Your name is not familiar, but I'd be happy to chat if you want to pm or email me.

The previous link that I posted is dead, but this is current in terms of the judgement made against Traynor

[www.psychsearch.net]

I was a 12 1/2 year client at CCC and I left last August. I went through months of guilt and thinking that I would drink again (after 16 years sober) and that every decision I was making was wrong. They did a lot for me, but I really wish I had left years ago. The hardest part for me today is that many of my best friends express disapproval with how I am living my life, and I don't want to hear it, so they have stopped calling.

I used to wonder why all the "expatriots" hung out together, and now I know that they are the ones who can best understand the anger, sadness, and embarassment of spending a chunk of your life being controlled, put down, and told that if you leave your life will be over or at the very least suck.

I don't entirely blame them. I started at 20 and have always been a bit of a follower and push over. There is tremendous satisfaction today knowing that any decision I make today, good, bad, indifferent, is mine. There is no one else to blame and no one to make me feel ashamed of my mistakes. I have fallen in love with a guy who is honest and loving and reminds me not to take the last 12 years out on him - that I can listen to him every now and then and not just rebel for the sake of making up for lost time. We live together and talk about marriage and kids.

One of the last things I was told in group by Maureen was that I hadn't made any progress in 12 years, had nothing to bring to a relationship, and that no one in their right mind would ever want to date me. I had just ended a 6 year relationship with a fellow client because I felt crazy and unloved whenever I was around him. That night I thought about suicide for the first time since getting sober. It terrified me, but not as much because of the thought but because I had allowed myself to be treated like that for 12 years and her opinion mattered that much to me.

I'm not happy everyday, but who is? What I do know is that I'm regularly so much happier than I was living in that community. I am still sober. I have lost a lot of friends, but the ones I have now are loving and kind, and don't feel the compulsion to put me down and assess my progress. It was frighteningly like an abusive marriage, and I feel lucky and grateful to be out of it.

BW

Hi there,

I left in 1999 so I must know you but doesn't matter... I feel so much happier now but it does take a while too. I was definitely relieved to leave and that's how I knew it was the right choice but it takes a while to recover fully. I have had some professionals tell me it sounds like PTSD. Either way, I am still sober, will have 24 years next month, am happily married and have a beautiful bouncing baby boy! And I have had my job for 9 years (oy has it been that long?), bought my own house, get my groceries delivered :) and am happy joyous and free~! Of course life isn't perfect but it's great that not everything is a crisis, you know?

I wanted to comment because I was telling friends recently some of the crazy sh*% that Maureen used to say to people and what I said was almost verbatim what she said to you about no one wanting to date you. I know it's not funny but my friends almost didn't believe me! its so nutty.

luckily my husband had a good friend in high school whose family was in a really strict, cult-like church. so my husband sort of knew what I had been through, which was nice. He totally understood and didn't judge me for being there. I still do sometimes, but that's getting better too.

thanks for posting.

Thanks for writing back. I'm Bronwen, and I must know you too. I've been talking to other "ex-patriots" and have shared with them that I still have dreams sometimes about being in group or in a session and being completely torn down. In the more recent ones I tell people off or remain calm and just leave, in others I'm a puddle. I know what you mean about PTSD. Even my priest said that you shouldn't follow anything blindly, church or otherwise, but counsels me to not be hard on myself.

The most painful part was being rejected by those "friend" I had known for years, but also realizing that I had done that to others who'd left. I have contacted some of those others to make amends and have renewed some friendships. I still believe that they provide a helpful service, but I wish I had gotten out a decade ago.

BW

I "joined" the Choices community in 1993 and 16 years later I still shutter when I think of the place.

I cannot even begin to describe the damage I suffered and my family suffered from me being there. They were basically kept away from me while I was there (under the guise that ***I**** was making the choice to stay away from a damaged family system until they could get themselves in line - B.S. - that was Maureen's way of keeping clients away from their families - by convincing them it was in their best interest). I was only allowed supervised calls (by Pat W.) to them on the very odd occasion.

I made the decision to leave and basically spent the next few years in a therapist's office getting deprogramed from their therapuetic methods.

I can relate to every post I have read here about Choices. Yes, I agree they don't believe a client is EVER ready to leave. Maureen told me when I left that I was the worst case for sobriety she had ever seen.

I spent a lot of time healing from beating myself up (sound familiar?) for even buying into their belief system and staying as long as I did. I suffered from a lot of regret, shame and anger of damaged lives (my family was heartbroken they weren't allowed to see me) and time I can never get back. It took a lot of work on my 4th step to get over my experience there. If i am not careful I can go to the angered - NO - rageful feelings even 16 yrs later as I am writing this.

I could go on and on as I am sure everyone here can about that place. But I had to trust what my gut was telling me and get out of there and get the help I needed to reintegrate into a non therapuetic community. It took awhile but I healed. But they still make my 4th step everytime I do one - LOL.

It's sad when I think about a lot of the women I knoware still probably there. One short story before I close, my "assigned" sponsor and I were sitting on a park bench in Winter Park 4 days before I was to leave and she turned to me and said - You'll be fine I know - just do what you learned in AA/OA and you'll be fine. I looked at her and asked why she had been there 10 yrs already (now it would be 26 for her) and she said - I can never leave Choices - I can't make it on the outside world and stay abstinent. That my friends says everything anyone would ever want to know about such a criminal, evil place.

Every time I read a posting on here I am comforted to know that I'm not the only one still effected. I often have feelings of anger flare up and want to kidnap and deprogram a couple of people.

And the most painful part was that when I left I really didn't know if I could stay sober without them, but I knew I couldn't get/stay sane and stay there. I was afraid for my life because what I heard in group made me have suicidal thoughts. I came to counseling suicidal and only felt those feelings come back in group or sessions because I felt beaten down and crazy. It was to the point that when someone was kind to me (in the outside world) I thought I must be manipulating them. "If they only knew the real me they would run." I felt that enough before counseling and being there only made it worse.

I could go on too, and I probably will at some other time, but it's strangely comforting and cathartic to see other people's postings and know that a) I'm not alone and b) we are making it.

so glad to reconnect with you all. It was going back to the basics in AA that really helped me, I think. I was so goofed up in my head about what real sobriety meant, real recovery, real mental health. How many addictions I had. you know the list :) so plain and simple AA and some really excellent professional help since then too. I even went to a psychiatrist who weaned me off of the medication Maureen had me put on. I am not opposed to it again if I need it someday but that hasn't happened yet.

What a cool story about your sponsor Numbersgirl/ That's what is so crazy about it, everyone there was normal and interesting, intelligent... and some of those tactics really work in a hard core situation of addiction, I guess. But I was sober for a few years and put on all kinds of restriction for codependency counseling. ? And I realized last year that none of Maureen's own daughters (at least when I left) were in relationships or had any children. what kind of legacy is that?

BW213 - I remember you :) . I'm glad to hear you are doing okay and adjusting okay. It will take awhile - you were there a long time and last August really isn't that long ago. It took me a few years to shake a lot of the programmed thoughts/ways of doing things out of my psyche. One of the hardest struggles I had (still can have if I am not careful) is the confrontational style I had learned there. I had to learn (over time) that I have no right to stand in judgement of what anyone is doing - and it isn't up to me to confront them.

Take care of yourself and take it easy. Nice to hear about you B.

LP - that was how it was with me as well. It took some old timers in AA and a lot of meetings before I learned what "recovery" in AA really was. Thank God people were patient with me LOL. I went into my AA community with some pretty twisted ideas about how everyone else SHOULD be getting sober. God, I cringe when I think about how robotic and rigid I was after I left. Would love to know what some of the women I knew are up to these days and if they are still there. I think about some of them even to this day.