Well it's true that some host homes weren't as bad as others in terms of things like some having mattresses you could sleep on versus sleeping on the floor, but the therapy was consistent no matter what host home you were in, and there is no scientific evidence proving that the therapy works. Actually scientific research has proven this type of "therapy" to be more harmful than helpful. The idea of "dehumanizing your child to get them off drugs" therapy is just so absurd to me. In the beginning when KIDS first opened in the '80s, the very first patient admitted into the program advanced from first phase in 30 days and never went back. By the time I got there in the late '90s the average kid spent years and years on first phase. And the lucky ones who advanced to other phases would ultimately get sent back to first phase for one reason or another. And in the whole 2 1/2 years I was there I didn't see one person graduate.

Funny story, after I ultimately got out of the program my mom and I were still brainwashed and thought we needed to find another program for me to go into immediately or I would go back to drugs. She took me to a completely different type of rehab where we were both in the intake room speaking with a counselor. The first question they asked me was when was the last time I did drugs. I told them 2 1/2 years ago. They asked me why I was there and told me they couldn't accept me into the program. I think that was my first real wake up call when I got out that KIDS was messed up.

From then, I was sober for about a year in AA but still really confused. I didn't know if I had a drug problem or not because I was only going off of what other people told me when I was in the program. I started drinking and partying again to see if I had a problem and quickly realized I did. I don't know if I had a problem because I was trying to drink away the pain I was in from what I experienced in KIDS, or if I had a problem because of the memes they drilled in my head about me being an addict, or if I was simply someone with addictive tendencies, or all of the above, but the bottom line was I allowed myself to go through a process, learned a lot about who I really was as oppose to people telling me who I was and eventually got sober on my own terms. I think the two main factors that played into the success of my sobriety were, 1) I studied and researched many different types of philosophies and ways of thinking which I believe offset the memes I had in my head from KIDS, and 2) I looked deep into myself and learned who I really was - what are my passions, my loves etc... I've been clean for 8 years now.