations about the issue before he finally gave in.
"I figured, you know, my parents spent $14,000 for me to be here; I might as well go along with it," he said. "I figured, it's not the first time I had to act straight for someone."
There are still widespread misconceptions surrounding the LGBTQ community across the United States. Here's what you need to know about the misconceptions of LGBTQ + and how to respond to those misconceptions.
The Insight Program Survivor:
I was told I wasn’t really gay because it was ‘only a symptom of my sick addict mind’ so I couldn’t trust myself to know my own sexuality.
I was a 16-year-old girl, told to date 3 different boys in the group even though I didn’t want to. They said it was normal to not have feelings for a boy, but that it was my duty to give these guys a chance and date them even though I felt uncomfortable.
It took me two years after leaving the group to realize I was gay again, because they brainwashed me into believing I wasn’t.
The Cornerstone Program Survivor:
I was bisexual when I entered the group, and had more relationships with girls than boys at that point in time.
When I did tell my OP counselor about it, she wanted me to really think about if I had feelings for both men and women. She asked if these girls were also using drugs, and she described to me that usually when a girl swings both ways its because they are both on drugs.
I never brought it up to her again. It was almost like there was an unspoken rule in the group that associated homosexuality with using drugs.
The Pathway Program Survivor:
For years, I felt relegated to a subclass of human existence and for what reason? I spent years working on the things that made my life unmanageable primarily because the people around me decided that it was.
Furthermore, I was promised that if I stopped watching porn, which I did for years, my brain would rewire itself and I would no longer be attracted to men.
As stupid as that sounds now, why wouldn’t I, as an 18 year old, believe what I was hearing from who I only presumed to be trained professionals?
News Articles on Conversion Therapy
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Conversion Therapy in the Troubled Teen Industry.
According to Maia Szalavitz, author of Help At Any Cost: How the Troubled Teen Industry Cons Parents and Hurts Kids, placement is frequently recommended by educational consultants who have ties to the troubled teen industry, even receiving kickbacks.
Often, kids are sent away not for being LGBTQ, per se, but for purported “sexual deviance.”
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Conversion Therapy lurking in the shadows.
For months, someone was trying to change Andy Taylor’s sexuality. He just didn’t know it. “I had no idea what was going on,” Taylor recalled, thinking back to a series of unnerving one-on-one meetings with a church leader in Liverpool, England, in 2012. “Even after I quit, I didn’t fully realize that what I went to was conversion therapy.”
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The Lies and Dangers of Conversion Therapy
"Reparative" or "conversion" therapy is a dangerous practice that targets LGBTQ youth and seeks to change their sexual or gender identities. So-called “conversion therapy,” sometimes known as “reparative therapy,” is a range of dangerous and discredited practices that falsely claim to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity or expression. Minors are especially vulnerable, and conversion therapy can lead to depression, anxiety, drug use, homelessness, and suicide.
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New research documents the severity of LGBTQA+ conversion practices — and why faith matters in recovery
New research reveals the harms of religion-based LGBTQA+ conversion practices are more severe than previously thought. People who have been harmed by attempts to change or suppress their sexuality or gender identity are often left with chronic, complex trauma and face a long journey of recovery.
This is also believed to be the first study anywhere in the world to include mental health practitioners and consider the effects of a wider range of conversion practices beyond formal “therapies”.
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Conversion therapy is discredited and increases risk of suicide – yet fewer than half of US states have bans in place
Conversion therapy, or the practice of attempting to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, has also been known as reparative therapy or “the gay cure.” It began being practiced in the late 1900s and is based on an outdated and incorrect notion that such identities are a choice that can be changed.
Multiple professional bodies including the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association and the American Counseling Association have over the past 20 years denounced conversion therapy and determined it to be deliberately harmful and abusive to clients who are subjected to the practice
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Another Study Finds Bogus 'Conversion Therapy' Harms LGBTQ Teens
There are serious mental harms and high financial costs associated with so-called conversion therapy for LGBTQ people, researchers report.
Conversion therapy attempts to make lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people "straight." Its safety and effectiveness has been discredited in multiple prior studies.
In the new analysis, researchers looked at data from 28 published studies focused on conversion therapy. The review found that people subjected to it suffered significant psychological distress, had much higher rates of depression and substance abuse, and showed an increase in suicide attempts.
“Staff encouraged, and were fully aware of, how often I was tormented over being queer.”
— PDAP Survivor
“Staff consistently called me and other group members the following names: bitch, f*ggot, d*ke, skank, tr*nny, etc.”
— Cornerstone Team Counseling Survivor
Messages of Hope from LGBTQ+ Enthusiastic Sobriety Survivors
LGBTQIA+ Mental Health Support
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How to find a LGBTQ+ Affirming Therapist
“In our current political climate, it’s perhaps more important than ever that we in the LGBTQ+ community bring mindful awareness to our mental health,” says John Carroll, a marriage and family therapist at the Institute for Human Identity in Manhattan, New York. finding a therapist you share common ground with can alleviate some of the fear and anxiety that therapy can bring. Additionally, you might have to spend less time educating your therapist about your identity. It’s not necessarily important for queer people to find a therapist who is LGBTQ+ themselves, it’s definitely crucial to find one who is LGBTQ+-affirming.
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National Queer & Trans Therapists of Color Network
Our directory is an interactive digital resource that helps QTPoC locate QTPoC mental health practitioners across the country. To date, we have 145+ psychotherapists in the directory, and we are continuing outreach efforts to increase the number of practitioners in under-resourced regions, especially the southeast and midwest. We honor, respect and acknowledge the myriad of ways that QTPoC heal. At this time, our directory only lists QTPoC mental health practitioners working in agencies, community-based clinics, and private practice. We hope to collaborate with other networks of healers to support QTPoC’s ability to find practitioners from other modalities.
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Pride Counseling
Whether you are struggling with mental health issues, your identity, or just need someone to talk to, we believe help should be accessible to everyone. We noticed that individuals in the LGBTQ community suffer from mental health issues at a disproportionately high rate and we wanted to help. By providing online therapy to the LGBTQ community, we make help accessible and accepting of everyone. We provide a platform for people to get the help they need discretely, affordably, and conveniently. Message your therapist whenever an issue arises. Schedule sessions that work with your schedule.
A Glossary of LGBTQ Terms
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Acronym for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer. The Q generally stands for queer when LGBTQ organizations, leaders, and media use the acronym. In settings offering support for youth, it can also stand for questioning. LGBT and LGBTQ+ are also used, with the + added in recognition of all non-straight, non-cisgender identities. Both are acceptable, as are other versions of this acronym. The term "gay community" should be avoided, as it does not accurately reflect the diversity of the community. Rather, LGBTQ community or LGBTQ+ community are recommended.
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The scientifically accurate term for a person’s enduring physical, romantic and/ or emotional attraction to another person. Sexual orientations can include heterosexual (straight), lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, asexual, and other orientations. Avoid the offensive term "sexual preference," which is used to inaccurately suggest that being gay, lesbian, or bisexual is voluntary and "curable." People need not have had specific sexual experiences to know their own sexual orientation; in fact, they need not have had any sexual experience at all.
Gender identity and sexual orientation are not the same. Transgender people have sexual orientations too, and they may be straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, etc. For example, a transgender woman who is attracted exclusively to women would typically describe herself a lesbian; if she were exclusively attracted to men, she would likely describe herself a straight woman. A transgender person who is attracted to more than one gender will likely identify as bisexual or pansexual
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A person's internal, deeply held knowledge of their own gender. Everyone has a gender identity. For most people their gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth. For transgender people, their gender identity does not align with the sex they were assigned at birth. Many people have a gender identity of man or woman (or, for children, boy or girl). For other people, their gender identity does not fit neatly into one of those two binary genders. Please note: gender identity is not visible to others. You cannot look at someone and "see" their gender identity.
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A woman whose enduring physical, romantic, and/or emotional attraction is to other women. Some lesbians may prefer to identify as gay (adj.) or as gay women. Avoid identifying lesbians as "homosexuals.” Lesbian can be used as a noun or adjective. Ask people how they describe themselves before labeling their sexual orientation.
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An adjective used to describe a person whose enduring physical, romantic, and/ or emotional attractions are to people of the same sex (e.g., gay man, gay people). Sometimes lesbian (n. or adj.) is the preferred term for women. Avoid identifying gay people as "homosexuals" an outdated term considered derogatory and offensive to many lesbian and gay people. Ask people how they describe themselves before labeling their sexual orientations.
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An adjective used to describe a person who has the potential to be physically, romantically, and/or emotionally attracted to people of more than one gender, not necessarily at the same time, in the same way, or to the same degree. The bi in bisexual refers to genders the same as and different from one's own gender. Do not write or imply that bi means being attracted to men and women. That is not an accurate definition of the word. Do not use a hyphen in the word bisexual.
People may experience this attraction in differing ways and degrees over their lifetime. Bisexual people need not have had specific sexual experiences to be bisexual; in fact, they need not have had any sexual experience at all to call themselves bisexual. Some people use the words bisexual and bi to describe the community. Others may use bi+ which is intended to be inclusive of those who call themselves bisexual, pansexual, fluid, queer and other words which describe people who have the potential to be attracted to more than one gender. Similar to questioning, people might say they are bicurious if they are exploring whether or not they are attracted to people of the same gender as well as people of other genders.
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An adjective to describe people whose gender identity differs from the sex they were assigned at birth. People who are transgender may also use other terms, in addition to transgender, to describe their gender more specifically. Use the term(s) the person uses to describe themself. It is important to note that being transgender is not dependent upon physical appearance or medical procedures. A person can call themself transgender the moment they realize that their gender identity is different than the sex they were assigned at birth
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An adjective used by some people, particularly younger people, whose sexual orientation is not exclusively heterosexual (e.g. queer person, queer woman). Typically, for those who identify as queer, the terms lesbian, gay, and bisexual are perceived to be too limiting and/or fraught with cultural connotations they feel do not apply to them. Once considered a pejorative term, queer has been reclaimed by some LGBTQ people to describe themselves. However, it is not a universally accepted term even within the LGBTQ community, so use caution when using it outside of describing the way someone self-identifies or in a direct quote. When Q is seen at the end of LGBT, it typically means queer. In a setting for support, particularly for youth, it may mean questioning. Ask people how they describe themselves before labeling their sexual orientation.
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An adjective used to describe a person with one or more innate sex characteristics, including genitals, internal reproductive organs, and chromosomes, that fall outside of traditional conceptions of male or female bodies. Do not confuse having an intersex trait with being transgender. Intersex people are assigned a sex at birth — either male or female — and that decision by medical providers and parents may not match the gender identity of the child
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An adjective used to describe a person who does not experience sexual attraction (e.g., asexual person). Sometimes shortened to "ace." Asexual is an umbrella term that can also include people who are demisexual, meaning a person who does experience some sexual attraction, but only in certain situations, for example, after they have formed a strong emotional or romantic connection with a partner.
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A person who is demisexual experiences sexual attraction only when they feel a true emotional bond with another person. For instance, they may not feel sexually attracted to a person they randomly see at a coffee shop, but if they were to start talking to that person and form an emotional connection, they might then become sexually attracted over time.
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An adjective used to describe a person who has the capacity to form enduring physical, romantic, and/ or emotional attractions to any person, regardless of gender identity. This is one of several terms under the bi+ umbrella.
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Nonbinary is an adjective used by people who experience their gender identity and/or gender expression as falling outside the binary gender categories of man and woman. Many nonbinary people also call themselves transgender and consider themselves part of the transgender community. Others do not. Nonbinary is an umbrella term that encompasses many different ways to understand one's gender. Some nonbinary people may also use words like agender, bigender, demigender, pangender, etc. to describe the specific way in which they are nonbinary. Always ask people what words they use to describe themselves. Nonbinary is sometimes shortened to enby. Do not use NB, as that is often shorthand for non-Black. Nonbinary may also be written as non-binary. Both forms are commonly used within the community and both are acceptable.
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An adjective used to describe people who are not transgender. "Cis-" is a Latin prefix meaning "on the same side as," and is therefore an antonym of "trans-." A cisgender person is a person whose gender identity is aligned with the sex they were assigned at birth. Currently, cisgender is a word not widely understood by most people, however, it is commonly used by younger people and transgender people. If you use cisgender in a news article, it is important to define what it means first, or you can simply say non-transgender people. Cisgender can be shortened to cis. We recommend only using the shorthand after you have used and defined the word cisgender for your audience. Note: Cisgender does not have a hyphen, nor does it need an "-ed" at the end.
“I am bisexual and transgender, and feel strongly that I went through a much longer period of depression and not acknowledging my gender due to the conditioning received in the group.
I still have panic attacks when I try to date women instead of men from that conditioning, and it’s been almost 20 years.”
— The Crossroads Program Survivor
“I was sponsoring a transgender girl and the staff member told her that she was “sick” and once she got sober she would realize that she was a boy and that she should put her “self discovery” on hold.
Staff would also dead name people all the time and not respect anyone’s pronouns.”
— FullCircle Program Survivor
Share Your Story
If you have a story to share, a perspective to highlight, or a message to parents, staff, and group kids, please submit your story to us.
Anonymity will always be our default to posting survivor stories, unless with explicit permission from the survivor to share their story with a photo of themselves from when they were in The Program.