¡GetSmart! with Erin Moore! Recovery Horror Documentary ”The Last Stop” & Synanon‘s Lasting Influence

RMA-Episode 59 Show Notes:   This week on RMA-The Last Stop: When a good kid goes down the wrong path, parents are left feeling hopeless. What do they do when their kid starts doing drugs and drinking and getting into trouble with the law? I’ll tell you what they shouldn’t do. Don’t have a transport company pull them out of bed in the middle of the night and send them to a place like the Elan School. The Elan School,  located in the deep woods of Maine was presented to their parents as a last stop resort for out-of-control behaviour. It used a mixture of harsh discipline, emotional, and physical abuse, to deconstruct the students’ psyches and “cure” them of their behavioral issues. The Last Stop, an award-winning documentary film currently streaming on Amazon Prime, takes a deeper look into the controversial therapy methods used at this school, methods that developed from the Synanon recovery cult. Synanon spawned hundreds of copycat programs like Daytop and Phoenix House, that used confrontational therapy and other abusive tactics with no scientific basis to treat teens with substance abuse and behavioral issues.  Erin Moore joins Mike and Nat this week to share her experience as a survivor of the Phoenix House program, and to join in reviewing The Last Stop. It’s a compelling episode that strikes at the heart of the “troubled teen” movement and asks why there has been little to no oversight of these largely unregulated facilities.   Plus, the week in review and the usual hijinks on an out-of-control, questionably therapeutic, deep in the woods episode of Recovery in the Middle Ages.    LINKS:   The Last Stop is available here----> Use this link and help out RMA~! https://amzn.to/3GcYP9O   Erin Moore   https://fallingphoenix.com/ Recovery News You Can Use   https://www.soberliningsplaybook.com/ Recovery in the News:   Caging the Drunkards! Lawmakers want to strengthen access to non-religious substance abuse treatment services   The Week in Weird:   Einstein Examined Alien Craft in Roswell in 1947   Tell Us Your Ghost Story:   Email Mike at [email protected] LISTEN TO RMA ON YOUTUBE PLEASE leave us a 5 star review on I-Tunes if you’re enjoying the show and SUBSCRIBE to get the latest episodes.    You can reach us by email at: [email protected] [email protected]   Send comments, complaints, death threats, ideas and requests to be interviewed. We’ll talk to anyone! Check out the website: Www.middleagesrecovery.com   While you’re there, buy a T-Shirt and support your favorite recovery podcast.   Visit MiddleAgesRecovery.com and tell us your story of your struggles with alcohol and drugs. Fill out the “tell us your story” Form on the website, write your recovery or using story and we will read it on the air! (Anonymity guaranteed).   FOLLOW US ON TWITTER  Join the Facebook Page! Exciting things are happening there!   We also have a Facebook Group! Request to join the group. It’s a private space for continuing the discussion of what Nat and Mike talk about on the podcast. Hope to see you there. If you’re in trouble with substance abuse and need help, reach out. There are thousands of people who have put problems with addiction in their rear-view mirrors and you can be one of them. While we neither endorse nor condemn any particular program, the sheer number of available AA and NA meetings suggest that reaching out to those organizations would be a good first step on the road to recovery.     https://www.aa.org/ https://www.na.org/meetingsearch/   Marijuana Anonymous (just in case):   This Naked Mind   Addiction Recovery Podcast