Corey Jentry on Selling Sanity: Inside the Troubled Teen Industry Cult (Part 1)

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[00:00:58] And I'm Anthony Nippy Ames. And this is A Little Bit Culty. We woke up from a cult. And that journey was captured in The Vow on HBO and in my memoir, Scarred. Now, in this podcast, we break down the shame and secrets that make these experiences so destructive with honest conversations on how seemingly benign groups can cross into the cultiverse and how to spot and recover from trouble if it happens to you. Each week, we bring in experts, survivors, and whistleblowers to explore red flags, resilience, and even share a few laughs because sometimes you gotta laugh.

[00:01:26] Subscribe to our Patreon for early and ad-free listening, some live Q&A, and exclusive content at patreon.com slash a little bit culty. Welcome to Season 8 of A Little Bit Culty.

[00:01:53] Welcome back to A Little Bit Culty, everyone. Sarah is well caffeinated and bouncing off the walls, and I am not. It's fun over here, everybody. But even though Nippy's demeanor is mellow, we're very excited that we're coming to Vancouver this summer, aren't we, Nippy? Yes, we are, Sarah. We're going to be doing a launch. We don't know where yet, just keeping it in your mind. Just block off July for now. Save the date. July. Save the month. Save the month. Save the month. Coming soon in Vancouver. Yeah.

[00:02:20] Any ideas for locations? We have a few that we're working on, so stay tuned. Just do it outdoors. Just do it at the beach. Set up a kiosk. Set up a kiosk. Set up a kiosk.

[00:02:58] And unlike many authors, Corey actually brings a really rare double lens. He's lived it, and he's worked inside the systems that keep it running. In this episode, we get into what really happens when care, control, and commerce start overlapping a little too comfortably. Corey unpacks how these programs can function less like treatment centers and more like high-control environments, complete with coerced dynamics, tightly managed information, and financial incentives that quietly shape outcomes.

[00:03:26] We'll be exploring the parallels between the troubled teen industry and cult structures, from power and belief systems to the way that families are kept in the dark. Because when you start following the money and the methods, the story gets a lot more complicated than treatment, and it gets a lot more important to understand. We also will be talking about Wayward, the series about the troubled teen industry on Netflix, and hear Corey's very harrowing journey in and out of one of these treatment centers. Here's part one with Corey Gentry.

[00:04:09] Corey Gentry, welcome to A Little Bit Culty. Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here. So grateful to our mutual friend Meg Applegate for introducing us. As you know, we've covered a little bit of the troubled teen industry, two or three episodes in our 300 plus. It's getting out there in lexicon. It is. Thank goodness. So welcome. Tell our audience a little bit about yourself. First of all, how are you? So sorry you went through all this, and how are you doing? Let's just start there. How's Corey Gentry?

[00:04:37] Corey is doing A-OK today. I'm hanging in there or hanging out there, one of the two. But no, life is pretty good. I don't know any kid or teenager, for that matter, that when they're in school thinking about what they want to be when they grow up, they're like, ah, you know what? I think I'm going to join a rehab cult and get shipped away for five years and all of that. But, you know, such as it is. And despite, you know, that entire experience, life is pretty good today. You know, I feel like these crazy situations that we sometimes find ourselves in, you know,

[00:05:06] at the very least, it gives us a pretty interesting perspective on life. And, you know, it motivates us to do something that, you know, maybe not a lot of people get. So, yeah, today life is pretty good. Great to hear. Good to hear. Well, I know you've been through it. And when we do these episodes, I feel like, okay, I've already learned about that. I understand how these things work. But there was a lot I didn't know when I read your story.

[00:05:30] I actually thought that all of these treatment centers involved kidnapping, like had happened with Meg being gooned, right? Stolen in the middle of the night, like in the show Wayward on Netflix, which we'll talk about later. But you, that didn't happen to you. Tell us how you, what was going on for you in your life and how did you get involved? So there are a few different ways that I've discovered, both personally and professionally, that these troubled teen programs kind of attract or capture their prey, for lack of a better word,

[00:05:58] is it's kind of by hook or by crook, you know? So they either, by crook is, you know, they get the goons to come in at, you know, two or three in the morning and pick you up. Or, I mean, Jesus Christ, I know so many people that, you know, wealthier families or not wealthy families, they trick them into getting into a car or a plane. And the next thing they know, they're in a, like a Mexican psychiatric camp, which doesn't allow them to leave until they're signed out or they're. In a wilderness academy in Montana or Colorado or wherever they're at, Utah mostly. Mine was very different.

[00:06:28] Mine was a treatment cult, full-on cult, that was started initially in the 1970s by this guy named Bob Meehan. He was this very charismatic heroin addict. And actually there was a movie that was kind of loosely based off of him by a guy named Matt Dillon, Matthew Dillon, called Drugstore Cowboy. Did you guys ever see that? Drugstore Cowboy. Yeah, great movie, but it was kind of loosely based off of Bob Meehan's life. He was this heroin addict. He used to knock off grocery stores and drug stores and stuff for his, you know, drug habit.

[00:06:58] And he got put away in prison. And then of all places, he ended up in Texas and started a treatment program with, it was called Palmer Drug Abuse Program. So it was PADAP initially, which is kind of an old school name in the treatment world, but it was attached to the Catholic Church. He started out as a janitor in the basement of this Catholic Church. And there were a lot of young men and women around the church at the time.

[00:07:22] And the priests were pretty big on Bob, given his personality and his kind of charisma that they wanted him to, if he spent a little less time, you know, mopping floors and taking out the trash and everything, and spent a little more time with the kids than, you know, the church was, they didn't care about that. So that's kind of how it started. He started with sort of the blessings of the Catholic Church and this Palmer Drug Abuse Program

[00:07:47] and started what was later an ice cap, and it was enthusiastic sobriety treatment programs that I wrote about pretty extensively in my book. And in the treatment space, they really kind of capitalized off of this, it's a saying from like 12-step world and stuff like that, but it's attraction rather than promotion. So instead of them spending money like a lot of treatment centers do on advertising or all of these different referral channels that treatment centers invest heavily in

[00:08:14] to recruit individuals into their treatment programs, this guy just simply, it was kind of brilliant actually, because he just led off the attraction part of it. So he would recruit, you know, very young and attractive teenagers from kind of affluent neighborhoods to be members of this group. And Bob was like super charismatic and he smoked and he cussed. And, you know, to a 14, 15-year-old, he was like the coolest guy ever. Funny how that works. It's funny.

[00:08:43] Yeah, yeah, it is funny how that works. And all of his staff were these like young 20-something year, I mean, maybe they were in their early 20s, but they were these, you know, really attractive young men and women. Again, a lot of them came from affluent families, sort of broken families in a variety of different ways, but families that had money and they lived in really affluent neighborhoods and places like Buckhead in Atlanta and, you know, the Alfred community. That's where we are. Yeah, yeah. The treatment center I went through was in Augusta, Georgia. So just up the road.

[00:09:12] So we used to go to Atlanta all the time was the main satellite. And that was where Bob and off of the Peach Street. No way. By the way, we're in the south, we're in what we call the like- South part about that. The south part. We're not in the fancy part. So funny little sidebar, I want to let you get back, don't want to interrupt you. But one of the guys that I gave my book to, and he's helping us with a speaking event in the fall, went to one of these schools. Really? And I gave him a book. He's like, oh my God. Because he kind of knew about it. And I said, look, read this part.

[00:09:41] And so it's interesting. I've known him since I was a kid. We're going to give him a copy of this. I had no idea. I've already given him a copy of this. I had no idea he was involved with it. Oh, period. Yeah. The strange thing is the troubled teen, it's such a small world that usually it's like one or two degrees of separation between me and some of these other people. In Atlanta. Yeah, it's wild. So Atlanta was like their main hub. And then they had a kind of a branch off satellite in Augusta, Georgia, which is where I was from. And, you know, my life was just a train wreck.

[00:10:10] You know, I had this really kind of bipolar and mentally unwell mother with a substance abuse problem. And my poor father had, you know, me as a son and, you know, two other kids. And we were just off the Richter scales. And we were poor. We were like super poor. So it was kind of just a series of fortunate or maybe unfortunate events that got me there. A friend of mine, you know, these programs started in the 70s. They kind of proliferated. They got kicked out of Texas. And Bob got the boot from PADAP because they were like, you know, trademark.

[00:10:40] This was a little bit culty for them. Even the Catholics were like, yo, this is, you know, this is a little weird for us, dude. If the Catholics are calling you out. Yeah, you know, you know it's bad when the Catholic priests are like, hey, man, we don't want you to be able to poison anymore. This is not good. You can edit that out if you want. No, I don't discriminate. But I, so I kind of, these programs proliferated. Nonetheless, Bob got kicked out of Texas. And then he went to, I think it was Arizona was where he sort of went and licked his wounds

[00:11:09] and started pathway programs and then went to Colorado and started Cornerstone. And then St. Louis was Crossroads. And then Insight was like the Georgia, the Southeast Georgia-based program. And I think they've since spread out. But at the time they had an Augusta program. And, you know, all of their counselors were like maybe 21, 22 at the oldest, which I found out later is kind of an industry standard for most therapeutic professionals in the treatment world. Ridiculous. But they were young, they were really attractive, again, came from like these really affluent

[00:11:39] areas because, you know, these people are crazy, but they're not stupid. You know, they know where to do the recruiting at. So they were in these like uber affluent neighborhoods in Atlanta, uber affluent neighborhoods in Augusta, Georgia, where I'm from. And then the same thing in other pockets of the country that they were in. They tend to pull in areas that, you know, they have a lot of money. So I'm hearing it's a tight business model. Oh my God. Oddly enough, through a series of, again, fortunate or unfortunate events, I ended up working on the business side of treatment many years later.

[00:12:09] And then like 20 something years later through a fluke. And I got to see the kind of unit side economics. Sorry, I'm an economist by education and training, but the unit side economics of these, I was like, holy shit, these places are making a fortune. It's like, you know, 30, 35% profit margins at minimum if you run the program right. So, yeah, these guys are doing, they're doing well. And you didn't know any of this at the time. Obviously, you're just a poor kid, like literally living in a trailer, food stamps.

[00:12:39] Yeah. Struggling with your mom's mental health, your dad. What was his deal? My dad, you know, my dad was like a good enough guy. You know, my mom was too. She was just out of her mind. She was nuts chemically. But my father was just this, you know, Navy guy. He was very working class. Well, you know, what we would consider just kind of blue blood, blue collar American. You know, he was an electrician basically by trade and everything. And a real, my father was a real kind of man's man, you know, so not a lot of emotion, very stoic,

[00:13:09] very almost British in that respect. And, you know, he had a wife that was bipolar and just like very vocal and all over the place. And then he had, you know, me as a son who was kind of emotionally all over the place. And I was a troubled kid, you know. And then one day, a friend of mine that I went to school with, his name was, we'll call him Kevin. He was kind of the resident. I feel like every friend group has this, but he was the resident fuck up of the group. You know, he was just the kid that's like, oh yeah, Kevin's in trouble again, or this happened or that happened.

[00:13:37] And so he ended up getting in trouble again for sneaking out or doing something, you know, stupid that a lot of teenagers do. And at the time I was, you know, experimenting with substances, smoking weed, drinking, you know, doing all this stuff that teenagers, particularly from my part of the world did. And Kenneth ended up at this rehab and we thought, oh, well, he fucked up and that's it. He went away. And it was kind of a commonplace thing in the Southeast where your parents never threatened to send you away to treatment, but it was always military school.

[00:14:05] So it was like, if you don't straighten up, we're going to send you away to military academy or whatever. And I thought, well, Kenneth got shot off to military academy. And a few days later, he started popping up at school and he was, you know, swinging one of these monkey fists around. And he was, you know, he seemed very happy and kind of buoyant almost. We were like, Kenneth, what the hell happened? You just like disappeared for a week and now you're back. He was like, oh man. We were like, what the fuck is this fist thing that you're spinning around on your finger?

[00:14:34] And he just started telling us about the group. And he talked about it the way that a 15 year old boy would talk about it to another 15 year old boy. He was like, oh man, the counselors, they all have these, you know, they've long hair and they let you smoke and they cuss all the time. They just thought it was, you know, the coolest thing ever. And then he was like, bro, the girls at this place are fucking hot. But to a 15 year old boy, that was all I needed to hear. I was like, what? They're girls. And he was like, oh man, are there? He's like, it's like 70% girls.

[00:15:01] And so I was like, so the male to female ratio is like 70%. You know, it was just like a dream come true to a 15 year old boy. I was like, when do I go? I later learned that was their business model. And it's super effective for teenagers. What they do is they recruit these like young, attractive kids from affluent families. And then they want them to go to like schools and stuff like that before they pull them out to recruit their friends. And it's like, hey, I went to this treatment program and they would tell you when you

[00:15:30] would go like, hey, if any of your friends, you know, that you're doing drugs with or whatever, tell them about us and they'll come. So it's a whole recruitment thing because as a kid, you found something cool and you just want to talk to your friends about it and tell them about it. So it was super effective from like a marketing standpoint, looking back on it. Before we hear from our sponsors, just a quick reminder, our book, A Little Bit Culty,

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[00:16:53] Thank you for listening. Now let's dive back into the cultiverse. So Corey, question there. How calculated is that business model? Because there's no better testimony than a 15-year-old kid going back to his friends and saying what he's saying. Do you think it was that premeditated? Super calculated. Wow. Yeah. After working in the industry on the business side, I mean, that's what these programs live and breathe off of. So there's no real...

[00:17:23] The problem with the troubled teen... This is kind of an aside, but the problem with the troubled teen industry as a whole, and really behavioral health treatment is we practice it here in the United States as a whole, like the residential step-down models and stuff that everybody's going through in one way or another now. There's no there there with any of it. So it's... They all talk about like evidence-based practice and this and that or whatever, but you know, you have to think there are tens of thousands of counties in the United States,

[00:17:52] 50 states in the United States, all of which have different legal frameworks, criteria, you name it. So there's no like unified measurement for what successful treatment looks like or doesn't look like. So it's not like a heart surgery where a surgeon goes in and they do 100,000 or 200,000 heart surgeries with a specific method or using a technology or medication. And then based on those longitudinal studies and clinical trials, they're like, hey, we

[00:18:18] have a 98% success rate utilizing this method or this medication with this. The treatment center, it's all kind of like anecdotal. So they don't have any real longitudinal studies. 90, 95% of these treatment programs don't use what are called independent board review studies, which is where you get a third party that just takes all of your data and looks at it completely objectively and says, well, you could do this or you could do that. And that's how standards are developed in any practice, particularly a medical practice.

[00:18:48] None of it, none of this exists in the behavioral health space because there's no like overall standard of care and there's no real like arc of measurement that standardized that everybody kind of utilizes to measure success in an overall way. And they're not comparing themselves to the efficacy of other programs. So in void of that kind of data, what you do is you come up with testimonials. So then it all becomes anecdotal and testimonial data. It's like, well, we don't know.

[00:19:14] We've treated hundreds of thousands of kids, but we have these five testimonials of kids that just really loved it. And they're basically the ones that were like hanging out there long enough that they could interview them. And a lot of the times they were, these kids are probably like, Jesus Christ, get me the fuck out of this place. I'll say whatever you want me to, if I can leave. You know, so that's kind of how they're doing. Corey, just so you know, testimonials have become somewhat red flags for me now with anything just because I know how they're used.

[00:19:43] And we did that in NXIVM too, by the way. Question for you. Did you realize? Yeah. Yeah, we did. Embarrassingly. Let's say I started to get suspicious and I want to implement some checks and balances to this industry. Let's say, you know, I start to recognize, you know, my son Corey. Yeah. And then if I want to come in and put a checks and balance of you, how is my curiosity about what you're doing met? How do they defend that? It's what I would call having a captive audience. You know what I mean?

[00:20:11] So it's basically you take a kid, send them to a place where everybody's saying that the kid's crazy. And then, of course, the person there is going to be like, I'm not crazy. What the fuck are you talking about? Like, I don't have a drug problem or I don't have this. Usually what they meet it with is like, oh, you're being resistant. They love this term. It's like, oh, he's treatment resistant. It's like, well, what the fuck does that mean? You guys probably wouldn't say like, oh, something's definitely wrong with this kid. I mean, you know, the vaccine worked on every.

[00:20:41] The immediate point would be, oh, they probably, maybe we need to rethink this chemical concoction that we have. But that's not what's going on in the troubled teen programs. If a kid comes there and they're like, what are you talking about? And this Bob guy seems like a dirty hippie from the 70s and doesn't know what the hell he's talking about. None of you have medical degrees or any kind of credible certifications that make you an expert in this field. They're just like, oh, man.

[00:21:07] In my case, I can share from my own experience that I talk about in the book is they would then just start gaslighting you. And one of the things I'll never forget them saying is, is I was going at them about, you know, this and I am, despite the jokes, a Catholic. I was raised in a very fundamentalist kind of Christian family, but Catholicism, for whatever reason, was always a staying point there. And, and, you know, for good or better, I had some belief in that at one point.

[00:21:33] And I remember going into this treatment center and their Bob was like, God, the word, it was the word of Bob. It wasn't the word of God. It was the word of Bob. So whatever Bob said was like the law. And I remember these guys just going in on me about my religion. And they were like, oh man, this is all bullshit. And you know, you've been hoodwinked and blah, blah, blah. And let us explain these ways of thinking. And if you push back at all on them, they would just be like, man, you are so sick. Yeah. You don't even know how sick you are, do you? Wow.

[00:22:03] And for a 15 year old, you know, someone that came from my background, my kind of family, you know, I already had some underlying emotional issues that I was probably born with biochemically that I inherited from my mother or family or whatnot. It's not a hard load to convince this person that there, there's something wrong with them. You know, every teenager feels that way, that something's wrong with them. So they convince you on the one hand that you're like really messed up. And then on the other hand, they present themselves as the only solution for it.

[00:22:32] So it was like, man, you're so screwed up. And then the counselors would do these things where it's like, man, I get you. I get you. I know you. We're the same. You know, in some ways that's very seductive because these are young, very attractive, 20 something year old people to a 15 year old. I mean, to a 43 year old. Now I look at a 21 year old and I'm like, oh my God, they don't know anything. What the hell? Well, they're babies, you know, but to a 15 year old, it's like a God. Totally. You know, you're like, oh. We skipped a little bit.

[00:23:00] I want to go back to your original hook was like hot girls. But then when you get there, tell us a little bit about the like the feelings of belonging and how you decided to. Oh, and there were plenty of hot girls. Yeah. Let me tell you. So they knew how to recruit them. So I showed up to my first meeting and it was at this Methodist church in Augusta, Georgia in a very affluent part of town. And, you know, I pulled up and walking up for these, you know, there's this, he looked just like Kurt Cobain at the time, but there was this counselor there named Bruce and he

[00:23:29] had long hair and, you know, long, long hair, blue eyes. And, you know, this was in 1997. So it was in the height of the kind of grunge thing and all of that stuff. And he walked up with his flannel shirt on and all of that. And then this other counselor there, her name was Jackie. And she came up and I mean, they were just gorgeous. You just get flooded. Imagine a 15 year old who has no friends, who's socially awkward, who's like smoking weed out of, you know, apple cores and shit like that in trailer parks and, you know, drinking malt liquor.

[00:23:59] And then all of a sudden, like 25, 30 of these just gorgeous, you know, kids ranging from like 13 to 19, 20, some of them. And they were all like good looking. 70% of them were women. You know, they're all coming up to you and giving you a hug and being like, oh my God, what's your name? My name's Sarah or Tanya or this or that or whatever. They're giving you hugs. They're telling me they love you. They're like, oh my God, you're going to hang out with us tonight. You're going to hang out with us tonight. It was completely overwhelming to a kid like me.

[00:24:28] I was like, oh, what the fuck is going on here? And everybody's cussing and they're all smoking cigarettes and they're like, you know, effing this and effing that. Because where I was from and, you know, for a lot of kids in the Southeast or a lot of places like that, in terms of like sociability, you have a few options. You have school, you have church, and then you have like, you know, maybe sports and stuff like that. I wasn't any good at sports. I hated church. And, you know, I was a bit of a loser at school.

[00:24:56] So your kind of social options are pretty limited. And then up comes these like 30 kids and they're all just like, hang out with us and do this. And they're taking you to their houses. And these are kids where, you know, in my school, I grew up on the other side of the train tracks. And, you know, these people wouldn't have stepped on me if I were on fire in a normal social situation. But here they were like, you know, in these really affluent families, gated communities. And, you know, their house, their living rooms were bigger than my entire house.

[00:25:24] And they were coming up and being like, let's hang out and do this. And then I was just completely flooded by it. And all these attractive young girls are like, hey, ride my car. You're driving with me tonight. And I was like, oh, yeah, I am. So they had me. And then the counselors sit you down and they just start asking you a bunch of leading questions in there. You know, I remember they talked about how much they love drugs, what drugs they love to use and this and that. And I had done some substances at that point. But, you know, I was 15 years old and poor as hell.

[00:25:54] I hadn't done a lot. So, you know, you do what any kid does. You're hanging out with a bunch of older 20 something year olds and you're like, Jesus Christ, I want these people to like me. So I just started breathing and lying. Be like, oh, yeah, I love this. And I love that ecstasy stuff for this or that. You know, and I didn't even know what the fuck any of this stuff was at the time. But, you know, they just kind of ask you a bunch of leading questions. They were like relating to you, giving you cigarettes. And then at the end of this like 45 minute conversation, they get real serious on you. And they're like, man. So a couple of things.

[00:26:24] One, we're going to have to tell your parents because they're legally required to do that, which is true. But the main part behind that is they want to get your family on board because if they can hook your family in as soon as possible, then the probability of you going into treatment is much, much higher. So getting a random call from a counselor being like, hey, we just had an hour long talk with your son. He really opened up to us and talked about all the drugs that he was doing. And he's also probably really struggling with this and that. And your kid's probably going to die.

[00:26:52] You didn't know this, but he's suicidal and blah, blah, blah, whatever. And they'll just take any little bit of information that you give them in that time and they kind of hold it and then they'll talk to your parents about it. And, you know, any logical or rational parent would be like, oh, my God, my kid's suicidal. He's doing drugs. I knew there were problems in school and this and that, but I didn't know it was that bad. And then they just go in on the sales pitch and it's like, yeah, your kid's fucked. This and that and whatever.

[00:27:18] But like we have a solution and that solution is, you know, this. So that was kind of how it played out for me. But they had me, I mean, hook, line and sinker from the very beginning. I was like, man, I definitely want to do this again. So this is what's new for me that I didn't know is that you could get in yourself versus it seems like all the other triple teen industry stories that I'd heard about. It was a parent being concerned about their kid, you know, smoking weed, acting up, getting arrested or whatever. And then they would seek out these treatment centers.

[00:27:46] But you found yourself there and then they exaggerated and then got your parents up. They love bombed them. I loved them, love bombed them. And eventually isolated you and all the cult stuff, which we're going to get into. But how like your family was really poor. What how did they get the money? Like, why would they be going after somebody like you? I mean, just if it's about money for them. That's what I was trying to figure out. Yeah. To this day, I have no idea where how my family came up with that money. I mean, I think part of it was and they're there.

[00:28:14] God, this stuff is so dense when you start talking about it. But knowing the business side of it now, too, is there there was a consultant that was involved in the treatment program that kind of came in post-festive. And I think that was more how my friend got invited to this as he got in trouble. They went there. So there was sort of ad hoc a consultant that was involved because of my friend who his family did have money. I hung out with them and they would have had money to pay for that. Oddly enough, though, they didn't. His family was like, no, there's something kind of kooky about these people.

[00:28:43] And like, we think we're going to just, you know, they sent them to military school, actually. But like, but with me, my family didn't didn't have that option. So they came to my family and it's a scholarship part of it. And then God knows what my family did to come up with the rest of the money. I mean, you know, back in the day, this was 1997. It was like $9,000, I think, for their outpatient program. And then, you know, housing and all of that other stuff. But, you know, $8,000 or $9,000, whatever it was, that was a lot of money.

[00:29:13] Oh, for sure. You know, anybody back then. And so my family got like a big scholarship from internally. And there's a strategy to that, too, because with. Oh, God, this is where it gets hard to get in the weeds with it. But OK, whatever you want to do. So the way that the kind of unit side economics of these treatment programs work is it is about money at the end of the day. It is about money because they charge these fees, which the numbers that they come up with for their like monthly fees or their treatment fees are completely arbitrary.

[00:29:42] I mean, it's just they're literally like, yeah, $30,000. Let's do $30,000 a month. That sounds about right. And then everything is just to kind of make sure that their margins stay nice and bad on that. But what a lot of places do, because in the treatment world, particularly the troubled teen treatment world, is everything's coming in through referrals in one way or another. So you're either attracting them in through your own kind of alumni and alumni systems, which they rely and invest heavily in, which are situations like mine,

[00:30:10] where you have people that went through the program or going through the program and they attract people to come in to go to. So it's like get your friends to do this as well, which is very effective for teenagers. Or they do outreach to through a variety of different methods where it's like professional. So they'll go to education consultants, which I'm sure you guys have heard a lot about. And they're a big thing in the troubled teen industry. And they're like feeders to these programs. But then there are certain social workers, individual therapists and stuff.

[00:30:38] And most of these people, they have no idea about what's going on on the inside. So you have to think about it from the perspective of a behavioral health provider. So you have a social worker or a psychiatrist or whatever. They have this family that's looking for answers for something, you know, and they're like, hey, we've got Johnny here. He keeps getting in trouble at school. He's doing drugs. He told his mom to go fuck herself. Like, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. He's being a dick or she's being a dick.

[00:31:05] They're doing what teenagers often do, but they're being a dick. And these parents are like, you know, what do I do with my kid? What do I do with my kids? So on the behavioral health side, these psychiatrists or education consultants have these parents that are like, I need you to do something about this. This is what I'm paying you to do something about. And most of the psychiatrists and therapists are like, I don't know what the fuck to tell you know what I mean? They're like, we can try this medication. We can try that.

[00:31:31] So they're just like, please get these people out of my office so that I can move on to the next, you know, struggling individual that I'm trying to treat. So some of it's a capacity thing. So they just start reaching out to whoever and they're like, hey, I have this family. What's going on? Blah, blah, blah. So these intermediaries get in there and they're like, oh, what about this program? Or what about that program or whatever? And the psychiatrist is just like, look, fine. But will they take them? Will they get this person out of here? Like, great, go.

[00:31:59] Because they already have a caseload of, you know, God knows how many people that they have to see in a day. So for them, it's just like, OK, can I give a recommendation to a family and then move on? And then from the family's perspective, they're like, well, my doctor, this person said like you should go there. So we'll give it a try. And that's how it works. So for scholarships and stuff, what a lot of these programs will do, because if an education consultant comes and they try to send you somebody, that's what you want. Because education consultants control who's sending to their program.

[00:32:29] That's who's feeding their program. So if an education consultant comes along and they're like, hey, I got this guy. And then his friend comes along. The consultant, from their perspective, is like, hey, I sent you two people, which in industry parlance is like, wink, wink. I just sent you some money. So how about you send me somebody back? So they leverage the trust. They leverage the trust and they leverage the relationship to send people to back and forth to these things. So a consultant, what likely happened, looking back with the information I have now and the

[00:32:59] knowledge of the industry, is a consultant probably went to them and was like, hey, I've got this kid. I know the program here in Augusta is relatively new. You guys are starting out. So what I need you to do is I need you to scholarship this kid either 100% or at whatever percentage that you can. And don't worry about him. I'll get you another full pay client down the road. And a lot of times these programs, just to get in good with an education consultant, will do that. They'll do a few like scholarship or charity cases is what they'll call them.

[00:33:28] And then from that, they know that by taking somebody like me in, that consultant probably sent up five or six other young individuals later that would pay the full cash price for their program. So it sounds disgusting. A lot of back scratching. It sounds disgusting talking about it this way. It really does, man. It's so disturbing to hear that. But that's how the business operates. I mean, it's really like, okay, you take this one and then I'll send you like five or six others down the line.

[00:33:56] And they know they're good for it because it's like, oh, Linda, this education consultant or Vance, this education consultant, we've been working with him for a while. And, you know, Call it what it is. It's trafficking. It's trafficking. It's totally trafficking. Yeah. Let's take a little break from the cultiverse. Here's a word from our sponsors.

[00:34:28] Thank you, sponsors. We couldn't do it without you. Now let's get back to the show. And you didn't know about any of this. You're hanging out with cool girls and cussing. So you don't know any of this is going on. Tell us a little bit about your, so like once you're in it, once you're hooked, what was it like? Give us like, what were you, people always want to know, like, what was it like in it? Was there anything useful? Was it all bullshit?

[00:34:57] I mean, from an experience standpoint, it was, and I think this is consistent with a lot of survivors, at least from my program, from the cult. It's like when you're in it, it's the best thing in the world. I mean, imagine going from somebody like me who had no friends or limited friends. You know, I came from the kind of area where, you know, it was a pretty regular thing where my, I could stay at my friend's house, but my friends weren't allowed to come over to my house because of where I lived or my parents, you know, those kinds of situations where families

[00:35:27] were like, well, we don't trust our kid over there or whatever. And then all of a sudden it was like, people are fighting people that would never have looked at you girls. It would have never, you know, they would have been like, get away from me. And they're like, oh my God, I love you. And this and that, and they're flirting and, you know, all of this stuff. And I loved it. I mean, I think about back to some of the best times of my life, some of the closest and most secure moments I've ever felt were with people in the group. Now, the turn side to that is, is that we were all like a bunch of, it was like Lord

[00:35:57] of the Flies. I mean, we were a bunch of fucking savages. I mean, we would do things like fun felonies all the time. We would break into places and destroy things. And this was all very much encouraged by the counselors. It was like, just have fun and get out of yourself. What really started to turn for me was about like a couple of things. One was when I actually went into outpatient and a lot of the programming, and this is pretty consistent with most of the trouble teen places. And it's funny, I spoke at a trouble teen conference recently, and they almost crucified

[00:36:24] me for going in on this because they're like, that's not an official thing and whatever, but they all kind of operate off of this tough love idea. So it's like, we're going to be honest with you and we're going to tell you the truth. And because we know you better than you know yourself, and you're so screwed up that you can't believe anything that's going on in your head. We want you to just tell us everything and constantly share and dump in this and that. So when I was in treatment, I talked about some stuff that happened when I was a kid. And, you know, I have a half brother who was very mentally ill and he tried to murder

[00:36:54] me a couple of times and I had a, you know, a very mentally ill mother that was quite physically abusive and verbally abusive and just a lot of things that kids should never go through. But I went through them when I was a kid. And I remember going through these stories and stuff like that. And, you know, there were some other experiences where, you know, which is very common with a lot of young men and stuff where they experiment with other, you know, always touching boys and, you know, that kind of stuff. But and they just the way that they kind of would hook on to that and be like, what are

[00:37:24] you up? And please forgive listeners and everybody. But this was the vernacular that they use at the time. They go, what are you a fag? Are you a fag or something? Is that what it is? And you were like, oh, because they didn't believe in gay people and stuff like that. And I had a lot of gay friends. So that was kind of one. And I was like, well, I don't think it's that. And I mean, I knew nothing about nothing at the time, but I was like, I don't. That was a red flag for you. Yeah, it was a red flag. Well, it was just very black and white. It was like, you're either gay or you're not gay. And there was something about that where I was like, well, that doesn't.

[00:37:53] I was like, I don't think it has anything to do with gay. I was like, kids just, you know, do weird shit sometimes. And then I was talking to him about my family was the kind of big one where, you know, I was talking about my mother and some really kind of horrific things that that happened with her in a suicide attempt. And, you know, a lot of that. And I remember the counselor at the time just got real serious and kind of looked at me and she was like, this is all your shit, dude. She was like, you chose this. And I remember thinking like, are you out of your fucking mind, lady?

[00:38:22] Like, what are you talking about? And it was this real kind of Zen, this weird spin on like Zen Buddhism and radical accountability and all of that. But it was like somehow in my afterlife, I had chose to be born into this body and that my whole experience was all my choice to this point. So all I needed to do was just change my mind about situations and like, you know, think about things differently and blah, blah, blah. I've always been like an academically rigorous kid. So I was a nerd.

[00:38:51] I was really good in school and I always had critical thinking. So I had a lot to say about that. And the counseling session, I called my counselor of CUNT and because she was the one that was kind of, I was like, oh, fuck you, cunt. And, you know, just went off and all of that. And she was like, oh, but that was really, that was like a huge red flag for me. Cause I was like, how could you say that? I chose this. I was like, my mother was abusive and she did this and that. I was like, how did I choose that? And that was the first kind of real pushback that I gave them.

[00:39:19] And that was about six months in, I would say. And at that point, it became very apparent that there was a line that you didn't cross and that I was crossing that line. And that line was that I was challenging the authority of the counselors on the knowledge that they were getting. And they're like, hey man, that's not cool. And, you know, after that session, I got brought in. It was a group session. I got brought into the counselor's office and they gave me like a real talking to. And I was shamed by everyone in the group. I mean, everybody in the group.

[00:39:48] And it was kind of black and white. It was like, everybody went from like, oh, you love me to whatever to like, oh, Corey called, you know, Shannon a cunt and challenged her on the thing. And it wasn't so much that I called her a name. It was that I challenged her authority on information and everybody in the group just kind of turned on me. And I remember thinking distinctively about six months in like, yo, this isn't right. What you were picking up on there is something that so many cults do,

[00:40:14] including NXIVM, which is basically to make the radical accountability, saying that this is something that you chose or like, you know, our terminology is like, you authored this. Yeah. You know, you caused this. And it's this like toxic spiritual. It was gaslighting also, but it's like a toxic spiritual bullshit. It's proactive gaslighting. Yeah. It's like. Good for you for standing up. Yeah. So I, so I got in a big row with the counselors at that time. And then I got brought back into the office and they basically were like, look, dude, if you do that again, you're out.

[00:40:44] And in the treatment groups, like anyone that has any kind of experience professionally or anecdotally with drug addicts and particularly teenage drug addicts or people that are alleged drug addicts are using substances is they're going to relapse. It's just, it's part of the deal. Like they're going to drink or they're going to do that. There was something's going to happen. And it's just like part of the process for lack of better word. It's the same with any kind of mental health episode or whatever. They're going to be like recidivism episodes. You know, individuals are going to revert back into behavior.

[00:41:13] They're going to become triggered, whatever. But in the group, they had a very sophisticated way of dealing with it. And a lot of other places do it too, is it wasn't very much consistent with what I saw on that Netflix thing wayward, which I can't wait to talk about, but they didn't call it a relapse. If you engaged in bad behavior or you kind of did this or did that or whatever, they, they reframed it in a way of, instead of like in a, they'd be like, Oh, well, that's just your disease or, you know, whatever, which is also kind of manipulative and odd way of personifying.

[00:41:44] Totally is. Yeah. But in the group, they would be like, dude, you bailed on us. So it wasn't like you relapse and you have this disease, which they would tell you about. They'd be like, Oh man, you've got this illness and you're completely fucked and like whatever. But because of radical accountability and all of that, it's like, everything is your choice. So if you use, it wasn't because of your disease that they told you that they had, of which you have no control over and you're powerless over. It was a conscious choice for you to leave and abandon the group.

[00:42:11] And it was like, it's kind of like your parents being like, I'm not angry. I'm just disappointed. Cause everything was about you being in and around people in the group, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year overnight in a nanosecond that would get cut off. And they wouldn't talk to you. They wouldn't call you. They'd be like, I'm sorry, dude. You're just, you know, you bailed on us. And that was it. And you were completely cut off. So you can imagine what that emotionally does to a teenager, but also it's a hell of

[00:42:39] an accountability mechanism because the counselors would basically sit you down and be like, look, dude, you're out and nobody's going to talk to you. Nobody's going to call you. You're not going to go to these groups anymore. And we're going to tell you, not only are everyone in the program going to abandon you, but then you have these professionals, the counselors that will call your parents and be like, your kid is going to die. And most of the time it would be like, your kid is really fucked up. He's really treatment resistant. He's going to die.

[00:43:05] And what that means is that we need to upsell you to the next level of care, which is their, which was their inpatient program. And you saw, which they called step two. They tried to do that with my family, but my dad was basically. Like, look, you've already gotten like X amount of money out of me. There's no more blood left in this stone. So you're either going to work with this kid or you're not going to work with this kid. And I was like, I didn't want to be abandoned by all my friends and stuff.

[00:43:31] So I, you quickly learn how to toe the line and you learn what the boundaries of acceptable and not acceptable are. So that was kind of my experience in there, how they police behavior and stuff. And then everything beyond that is internalized peer pressure. So you have a bunch of other kids that are being told the same shit from these counselors who know nothing about nothing and whose training is cancel culture. Yeah, it's cancel culture. Yeah. And then, then they're all just like repeating the same nonsense. So you get a real group think mentality. And, you know, it's very effective.

[00:44:01] If you've got 25, 30 kids that are all, they're just hanging out with each other. We were only allowed to have jobs with people in the group. You could only live with people in the group. You either stayed at people in the group's house or they stayed with you at your house. You were never, ever alone, ever alone. And because of that, you are also never able to think for yourself because the basis of it was like, you're thinking it's completely screwed and you can't trust anything that your mind says. So we're constantly like communicating, sharing what was going on in our heads to other kids

[00:44:31] and in group settings. And I mean, you'd have young girls talking about like 13, 14, 15 year old, 16 year old girls talking about being raped, being molested in male settings. And it's like, I, even at like 15, 16 years old, I was like, I probably shouldn't be hearing this, but you would hear about it nonetheless. And eventually it's, I mean, looking back on it, it's embarrassing. Like some of the behavior and some of the stuff that you buy into, it's like, Jesus Christ, I can't believe I said that. Yeah, we get it.

[00:45:01] It's a really weird thing though, because when you're in it, it's like, of course I'm doing that. Like why, what there's some, it's not that there's something wrong with me that I'm doing it. It's, there's something wrong with you that you're not doing this, you know? And I think that's the real, that's when they know you drank the Kool-Aid is when it's, and they rave about it. They call it a, they're like, oh man, your perception is changing, which is like a really sophisticated way of being like, we're brainwashing you. But like, yeah, man, you've seen the light. Congratulations.

[00:45:30] Wow, your perception is changing. It's like, oh bro, you've seen the light. He gets it. We would say that once they, and you'd see it, you could see the flip switch in a kid's brain when they're like, and they get the twinkle on your, then it's like, oh, you get it, man. You get it. And then you're just off to the races. I want to know how you escaped. But first, let's just wrap this section up. Knowing what you know now, you've obviously done a lot of comparison in your book and in

[00:45:58] your work and your advocacy with the troubled teen industry and cultic situations. What are, give us like, we've talked about love bombing, talk about isolation, group think, internalized peer pressure for policing, telling on each other, leverage trust. Anything we missed? There's always at least one token person for credibility is what I would say. So all of these programs, and if you look at any of the troubled teen programs or any of that stuff, they always have like, I call it the token medical professional. You know what I mean?

[00:46:24] And most of the time, it's just like, yeah, it's like the, exactly. It's like the guy in a lab coat. It's like, this is scientific. We have 30 studies. So they always have some like psychiatrist or whoever. And if you look at, I didn't know this then, but you're just like, oh yeah, they would be like, oh, doctor, this person or doctor, that person endorses the program and they have a PhD or they have a medical license from this.

[00:46:50] And the reality is, is this person is probably a 1099 employee. So he's just like a subcontractor. He's basically just like a face on the website. The doctor's there. If they need the doctor, they're paying the doctor per diem or like a basic kind of fee so that he stays on as a consultant. So he's probably getting like a set, you know, whatever, 10,000 a month or whatever the hell it is from the program just to be like their go-to doctor.

[00:47:17] There are literally thousands of treatment centers and thousands and thousands of treatment centers in Los Angeles. And if you look at them, they all have doctors. But if you start looking at the doctors, you'll find that it's about 10 or 12 doctors that work for the same treatment programs again and again and again and again. So they're just literally on there as like, uh, they get subcontracted in and then they're there to see patients for like, you know, five, 15 minutes at a time.

[00:47:45] And with the patients, it would be a zoom meeting like this. They're like, Hey, so how are things going? Not on any medication. You feeling okay? If you are a medication, what's, what's that like? Okay, cool. All right. Take it easy. Nice meeting you, whatever. And then that doctor gets paid for his, you know, doctoral services and everyone's like, aren't we doing such a great job? Well, this has to be a house of cards and really these come down when like there's dead kids, right?

[00:48:14] Like let's get into that in part two. Okay. End on that. You're ending the section. Okay. I see what you did there. So just one other thought just to wrap up the different cult likes things and we'll end this. You mentioned it earlier, the pathologizing of pushback or gaslighting. Like that is such a classic gaslighting thing. Like even Nippy who like wouldn't follow all the NXIVM rules because he had more autonomy than most of us. And he was labeled defiant. You know what I mean? Like that's so fucking classic.

[00:48:43] I didn't care because I'm defiant. Yeah. Me too. Yeah. We would have. Cut my pay. We would have. You totally would have. I can't wait to hear how you got out and what you're doing now and how, you know, we can make changes. Come back this Thursday for part two with Corey Gentry.

[00:49:24] We hope you're enjoying A Little Bit Culty. If so, please do show us some love. Drop a rating or leave a review. Hit subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen. And subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com slash a little bit culty. Even better, send this episode to someone who needs it. Maybe they're in a cult. Maybe they're just a little bit susceptible. Or maybe they just love a good story. Spread the word. Spread the love. Thanks for listening. And see you next time. A Little Bit Culty is a Trace 120 production.

[00:49:51] Executive produced by Sarah Edmondson and Anthony Nippy Ames in collaboration with producer Will Rutherford at Citizens of Sound. Our co-creator is Jess Temple Tardy. Our production coordinator is Leslie Dinsenbor. Writing by Sandra Nomoto and social media marketing by Eric Swarczynski and Brooke Keane. Our theme song Cultivated is by the artists John Bryant and Nigel Aslan.