Survivor Testimony circa 2004. Originally posted OnTheEmmis.com
I began the program in 1988 at Crossroads in St. Louis. I remember those being the most fun days of my life. I still love those memories. I met some really great people. If only I would have stopped there!!!!
Clint Stonebraker called me in 1991 and asked me to come be a counselor at Atlanta Insight. It took me about a millisecond to accept. This was my dream. I thought I could never be happier.
I learned some serious life lessons in the years to come. I never realized how much of a luxury food, electricity and toiletries were. Looking back, I really can't believe we were convincing people that true happiness included living in poverty and turning your back on your family.
I moved around to Houston and Phoenix. It was all pretty much the same story. We actually did start getting a little bit of money, though. After none at all, it seemed like a fortune!
Well, 1997 rolled around and I was extremely burnt out. I truly realized that I was not happy. I was terrified to leave. Here I was 24, no education, no money, no skills. ( I never even had the privilege of the ICECAP training). The worst part is, I truly believed that everyone else in the world was f-ed up in the head. I was convinced that these people in the program had the only answers to happiness. I was hopeless because if I can't survive being truly "happy", then my only choice was to self-destruct.
I moved home to St. Louis. Go figure, my family, who I had completely alienated and treated like crap, welcomed me home with open arms.
I began drinking immediately. Within two months, I was smoking crack. I was angry, had no self esteem and often contemplated suicide. I got completely plastered one night and walked into a liquor store with a 9mm. Thank God that I did not kill anyone. I was arrested and was facing up to 10 years in the Illinois State Pen.
Thanks to my Dad, who I didn't talk to for 4 years while I was in the program, I received some pretty good representation and I got a suspended sentence. I have a very boyish look and I don't think I could lasted too long in the Pen.
It took the death of the most beautiful soul I have ever known to straighten me up, my mother. She wrecked her car in 1998 and died of a chest injury. God, I want to throw up when I think of the things the program made me believe about my beautiful Mom. I miss her so much.
As devastated as I was, I chose to deal with it by fixing my life. I met one of former co-workers from Atlanta and he introduced me to three other friends who, literally, saved my life. I stopped drinking and smoking. I even started working out, I had ballooned to over 200 lbs!!!
I expected my new friends to tell me exactly how to live my life. I would talk to them constantly about everything in my personal life and I was so afraid that I was ?spiritually unfit'. I'm sure sometimes they thought I was crazy, I guess in a way, I was.
My life is pretty simple now. I truly believe that as long as I don't hurt myself or anyone else that whatever I do is pretty much OK. And if it isn't, I'll learn that. I talk about my problems when I WANT TO. I tell people what I WANT TO TELL THEM.
There are some admirable things about about the Palmer Drug Abuse Program, some questionable things, and not a few incomprehensible sides, and I think that is the point of this story, and I think that is the way we should preface our interview with the hospital folks and with Meehan.
Briefly:
Structure and organization:
At the top is the National Office, with Ed Leach as Director, and Bob Meehan as Founder, who co-runs the whole thing. There is a comptroller, a director of training, a parents coordinator (Meehan’s wife) and several other people. The National office has a national board of Trustees, made up of prominent people. Carole Burnett and Joe Hamilton will become trustees shortly. The National office is funded partly by assessments on the Central offices of the 12 cities in the program, and partly by donations from individuals and large corporations and the National office supervises the training of new counselors.
Each city in which the program exists has a central office headed by a Director, and under the central office are the neighborhood programs, called satellites. They invariably operate out of churches which have donated space. Each satellite has a Senior Counselor and a Counselor. Each satellite must be self supporting and is assessed to support the City central office. At each satellite there is a parents group which largely supplies the money to support the Satellite.
The Satellites are divided into age groups for PDAP members... up to 16 and 17 above. The younger groups meet one night a week, but their satellites are open during the day, and the meeting nights are staggered so that kids often go to other satellites on other nights. The older group satellites generally operate all day five days a week, and in the older groups are many kids who are not in school or working and who spend most of their time at the satellite. For both groups there are many weekend activities, parties, dances and the like.
Both groups have parent groups which meet separately the same night the satellite holds it’s weekly meeting. For both groups the basic document is the 12 step program, patterned after Alcoholics Anonymous.
The System:
When a kid comes in, or is brought in by parents, or referred in by probation or some other source, the counselor tries to get a commitment for 30 days of chemical free life... no dope, no drugs, no booze. If he stays off for 30 days he gets a “fist” at a meeting, with an elaborate and moving presentation. The fist is plaited leather square at the end of a leather necklace, the traditional monkey fist made at the end of nautical lines that are thrown for help from one boat to another or to the shore. It is on the honor system, and there are reports that not all “fistees” are so honest.
During the thirty days the counselors and peers really start putting the pressure on, in a small meeting, and small and large groups... the pressure not only to be chemical-free, but also to commit your life to the 12 steps, to be open, to love, to put faith and trust in God and in fellow PDAPers. Meetings are a cross between mass group psychotherapy and Baptist witnessing, and AA “I need help.” There is a lot of cheering and hugging and hand holding and I love you’s, all of which we have recorded beautifully on film.
During this initial month starts the “life is in the group - death is outside” message. And as the months go on the counselors try to see who is rising to the top, which people seem to have leadership qualities. Those who do are selected out to train as future counselors, and it is clear that one’s goal in life would be met if he could get a job as a counselor and work 7 days a week for PDAP for a modest income.
In short, what PDAP says is that kicking chemicals is not enough. You must be reborn into the greater society of PDAP.
The Criticism:
1. PDAP, which started out as a peer-centered, innovative, relatively modest program to get kids off drugs has turned into a religious experience, a way of life, a somewhat paranoid, us vs them organization led by a charismatic character, some would say con-man, who’s motto is “stick with winners.” Winners are those in PDAP. See attached sheet of comments.
2. What was undoubtedly a fulfilling experience for Bob Meehan - not only rising from the slough of drug and alcohol addiction, but founding an organization to help others do the same - now appears to have gone off on an ego trip. He loves the central, guru role, loves to be accepted in polite society (trustees and fund givers) while behaving outrageously. He is unabashed about making money and hopes to make a lot more. He volunteered the fact that the hospital PDAP sends kids to pays him a 50,000 dollar consultant fee (see hospital pages attached) and sees absolutely nothing wrong with it. He is, by his own admission, the country’s leading expert on drug abuse. He is absolutely, totally convinced that his way, PDAP’s way, is the only way.
There are those, though, who just as firmly believe that PDAP will collapse id Meehan doesn’t go. It is in danger of being destroyed by overly fast expansion (particularly since the Burnett stories), of having a hierarchy that has become an end in itself, and which has obscured the original aim of getting kids off drugs. There is too much administration, too much of an overlay on business, on fundraising, on rock bands, on I can do no wrong.
It is clearly a program aimed at the middle class and above. A black or chicano face in the staff or membership is an oddity, and observers say that is because Blacks and Chicano’s cannot provide the financial support now needed to pay for the size staff it now has, no do they have the kind of insurance that will support a hospital stay.
Meehan says PDAP is based on AA, but there is a major difference. AA has systems, but no hierarchal structure, and that is the reason it has survived. PDAP has lost sight of that, and that, and the emphasis on all life inside the group, is the reason PDAP will probably fail if it doesn’t change.
3. Statistics, success and costs:
They boost that they have a success rate of 70%, and that they only spend $300 per year per kid in the program. What they mean is that 70% of the kids who walk in the door stay sober for 30 days and get their fist. Even that figure I believe to be hyped, but long term statistics are nonexistent, and perhaps 15 or 20 percent stay sober for a year. As for the 300 dollar per year figure... Obviously a hype based on the number of people in the program, a figure to believed to be grossly inflated.
Besides, even if you accept that figure the average should include the staggering cost of the hospitalization of a large number of kids... 8 to 12 thousand dollars per times at least 5 or six hundred kids. Even though PDAP doesn’t pay that, someone does.
In addition their bookkeeping is bad, and accounting firms who audit their books imply there are a lot of contributions that are not recorded.
They recently got an outfit in Dallas to work up a system for keeping statistics on the success rate in the Dalles program. I’ll discuss that separately with you. It’s full of gaping holes.
4. The Hospital
As you will see in the attached research on the Deer Park Hospital, that whole system functions as an arm of PDAP, is by and large unnecessary for the needs of most of the people who go there, and is really used as a way for PDAP to get it’s message across in a controlled and isolated atmosphere. The hospital pages tell more.
Comments from others:
Once you get into the program there’s no easy way to leave it. You can get in, get straight, learn those things, but there’s no easy way to get back to regular living, being in society.
They make it sound that if you leave, no matter how long you’ve been off drugs or alcohol, you’re just going to die, to fall apart.
There was never an effort to get people out. The ultimate job in the world was being on staff. There was no other job worth anything.
Not more than 10 or 15 % of the people who come into PDAP are serious drug users.
At Deer Park Hospital most of the people I saw didn’t have to be there. Most of the people where were in there so PDAP could make a big impression on them right from the beginning. It was the trouble makers that ended up there... a lot of them were just little kids just having fun. They were brainwashed from the very beginning... to get nothing but PDAP for six weeks.
There was a simplistic evaluation about parents. Your parents were good if they got involved with PDAP. If they didn’t, you were told not to pay any attention to them.
They don’t look at it like you’re coming into this program to recover and move on. They look at it like you have stepped into a better way of life than everybody else in the whole world has. That’s the problem. And if you want to leave, there’s something wrong with you... Bob Meehan thought I was going to be in the gutter with a needle in my arm because I was leaving. They really think that way. To them, when you get to PDAP, you have arrived. Your not working toward working back to be a regular old guy in society. You’re there, man.
The kids were told constantly that if they left the program they would die. The only end result would be that they would go back to drugs and die. The only reason they were alive was because they were in the program.
They never graduate from the program... they’re told that thinkin’ is stinkin’ thinkin’s what got you here in the first place. You let us make all the decisions in your life for you. We don’t want you worrying about problems. You’re not capable of making decisions.
The patient load at Deer Park Hospital was around 90 when I visited a few weeks ago. Dr Baron says, and Kotzen confirms, that his is in overall charge of the patient treatment, supervises the therapists and therapy, but competent medical authorities, including Linda, who has broad experience in mental hospitals, say there is no way one Dr. can do this for so many patients. Baron told me he sees every patient every day (and bills for it accordingly) but when asked specifically how he has time with 90 patients he said that he does group therapy... with 15 or sixteen patients at a time. There is no way that can be therapeutic, and even a as method of checking progress that is ridiculous.
We have had several first person accounts from parents, and from former PDAP people that patients actually saw Dr. Baron only three or four times over 35 days in the hospital, that he often was not at the hospital (he claims he works 7 days a week...) yet the bill for daily visits continue to be sent out.Baron’s justification for this is (made to a parent who complained about the bill) was that since he was medically and legally responsible for the patients treatment he was entitled to bill every day the patient was in.
The PAASA (PDAP) program is not based on individual estimate of patient needs. Rather the progress (see attached schedule from a Dallas program) is assumed to be needed by anyone PDAP refers in. Patients, or their parents, are told they will be in a minimum of four weeks. (So far as we know, though, they are not told upon admission that Baron will be billing every day regardless) By Kotzens statement, the PDAP referral comes complete with a “book,” or description of the kid which, initially, at least, forms the basis of the managements decisions.
Though Kotzen says that he maintains 10 free beds (total) at hospitals in Houston is company manages, at least one of the criteria for PDAP referrals is whether the kids parents can pay, or have sufficient medical insurance to pay. There has been a recent problem with Blue Cross / Blue Shield in which they have refused to pay on the ground that the kids are not psyohistorically ill within their definition, but that may have been straightened out, or at least is in the process. Sometimes the kids, it is reported, have been given more severe diagnoses than is accurate solely so that insurance will cover.
The staff is acutely aware of the insurance aspect. While I attended a patient management conference the discussion of one patient centered around the fact that his insurance only covered 30 days per calendar year, so they were planning to discharge him on the 26th and readmit him on Jan 2 or so.
The PDAP counselors who work at the hospital are paid by PDAP, like all the other counselors, but the Hospital reimburses PDAP for their salaries (plus the usual 10% training fee.) In addition the hospital employs psychiatric technicians (techs,) or orderlies, all of whom are active PDAP members. They pay the techs directly.
This represents a kind of conflict of interest... both the repaying PDAP for the counselors, and the employment of the PDAPers as techs. But Kotzen feels not. He says the presence of the PDAP counselors at the hospital adds immensely to the total program, and that PDAP as a source of techs helps the hospital since they are hard working and understand the needs of the patients. Nonetheless paying personnel from the organization that gives the most of their referrals is not considered good management.
A larger conflict of interest is that Contemporary Health also pays Meehan an annual consultants fee, currently at the rate of 50,000 per year. Kotzen did not mention this when I spoke with him, but Meehan freely told me about it. Meehan says he consults with them on “hiring, on how to interview perspective employees, and on standards for therapist and psychiatrist.”
Contemporary health also pays consultant fees to many of the PDAP city directors. Amounts have not been absolutely confirmed but we believe in the neighborhood of 6000 per year each. (Bill Parker will tell us that, in essence, the fees to the city directors are to keep referrals coming. That when the patient population goes down, the word is put out that the “census is down” and in a few days the wards are full again.)
To sum up:
1. Most of the kids in Deer Park shouldn’t be there (medically speaking.)
2. There is no diagnostic interview or outside consult before PDAP counselors refer kids, and rarely is any referred kid not admitted.
3. The hospital is clearly an unofficial arm of PDAP.
4. The hospital’s relationship with PDAP clearly represents a conflict of interest, both financially and medically.
Footnotes: the absolute minimum Dr. Baron is billing is 450,000 per year, based on an average of 50 patients a day x 25 dollars per day. My guess is that his billings in 1979 were close to a million. He generally is paid partly through insurance, and if the parents won’t pay the rest he turns the bill over to a collection agency. One mother, who was outraged by the size of Barons bill and the fact that he rarely saw her child while he was in the hospital, refused to pay what was left after insurance coverage. The agency threatened to sue. She said she would welcome a suit since that would expose the truth about Baron’s phony billing. She never heard from them again and has not and will not pay. Another couple reported they were not told, when their child was admitted to Deer Park, that they would have a problem collecting under Blue Cross / Blue Shield, and got stuck with a huge bill from the hospital and also from Baron. They report Baron’s collection agency, one Jerry Sieger, has repeatedly made harassing and threatening phone calls both at work and home, and has threatened to turn the couple in to the IRS on a pretext, all of which is in violation of the law. They also report that Baron never offered a sort of progress report on their child while he was in the hospital.
Baron has contributed money to PDAP, as is listed as a public contributor in their fund raising brochure. There is also a letter from Baron in that brochure which praises PDAP. No mention of his connection with the hospital.
One father notes: We were told by management, and Bill Parker will confirm, that the word would be passed down when the patient census at Deer Park (and other PDAP affiliated hospitals) fell, and within a few days the PDAP counselors at the satellite have referred enough patients to get the census up.
Hospital Questions:
Kotzen:
1. It seems absolutely clear, from everything we’ve seen, from many people we’ve talked to inside and outside PDAP, that may, most of the kids that come in here do not need a hospital stay in the generally accepted psychiatric sense... they are not addicts, they do not need to detoxify. Yet you think staying here for 4, 6 weeks is valuable... PDAP thinks so. What do your patients get in here that they can’t get outside at less cost?
3. What role do the PDAP counselors play in here?
9. You know very well that there a number of people who think that your operation here is really just a fancy hustle. You’ve created a system first, then you’ve looked for bodies it fill it up... Daddy will pay for it, insurance will pay for it whether the kids need it or not.
2. You yourself told us, just a few weeks ago, “most of the kids PDAP referred here are ‘normally abnormal kids’” and that not more than 15 percent are acute enough or addicted enough to need de-toxification.
4. Your company, Contemporary Health Services, which runs this and other hospitals, pays Bob Meehan a consultant fee. He told us it was now 50 thousand dollars a year. What does he do for you to rate that kind of retainer?
5. We are told, by people who have kept the PDAP books, that Contemporary Health Services also picks up a substantial amount of Bob Meehan expenses...
7. The hospital reimburses PDAP for the salaries of the nine PDAP counselors who work here at Deer Park. Do you consider that a charitable contribution? If not, what medical services do they preform that your own staff doesn’t, or can’t?
8. You know, there are those who would say that your relationship with PDAP has a considerable degree of conflict of interest... on the surface, at least. You pay Bob Meehan a consultants fee, you pay a number of the city directors of PDAP a consultants fee, you indirectly pay the salaries of the PDAP counselors who work here... and PDAP supplies your profit-making enterprise, this hospital, with patients, almost all of whom appear to be admitted solely on the basis of a PDAP referral...
6. You also, we are told, pay consultants fees to a number of the City Directors of PDAP. What do they do for that fee?
Hospital questions... Baron
1. Dr. Baron, correct me if I’m wrong... you, in effect are the medical director of this hospital... that is, you supervise the therapists, you are in charge of patient management?
2. And you are the admitting physician of record, is that so?
3. I’d like to go over a few criticisms we’ve hear from persons who admittedly are not part of this program.. perhaps even hostile, but nevertheless seem to us to require an answer.
Firstly, that patients are being and have been admitted to this hospital without having been seen and evaluated by anyone other than a PDAP counselor... that, in fact, patients have been admitted here with your name as admitting physician on occasions when you were not present and have never, in fact, seen the patient...
Is it not customary for a patient to receive an evaluation from a physician or at the very least from a certified clinical psychologist before he’s admitted to a psychiatric hospital?
(Insert here followup, if necessary, from Sunday interviews.)
4. Now, you are in charge of the patients program, so to speak, but if I understand it correctly you are not an employee of Deer Park Hospital?
Are you affiliated with other hospitals?
Now, I understand that you charge for your services not through the hospital but independently, is that correct?
And how much do you charge per day?
That’s ____ per day per patient. And I understand that the average number of patients per day here at Deer Park has been ______. And if I can do a little fast arithmetic that comes to about _________ per year. That seems quite extraordinary to us. Especially since some noted colleagues of yours we have consulted tell us there’s no way one psychiatrist can supervise the treatment of that many inpatients and do it effectively...
Unless, of course, a good number of the patients... perhaps most... don’t really need to be in here?
START
Dr. Baron, there is a letter from you which is part of a fundraising brochure PDAP is using in which you say “I have worked closely with PDAP over the past several years, and I have found it to be the most effective drug abuse program that I have ever come in contact with in my professional career. PDAP’s results are outstanding.”
60 Minutes Interview Transcript (1979) Bob Meehan, PDAP
The only reason they were alive was because they were in the program. And they’d better work their program and try and keep straight, because otherwise they would -- they had no chance in the world. Their -- their friends were in the program with them. When they first came into the program, they were isolated from the people they had associated with before. They were told if they had people that they owed money to for drugs to tell them they weren’t going to pay them, which would cut them off from their old drug connections. They were told they were not allowed to associate with anyone that was outside of the program unless they were specifically allowed to. When they came into the program the relationships were heavily controlled. Who they dated. Who they became engaged to. Had sex with, or married was determined by the relationship committee. For example, if they didn’t like who you were married to, even if it was within the program, they would tell you to get a divorce. And in fact we have a complaint now from one of our clients who complains that he was told to divorce his wife. The - the kids would - would also be told things to say to their parents, that would be very disarming to...
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Woman: a totally controlled environment from getting sober to living with them, I don’t know, indefinitely. All your peer group is within PDAP. They discourage any kind of outside activity, whether it be educational or vocational, that takes away from the program...
PS: They discourage any kind of relationship with anybody outside of PDAP is that it?
Woman: Definitely...
PS: Tell me, have you had any experience with that?
Woman: Well, I used to sponsor a girl who was dating someone outside the program after she became involved. And she had wanted to get on the steering committee of an older group in Dallas and the senior counselor there told her that she could not because she was still dating this guy outside the program. And once he same in they’d reconsider and put her on.
Originally posted on OnTheEmmis.com in October 2005
I was in Tucson Pathway for almost three years from 1999 to 2002. I was told not to talk to my family or best friend because they were not in the program and my parents did not go to Parent meetings. When I finally got out I realized that I had no education and had been brainwashed from age 17 to 20. I can’t believe I didn’t realize it was all a cult and I don’t know anyone who was in it who is actually still sober.
This is what the group is. It is a false event appearing real. You are afraid to leave, afraid of what you read here, even angry at it, afraid of what will happen if you don’t stay sober.
I don’t know what will happen if you don’t stay sober. I do know what will happen if you leave the group.
I also know what can happen if you stay.
The ENTIRE group is false. Your records have likely been falsified. - F.E.A.R.
Your STORY has likely been falsified, slowly, methodically, over time. You probably don’t even notice anymore - F.E.A.R.
You are afraid of your dope fiend thinking. F.E.A.R.!!! It’s actually JUST YOUR OWN THINKING - YOUR OWN FEELINGS - THESE ARE OKAY TO HAVE.
God I am filled with such anguish at the thought of YOU being AFRAID. They teach you F.E.A.R. Please, *please* use what they have taught you to take a look at your reality, your events.
Parents, your child is in a program where everything is PRETEND.
They are PRETEND counselors, pretending to treat your child for what is likely a PRETEND diagnosis.
False Events Appearing Real
Your child is not a new, improved person. They are pretending. Unconsciously playing a role, because they have been trapped by F.E.A.R. and had their budding sense of identity clawed and ripped out of them and replaced with a manufactured sense of self.
False Events Appearing Real.
But you see, so many of us have stopped living in F.E.A.R.
We like our lives, and deal with the choices we make. WE make.
Please, make the choice to take a step away from a False Event Appearing Real, and take a look at reality.
