This Program is Supposed to be for Sobriety Support
The Pathway Program, 2019-2020 and FullCircle, 2021-2022
A lot of you probably know of me whether or not we’ve personally met or you’ve heard stories about me because of my reputation in the Phoenix group. Even a while after I’ve left, I’ve still gotten messages from people in this program, (that I’ve never seen before) telling me they know me because I was the one who “got shot in the face while in the group”. I don’t want one of my most severe traumas to be how I’m remembered here and I don’t like that it’s still a topic of conversation amongst kids who’ve never met me but that’s just the culture of the group I guess.
I wanted to talk about my experience in both pathways and full circle. I joined pathways when I was 15 and 3 years later and bailed, I still carry some negative experiences from the program with me. When in Pathways I was in outpatient for about 20 weeks. My family still hasn’t been able to pay off the $10,000 for “treatment” with “counselors” that have a certificate you can get for $50-$100 online.
For “treatment” with “counselors” that convinced my best friend’s family that he shouldn’t be put on anti depressants regardless of his severe depression and doctors strong recommendations. For “treatment” with “counselors” that sat back and let a group of boys in outpatient tell me about how my friend at the time’s self harm was just attention seeking and she was a coward. For “treatment” with “counselors” that told a girl that they couldn’t do anything about the fact her dad hits her because they “didn’t know if she was lying”, I sat with her while she cried to me. For “treatment” that consists of entire days of our outpatient counselor talking about porn, what type we watched, how often we watched it, what types were acceptable and that it could affect our sexual identity. I still haven’t been able to figure out how an adult talking to minors about porn relates to sobriety or how porn can make you gay.
I’ve watched a girl in outpatient get lectured by our outpatient counselor and slut shamed because she had posted a picture of herself in a bikini and because she kissed a girl. I’ve also listened to counselors tell young girls that they were simply gay for male attention. This has caused a lot of internalized homophobia for me personally and I always felt like I had to act 100% straight around the group or I would get called in attention seeker. I was re-traumatized by my outpatient counselor when she made me give details about my sexual assaults to an outpatient full of 12 boys while I was the only female, her reasoning was to teach them about how rape can affect women, I didn’t see it as that though I saw it as reliving my experience in front of a bunch of men that were equally as uncomfortable to hear those details.
My first meeting in the group consisted of me being pulled into a room by two girls and them asking me what my most traumatic experience was. I stood there blankly and confused so they went first, they each told me they’re most traumatic experience and after, I briefly mentioned something. All they said was “oh I’m sorry” and left the room. I was absolutely flabbergasted. The program normalizes trauma dumping by sharing “life stories” with other members of the group and forces you to “get honest” whether or not you want to share your entire life with them. I now know that this is a form of manipulation and control.
When you’re new in the group everyone surrounds and asks you what your drug of choice is, the new person thinks carefully about their answer and a lot of them lie to seem more “hard-core” because the people asking your drug of choice will silently judge you and evaluate your worth based on whether they believe you’re an addict or not. My counselors used to enjoy convincing kids they were addicts when they’ve only smoked weed a few times.
We were taught how to manipulate our parents into letting us stay out late and hang out with whoever we want, they call it “parent gaming”. Once I started “working the parent game” My mom let me stay out till 2am almost every night with anyone that was in the group.
This allowed me and a group of kids in pathways to relapse together, after a few times of us using together a couple people decided they wanted to steal a wax pen battery from a smoke shop. This is how I was shot in the face while sitting in the back seat of a car that I asked to get out of and asked to go home but the guy (who was in a group at the time) driving the car didn’t let me. The smoke shop employee came out shooting at the car and once they started driving me to the hospital the guy driving the car was trying to coach me through a story of what to tell the cops so he didn’t get in trouble while I was passing out from the amount of blood squirting out of my face and onto my best friend sitting next to me. The same guy that was driving the car was recently let back into full circle even after everyone found out he was planning to kill my best friend by feeding him fentanyl. But even before I was shot, I got a gun pointed at my head by the owner of an abandoned mall in casa grande while stuck in a ditch during a hangout. We broke in and cops came and detained us eventually. Breaking in and roaming around abandoned places is common for group hangouts and this is just one of the times it led to police reports and could have ended worse. We used to roam around the infamous abandoned airport on the reservation and tag airplanes, we used to climb onto the roof of a museum, we used to we used to hang out in drain tunnels and spray paint in there as well until one of the kids I was in outpatient with was chased out of the tunnels by a homeless man with a knife.
This image was submitted by the author of this testimony
We’ve frequently broken into cemeteries, blown things up in parks, took middle of the night road trips to places like “the domes” which we were sent home by cops when we arrived because there had just been a double homicide there. We’ve also destroyed a group members car with a bat and by throwing rocks through windows. These things should not be considered just another average night in the program. This program is supposed to be for sobriety support.
Image taken and submitted by the author of this testimony
I am not saying that counselors and the program are to blame for all of these dangerous “hangouts”, (even though there were many times that counselors specifically encouraged us to hang out in these locations because it would be “fun” and “spiritual”) but I am saying that the counselor’s convincing idea of freedom and trust with parents and their kids allows and enables us to put ourselves in these situations.
I’ve witnessed straight, white counselors use homophobic and racist slurs. I’ve watched counselors allow male group members to slut shame a girl for wearing shorts. I was repeatedly told the phrase “no victims, only volunteers” when talking about my trauma, which led to me further self victim blaming. I’ve seen my counselors lecture a boy in my outpatient because he refused to stop taking his ADHD meds that he was NOT abusing. I listened to one of my Full Circle counselors tell me that my trauma induced hallucinations were because I wasn’t working a good Program. I specifically remember listening to my counselor debating with a younger group boy on whether or not girls shaving their genitals promoted pedophilia, as if my counselor thought that was appropriate to speak to minors about.
A friend at the time was 14 dating a 19 year old (both in the program) and counselors did nothing about it. I could name a list of people that were bullied by other group members while in the program, which of course counselors did nothing about. Romantic relationships in the program are strongly encouraged to talk about their sex lives to staff and other members of the group. Alone time in the group was discouraged. If you wanted to be alone you were seen as “selfing out” which I was accused of a lot when I was in the group. If you “selfed out” a lot of us were considered “sketchy” and no one wanted to be seen as sketchy. People looked at you as less than if you weren’t working the best program possible. People always wanted you to be hanging out with A big group of people at all times to “get out of your head” so a lot of the time I forced myself to be uncomfortable to avoid social judgement.
We were constantly told that leaving the group would ruin our sobriety and lives. People who left the group because of its toxicity were most of the time shunned from kids still in the group because we needed to “stick with winners in order to grow” and bailed kids regardless of their level of sobriety or reason for leaving we’re not considered “winners” to the program. Most people assume that all bailed kids simply left to get high because that’s what we were all told by counselors.
When I was shot everyone I was using with in the group were kicked out except me. I’m assuming it was because they felt bad for me and didn’t want risk a potential lawsuit. My best friend was one of the people that they kicked out after they found out that he was relapsing even though it was his first time getting caught using in the group. A couple years later that friend died of an overdose and the counselors that went to his funeral were the ones that convinced his mother to keep him off antidepressants that could have helped him greatly at the time. After his passing and me being bailed from the group for over a year I decide to rejoin for a familiar place to get support. When I rejoined someone I was starting to get close with in full circle died of an overdose and not one staff member spoke about his death until I brought it up or even attended his funeral.
Since leaving I’ve talked to former counselors and they have enlightened me on exactly what they teach in counselor training and let me just tell you it’s absolutely disgusting. I won’t be sharing details though because I wasn’t there and it’s not my story to tell but I can tell you that the program is based off of racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism and pedophilia. I encourage every single one of you too visit the enthusiastic sobriety abuse website to get more information on everything I’ve spoken about. I believe the group could use some heavy reconstruction because in my experience this program has done a lot more harm than good to my mental health and sobriety. I do know that that is not everyone’s experience and I hope the program can change (if not shut down for all of the emotional abuse). The program needs to hire fully qualified and licensed counselors to help the kids that need it and to not convince the families of kids that are in fact not addicts that they are.
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