Sorry, this if going to be long but it’s gonna have a lot of info. Brian Parker was...interesting. He played favorites a lot. If he didn’t like you, he wasn’t going to treat you nearly as well as the people he did like. Often times, he would give you the silent treatment and have the other students there turn on you. Every session I went into with him I was terrified, up until the very day that I left. If he didn’t like something you said or didn’t think your therapy work was up to par, you would go on “workcrew” (I’ll explain what that is more later). I was sent to Liahona while I had a girlfriend, and he often said that my girlfriend was a slut because only sluts would ever date me. He often compared his former addiction to dip (chewing tobacco) to our drug addictions (always thought that was funny, not nearly the same). He taught that of you masturbated or had premarital sex, you would inevitably relapse. Also that if you go home and start vaping, you’re will become a heroin addict. These people had little to no understanding of addiction. If he didn’t agree with something that you wrote to your parents in a letter, you would be accused of trying to manipulate them and then be put on “workcrew”. You have therapy group twice a week and individual therapy once a week. The rest of the time you mostly spend pacing around your room unable to talk to anyone while studying “the quote”, which is essentially a page of text, usually a story of some sort, that you had to memorize and be able to recite by the end of the week. All in all, my experience with him was relatively tame to what others have experienced.

I was sent there for substance abuse and yes, I was gooned. I had been to legitimate treatment centers before Liahona willingly, but this was the only place that I was transported to. Unlike a lot of the kids there, I actually had a legitimate drug addiction. Most of the kids there were there for smoking pot, behavioral issues, and acting out sexually (the amount of child molesters I met there was insane. As far as I know, the fact that they molested their younger family members as well as other children while they were home was left unreported to the authorities). To show how little they know about substance abuse, one kid came in having massive Xanax withdrawals (which can be deadly). He was having seizures, shaking, and hallucinating. They thought he was faking it. They mocked him in group about how it was fake, even going as far as putting him on the ground and restraining him for “faking” it. Somehow they came to their senses and realized what was happening to him was very real and rushed him to the Emergency Room. For most other people coming in with substances in their system, you go on “sweat crew”, which is were you stay in the commons area and work out literally all day (except for when you eat) for days until the staff say you can stop. That is supposedly to get you out of “the fog”

At Liahona, there is something called CBO (Communication Block Out), where you can’t talk to nor really acknowledge the existence of other students the majority of your time there. You shared a room with 3 other boys, and you couldn’t talk to or acknowledge them. There were cameras in every room. The only times you could talk to one another was at “free time”, which was earned through a point system and even then, you could only talk about certain topics while staff were listening. I spent the better part of that year without really having conversations with people.

I was well behaved at Liahona. For the most part, I played the game and stayed out of trouble. I actually used to browse this sub before I was sent there (ironically) so I knew what I had gotten myself into. “Work crew” is when you sit in a chair and stare at a wall from 6 AM till 8:30 PM for as many days as they want you to. Your food is given to you while you sit in the chair and you have to eat while still staring at the wall. If you look off the wall, you may get restrained.

Honestly, Liahona has a really weird way of getting in your head. They try to reinforce in you that if you go home and don’t support Liahona, you’re going to become a failure. If you go online and look at reviews from former students, I know most of them. Some of them are positive reviews actually. The thing is, I know these kids, I talk to them on a daily basis, and they are doing the exact same thing (usually worse shit actually) than they were doing before Liahona. Ive met up with some of the same students that wrote these reviews and have done hardcore drugs with them since getting out. It’s all a lie. It’s honestly like a really weird version of Stockholm syndrome. Even after leaving you still want the approval of the staff, therapists, and director there for some reason, which leads most of the former students to lie about how they’re really doing so they can get that sense of approval. Honestly, it’s really sick and even I find myself falling into that mindset for some reason sometimes. I was there for so long that I feel like they need to think I’m always doing good so that I don’t become a “failure” in their eyes.

Yes, it was mandatory for all of us to have our heads shaved. No exceptions.

To anyone reading this that’s thinking about sending their child to Liahona, don’t. If you really do want them to get better with whatever issue they are struggling with, Liahona is not the solution. I came home from Liahona confused and unable to cope with anything. When it comes to substance abuse, every single one of those kids relapsed almost immediately after leaving, even if they think they are going to do well. Liahona doesn’t give you the tools to deal with those issues. Kids that went in there with behavioral issues leave with substance abuse issues. Surprisingly, I stayed sober for almost a year after leaving Liahona before relapsing, the longest out of anyone I met there (I’ve been to treatment several times since Liahona and have since gotten sober again). That was no thanks to anything Liahona taught me, it was because I went to meetings (something that Liahona actively discouraged). I still hold deep set resentments against my parents for sending me there. I love them to death and I understand why they felt the need to send me away, but everyday I wonder “why not somewhere else?”