The Addict and Six Degrees of Separation
Do you remember that game where you try to link a celebrity to Kevin Bacon? You would start with something seemingly random like “The Baby Dinosaur from Dinosaurs” and somehow find a connection between cast members and projects that inevitably led to a project with Kevin Bacon**. Now, I may never find myself linked to Mr. Kyra Sedgwick, but it turns out I am a lot closer to Paris Hilton than I thought I would be.
In 2005, a few weeks before my 19th birthday, I found myself in a very bad place physically (Central Texas) and mentally (on the unfun, not-cute side of substance abuse disorder). I was hitting bottom and secretly wanted to unalive myself but I had an absolute angel of a friend who intervened and gave me the strength I needed to leave school and seek help.
My sweet, naïve mother was shocked but supportive, and quickly became my sobriety cheerleader. I remember us pulling up to her church one afternoon and seeing her friend walking by – she rolled down her window and cheerfully announced that I was home to get sober as I cringed in the passenger seat. We had no clue on where to start when it came to finding a drug rehab. One time, we were driving by a strip mall that had a big sign reading "Rehab" so my mom pulled over to check it out. I popped my head in and asked if they were admitting new patients for alcoholism. The staff stared at me for a moment, confused, but then pointed out this was a physical rehab facility for injury recovery.
When I was about three weeks sober, just before my 19th birthday, we discovered Adolescents in Recovery (AIR), an outpatient treatment center for young people that offered group and individual therapy, peer mentoring, and social activities. Little did we know this treatment center was based on an infamous rehab known as PDAP.
The PDAP model of recovery included "fun felonies", where our counselors looked the other way as clients played with Molotov cocktails, stayed out all hours of the night in and around Houston, raced cars, clients as young as 13 years old chain-smoked, and more. Sleep deprivation was a fun challenge known as "wedging" (wedging two days into one).
Established clients were known as “winners” and received special privileges in exchange for their stewardship of newer or struggling clients. Most importantly, all our behavior, access to resources, and even housing was under the control of staff and led by owner Sheree Ahart.
You can see where this is going, right? I unwittingly enrolled in a recovery cult.
Like many cults, the initial buy-in was pretty simple: stay sober, stick to winners, and we will show you how to recover. New clients had to attend three group therapy sessions a week: two large intensive outpatient group sessions lasting 2-3 hours, and a gender-based therapy group that ran an hour. There was also one individual session each week with a therapist, and both Friday and Saturday night had mandatory hangouts with all clients at a client’s home. Newcomers to the program were involved six days a week with either therapy or attending the afternoon informal hangout sessions, and expected to attend AA, SLAA, or other relevant 12-step meetings throughout the week, plus school if the client was in high school or college. Scared parents of teens with substance abuse issues rarely pushed back against counselor recommendations.
The average length of "treatment" was at least 18 months -- many clients were not recommended for graduation from the the program despite having two or more years of continuous sobriety. Some staff were unlicensed professionals, usually former patients. At one point, I was one of those staff members, although there was about a year’s time when I was both a staff member AND a client. Yes, my boss, Sheree, was my therapist, and I’ll note I had zero training in how to be a peer counselor to fellow addicts, but I was expected to know how to handle any and every situation that arose.
Psychological abuse of clients was the norm and boundaries were nonexistent. A few examples from my tenure include:
Lovebombing. You were encouraged to tell everyone you loved them from Day 1.
A male client was directed by staff to ask me about my sexual assault experiences. It was unclear if he had a history of sexually assaulting women or if this was a general “exercise” in developing empathy. I was not given a heads up about his assignment, and was cornered at a weekend function, expected to share my trauma to help him.
I was forced to “find and own my part” in why I was raped. I was never taught how to have boundaries around sex, but I did have the support of some wonderful women in SLAA to help counter some of the more harmful advice I received in the program.
Group sessions often involved ganging up on one client in an effort for them to “Get honest”. The more depraved or depressing stories you shared, the more you were rewarded. Clients were regularly reduced to tears and some exaggerated their drug abuse to satisfy the counselor’s push for honesty. Clients were forced to process extremely private, traumatic experiences in group therapy or be labeled as noncompliant, or “sick”.
Children who were experimenting with drugs and alcohol were labeled and treated as addicts. There was no gray area between “normal” and “addict”.
Established clients were directed to “kidnap” newcomers and take them to meetings. Imagine being a 14- or 15-year old and being grabbed at school or at home and thrown into a car by 17-19 year old strangers.
Dating inside (or in very rare cases, outside) the group had to receive the blessing of staff, no matter the quality of your sobriety. Sometimes the group would attempt to pair up or break up clients. I remember having to check in with my group and peers about every aspect of my relationship with my now-husband, receiving their blessing each step of the way.
Using a three-strike system, clients who “struck out” at home were forced to live with another group family. One client with over three years of recovery was forced to be homeless for not adhering to trivial rules.
Clients who left the program against the advice of counselors were blacklisted; we were not allowed to associate with them unless we wanted to lose our status as “winners”. Staff created and enforced negative narratives around leaving the program including guaranteed relapse and death. I remember sobbing when a client expressed wanting to leave, believing the next time I would see them would be at their funeral.
Relapsing meant you had to start over completely; instead of being supported and encouraged to keep moving forward, you were singled out and punished. Relapsing was an automatic reason to be removed from home and placed with a different family.
Clients were routinely separated from family and friends who expressed concern about the program.
Staff ignored traditional rehabilitation schedules. After eighteen months of group and individual therapy (and continuous sobriety), my parents decided to stop paying for the program. Knowing that I would be seen as a non-winner and alienated if I left before the program graduated me, I secured a small scholarship and began paying for weekly group and individual therapy sessions from then on. To this date, I have no idea how much money my parents and I spent on treatment combined.
Confidentiality was expected from clients, but ignored by staff.
You may be saying to yourself, “Jesus fucking Christ, this is insane – why did you stay so long?”
Look, no one joins a cult. They join a good thing. And in the beginning, it seemed like Sheree and her program held the answers to all my problems. I was so scared to relapse, I did anything and everything they told me to do without question. I craved going back to college, and I knew that I would earn my parent’s and group’s trust to re-enroll if I followed directions.
The longer I stayed sober, the more I was rewarded. I quickly became a “winner”, a member of the “winners only” Steering Committee, and mentor to other women in the program. Because I worked AA, SLAA, and OA programs, I had a variety of sponsees that looked up to me. I was offered a job at the treatment center while I was still a client – I interpreted this as a sign I was amazing, wanted, and valued. Looking back, it’s because they knew I would continue to enforce their twisted norms.
My husband was also a client, and his experience mirrored mine: we both came in ready to get sober, and we didn’t question their methods. We were leaders to the newcomers, winners with privileges, and craved affirmation that we were “good enough”.
Cracks began to form when a patient developed brain cancer. Sheree had an oversized role as the family therapist and it became very clear that boundaries between therapist and client were gone. At one point, I admitted in a therapy session that I was jealous of how much time Sheree was spending with the client and his family. The response: Sheree took me shopping for clothes. At the time, it made me feel special and wanted, but hindsight has illuminated it as a form of bribery. But it worked – I didn’t bring up how much time she was spending with the client again.
I finally graduated from the program after about three years of treatment, but stayed on for another year as a staff member. I began to have panic attacks. I was in school full time, working both at the rehab and a second job, and beginning to question some of the methods and logic behind the staff’s actions. I remember receiving a scathing phone call from a fellow peer counselor blaming me for a client’s relapse; I was forced to take accountability for that client despite having no part in what happened. Again, looking back, I realized they needed someone to blame for why their program didn’t work.
During my senior year of college, I was fortunate enough to have access to discounted therapy on campus, and with the help of a new, outside therapist, I began to discover I was and continued to be abused. I remember the therapy session where she had printed out a list of ethical violations; I had either experienced or witnessed almost everything on that list. With her help, I developed the courage to quit my job there and both my husband, a fellow group graduate, and I disconnected from the group.
Then things got interesting.
Word got out that I was... disgruntled. I had told a few friends in the program that my therapist helped me realize we were being abused, that ethical violations were happening on a regular basis, but I wasn't ready to report anything yet, I just wanted to disconnect and walk away. I wasn’t sure how many other clients had similar experiences, and I was also concerned that if I reported the violations, the treatment center would close and dozens of clients would relapse (again, I was made to believe that success in sobriety outside the group was rare). A friend shared with Sheree what I had said, so Sheree banned all group members from having contact with me. I lost almost all my friends overnight. I don’t blame the client for sharing those details with Sheree – like I said, sharing information on another group member, former or current, was rewarded.
It was a lonely time after that. My husband and I had just gotten married not a month prior, with our wedding guests being either family or group members – we couldn’t NOT invite them to our wedding, obviously. We were clinging to each other as best as we could, dealing with the loss of our entire community. I had two former clients as friends left that would still talk to me, taking the risk of alienation on themselves. I abandoned my dream of becoming a therapist myself. I was too afraid I would turn out like Sheree to continue forward with that career path. I chose to pivot to finding a career in writing, my first love, instead.
Not six months later, a client confessed to his sponsor, a parent involved with the program, that he was in a romantic relationship with Sheree. The parent blew the whistle, secrets started spilling out from other clients about Sheree, and shit hit the fan. I came as soon as I heard to support the clients as they processed their conflicted feelings of a place that had helped them get sober through abusive practices.
Unfortunately, the abuse we suffered wasn't illegal, just unethical. A few of us filed formal complaints against Sheree to the state licensing board, and myself, my husband, and a few clients piled into my little Prius and drove through an ice storm to give our testimony at the hearing two hours away. We were terrified of seeing Sheree, detailing what happened to us with her in the same room, but knew we needed to tell our story and make it harder for her to start over somewhere else. Well, we testified, and she failed to appear at her own hearing, citing the same ice storm as her reason for failing to appear. Her license to practice therapy was revoked. The treatment center closed.
So where does Paris Hilton fit into all of this? Well, I thought my rehab experience was unique to just the clients of AIR until a few years ago when I saw a low budget documentary on PDAP, the OG youth rehab cult, and connected the dots. I was surprised at how emotional I got watching the documentary. I thought I had moved on. But I wasn’t fine, I was just pocketing my experience away until it was safe to process it at a later date.
I cannot explain the relief that comes with finding out you aren't alone and others share the same trauma. Then I found out that these groups were still happening all over the country and there was a name for them: Troubled Teen Industry, and there was a new advocate for youth in town: Paris Hilton.
Paris Hilton's honesty about her own experience with TTI has helped bring to light that these programs continue to exist, preying upon families scared to lose their children to addiction. As a result of her sharing her story, people were finally starting to pay attention to this largely unregulated field. Last year, I found myself serving on an informal committee to help guide legislation language placing new regulations around TTI programs. While we cannot prevent cult leaders from culting, states can require both licensing for staff and facilities, and provide patients with the resources to report violations against that license. I was “lucky” in that Sheree had a social work licensing board to be accountable to; many TTI programs fall under the radar because there isn’t a staff member with credentials or licensing.
I have spent over a decade dealing with the shame around how I got sober and how I acted during my first five years of sobriety. I’m still unlearning inappropriate behaviors gained or unaddressed in that program. I still feel the need to tell everyone “I love you” regardless of how I really feel. My throat gets tight anytime someone is about to provide me with feedback. I overshare, a leftover from my days in outpatient when I would get honest about everything to get the spotlight off me. I still default to a toxic level of service to others, forgoing my own needs and boundaries. I struggle sharing an opinion different from others.
I’m embarrassed to admit I once idolized Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and the other partying IT GIRLS of the early aughts. But knowing that we are all sharing some of the same wounds, and seeing how Paris is advocating for children and teens to receive psychological services with care and accountability, I’m not embarrassed to say I admire her today. Thanks to Paris Hilton and TTI advocacy groups sharing their stories and championing for patients rights, I am finally beginning to find a way to translate my trauma into something bigger and better. The boulder of shame that once held me hostage is slowly being reduced to pocket size.
You’re goddamn right it is.
**The Baby from Dinosaurs, a show utilizing the ideas of Jim Henson, who’s characters were featured in The Muppets (2011), a movie that starred Amy Adams, who once worked with John Lithgow in the film Leap Year, who once starred alongside Kevin Bacon in Footloose.