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Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous.
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Ooh, juicy episode, Monica.
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What do we got?
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Cults.
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Wow, really juicy.
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This one runs the gamut.
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I left this episode with tremendous heartbreak for people who grow up in some of these.
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Me too.
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Microcultures or cults or whatever you want to call them.
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Ooh, culture, cult.
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That s where it comes from.
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Wow, I never thought of that.
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I think I say this in the episode, but even though we tell people not to listen, and this one s tough to listen to, I think this is required listening.
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Yeah, this one is pretty required listening.
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Not that I ve never acknowledged this, but it was yet again another opportunity to acknowledge you can start in a pit.
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You just get brought home from the hospital and you don t pick.
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And so wherever I ve evolved to needs a big old asterisk.
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Like I started in a super open dialogue house where the truth was the reigning principle, where there was justice, where I could have my own opinion.
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Yeah, when I look at where I started to where I ended, it s probably a 10th of the ground that some of the people in this episode have covered in their lifetime.
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And fuck am I, I m so lucky.
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to have been born in Laura LeBeau s household.
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Shout out Laura LeBeau, I love you, and I m so lucky.
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And my heart breaks for people.
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Yeah, it s tough.
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It s also juicy though.
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It s also a great episode.
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Yes, it s a great episode.
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Oh, before we go, we have prompts for next month, so.
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Tell us about crazy cosplay, whatever that means.
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I mean, I m doing this prompt because I don t really understand what cosplay is and I don t even know.
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Am I saying it correctly?
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Yeah.
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Okay.
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So tell us about a crazy cosplay experience.
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Okay.
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Tell us about your worst day.
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This is inspired by Alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.
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You guys both knew that, but I don t, that doesn t ring a bell to me.
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It s a big children s book.
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Okay, so tell us about your worst day.
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Tell us your best cautionary tale.
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Is that the same as worst day or no?
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No, it s not.
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Cautionary tale is like a story that when you say it,
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Like don t eat the shrimp at Sizzler.
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Okay, so this is a pretty wide net, okay.
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And then this one I m particularly excited about.
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Tell us about a crazy experience you ve had as a delivery driver.
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That could be UPS, that could be any kind of delivery service where you re entering people s property, food delivery, you name it.
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Messenger, I was a messenger.
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Nate has the best, we should almost talk to Nate for that one about dropping something off to,
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Okay.
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DVD.
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Please enjoy Armchair Anonymous, Cults.
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Oh my God.
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Juicy cult.
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Oh, this one s going to be sticky.
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This one s going to be juicy.
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Hello.
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Is this Christina?
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It is.
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I m Dax.
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This is Monica.
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Is it your real name?
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It is.
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You look young to me.
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I m actually 30.
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Oh my God.
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Congratulations.
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You made it to 30.
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I did.
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And where are you in the world?
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I m in Brooklyn, but I m actually in the process of moving to Spain on Monday.
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No way.
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How exciting.
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Are you so excited or are you nervous or both?
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SPEAKER_01
I m super excited.
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I m going to move to finally be with my long distance boyfriend of two years.
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Oh, wow.
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And is he a Spaniard?
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He s Venezuelan.
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Oh, Venezuelan.
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I wonder if he knows Ana s family.
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That s improbable, but it s a nice thought.
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It d be great.
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They re a great family.
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Did you guys meet online?
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SPEAKER_01
No, we met in Spain.
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His cousin is my sister s ex-boyfriend.
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Okay.
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Meet Q. All right.
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So you were so crazy to say it, right?
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You were in a cult?
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You re involved somehow.
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There s a cult story.
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Yes.
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So it starts in 2016.
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You re 22.
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Yes, at the time.
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My dad and my stepmom had just done this self-development course that they were super pumped about called Executive Success Program, now known as Nexia.
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Fuck!
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Whoa.
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Oh my God.
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I almost got chills.
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You did?
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Like my brain got chills, but my body didn t.
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SPEAKER_03
Well, you might be AF.
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Because of the malaria pills.
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SPEAKER_04
Well, no, you might be a, um, a responsive arousal person.
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SPEAKER_03
Oh, maybe.
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SPEAKER_03
Right.
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Right.
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Right.
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Okay.
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So you were 22 in your dad and your step-mom, they took a course.
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And by the way, when I was watching the doc, the courses are good.
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They re very similar to many landmark, all these ones that would help you find the truth of the story you re telling yourself, right?
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There s some good shit.
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It actually changed my life and my family s life.
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My mom and my dad had a really tough divorce.
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And after doing this, it brought my entire family together.
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And we now spend Thanksgiving all together with my mom and my stepdad just because they were able to go back and heal.
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That s great.
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A lot of positive came from it.
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Not all bad.
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SPEAKER_04
Yeah, yeah.
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So they ended up convincing my sister and I to
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They re like, you have to do this.
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We ll pay for you to do the first course.
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It s worth it.
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We go to this five day intensive from 8 a.m.
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to 9 p.m.
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in the photo studio where it s 20 people.
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You re sitting in front of a screen and you watch videos and do exercises.
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And these videos are like from the 80s.
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Okay.
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Okay.
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Now who, this is probably a tricky thing to go through because you now have a relationship or feeling about all of it, but you have to kind of access what you felt like back then.
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So I m imagining a 22, you show up and you re like, this is so awkward, but pretty quickly in, does it start feeling fun and productive?
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SPEAKER_01
Some things were fun and some things were really emotionally hard.
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There was a lot of crying.
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SPEAKER_01
Oh, really?
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Cause you have to face a lot of fears and it s all about separating the emotional from the actual experience that you have.
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Right.
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I think that s the positive that you get out of it, but in it, it wasn t the most enjoyable.
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Super exhausting.
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I mean, you re there for 13 hours too.
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And were you and your sister kind of having parallel experiences or was she taking it differently than you?
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She took it differently.
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She took it very much like, I am not a fan of this really.
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And I was like, I think this is great.
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I m committed.
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SPEAKER_01
I m in.
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I mean, they start everything with like a pledge and they have the sashes.
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And I was in a sorority.
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SPEAKER_01
So those things to me weren t as woo woo.
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And my sister was the opposite.
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So for her, she was.
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Skeptical.
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Super.
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And a few months later was this thing they do called V-Week, which is Keith Raniere s birthday that they celebrate, and they call him Vanguard.
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Oh, yeah.
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Oh, my God.
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SPEAKER_04
And they call him V!
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Well, all of these programs have way too many acronyms.
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Scientology s all got acronyms.
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They live on acronyms.
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Well, that s not the weird part.
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The part is that they dedicated this whole week to this co-leader.
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Well, he s the smartest man who ever lived.
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He deserves a week-long birthday.
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His whole thing was, I m not here to celebrate myself.
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I m here to celebrate my mother.
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She s the one who birthed me.
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A lot of faux humility.
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The way I was able to go was because I was going to volunteer for the kids camp.
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They had this other program school for kids called Rainbow Cultural Gardens, similar to a Montessori sort of structure, but it was all based on exposing these kids to different languages.
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Sorry, we just laugh, but it has more to do with, we were just arguing the merit of requiring people to take two years of a foreign language for college.
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So you just kind of wandered into the aftermath of that debate.
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So it was kind of funny that you just said that.
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Yeah, it was sim.
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So Keith Raniere agrees with you.
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Because I speak English and Spanish, they were like, even better, more languages, more cultures.
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Great.
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So this is where I was introduced to India, who was one of the women
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She tells her story in the documentary.
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She was one of the main women who ended up being in DOS.
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I was watching Sarah Edmondson s son, so I was around all of these really big members, lots of sashes.
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I will call her Gabby.
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I m not going to say her name because she s still anonymous in the world.
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She was one of
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Keith s girlfriends.
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I didn t know at the time she and I got really close because she was the other Spanish speaker and Keith would do these big speeches in the auditorium and would sit and talk and share and At the end she s like I d love for you to
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meet Keith and she brought me and introduced me to him and it felt very much like a presentation.
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Now up until this point, so you like the program and you see the merit in it and you had a good time.
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How enamored are you with Keith?
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Are you kind of buying in?
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SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
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The listener needs to know this.
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SPEAKER_01
I m not saying this to make you uncomfortable.
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SPEAKER_01
You re outrageously cute.
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SPEAKER_01
You re like so cute.
1
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It s impossible.
1
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So I m already thinking the girlfriend maybe wanted to introduce you.
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SPEAKER_02
To bring in a new girlfriend?
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There s no way he didn t notice you.
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Wouldn t the girlfriend not want to bring a cute girl?
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He had tricked all of them.
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SPEAKER_01
They were getting more love from him by getting more girls for him.
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SPEAKER_01
I m sorry.
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I shouldn t speak.
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You would know better than me, but my understanding is like the girlfriends would go out and recruit new girlfriends.
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Yeah.
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Cause they wanted to please him.
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And so the more women they could bring to him, the better.
1
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
1
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So you were enamored by him.
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Cause I was like, wow, this man is so smart.
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He s taught so many things.
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SPEAKER_00
He has so many ideas.
1
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And I was 22 and I so wide.
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Also your most trusted figures in your life there into your parents, like the whole thing.
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SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
So I had no second thoughts about anything.
1
SPEAKER_00
And just after that, I was planning on moving to London.
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SPEAKER_00
I hop around a lot and they have one of the rainbow centers, the schools in London, and they were like, you should go work there.
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SPEAKER_00
It d be so great.
1
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, sure.
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That way I have a job there also.
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And they paid you.
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I mean, minimal, right?
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And they have a lot of well-known clients that have their kids there as students.
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And what they ended up having me do is one of their clients wanted one of the teachers to go with them to their house in Madrid.
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teacher and I was like great you re like on a wild adventure through this it s like all over the place I go and this poor kid wants nothing to do with me he hates me because he has so many nannies and teachers and people being rotated and he was four he s like just give me my fucking mom he saw his parents 30 minutes a day
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Eventually because of the stress I ended up having a seizure.
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Ding, ding, ding.
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Congratulations, you guys.
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Both really cute.
1
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Did you like it?
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SPEAKER_01
Yes.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, that s scary.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was like my second or third seizure.
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So they didn t really know what was happening yet and what was going on.
1
SPEAKER_00
And so I ended up going to the hospital, then flying back home to California, which is where I m from.
1
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And then I was like, OK, I m sort of done with this.
1
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And Gabby had reached out and she was like, I d love to continue mentoring you.
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Let s try and get you to do more courses and work on these things.
1
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And I was like, A, I can t afford this.
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This is completely.
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out of my budget and I have too much going on.
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SPEAKER_00
I can t.
1
SPEAKER_00
And that was when I dropped out.
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But during all of this, my stepmom and my dad are like full on.
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Right.
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They re going all in.
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SPEAKER_00
My stepmom was in all of the women s groups and going to different events in Mexico.
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And she was full on moving up the ranks also and trying to bring as many people in as she could because she was completely obsessed with everything that they offered.
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Really quick, Christina, when you left, would you say you were disillusioned at that point?
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Or you knew you had other shit and you just lost interest?
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Or were you like, this is weird.
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And I actually don t want to agree with it.
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A bit of both.
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People are a bit aggressive, forcing things on you.
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And emotionally people are just on your back of like, I need you.
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I want you.
1
SPEAKER_00
You re so great.
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SPEAKER_00
You can see through it a bit.
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SPEAKER_00
Definitely.
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SPEAKER_00
But I was like, you do you to my parents.
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It s working for you.
1
SPEAKER_00
Great.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh my God.
1
SPEAKER_00
Your poor sister.
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Or your lucky sister.
1
SPEAKER_00
Well, no.
1
SPEAKER_01
She s just like, my whole family s in this.
1
SPEAKER_00
As my stepmom gets more involved, she was having more of the higher-ups also reaching out to her.
1
SPEAKER_00
Hey, we actually have this sort of discreet, confidential group we d love for you to be a part of.
1
SPEAKER_00
But to do so, we need you to give us collateral.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
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And for people who have not watched the doc, which you should, it s incredible.
1
SPEAKER_01
Collateral is going to mean something that you d be incredibly embarrassed to get out so that they have some kind of leverage over you to make sure you ll maintain secrecy.
1
SPEAKER_00
She was very much like, this seems super wrong, but I also love this.
1
SPEAKER_00
I don t know what to do.
1
SPEAKER_00
And finally she was like, this shit s too weird.
1
SPEAKER_01
She got to the crossroads and she, wow.
1
SPEAKER_00
And because of how high up she was, they like black you out.
1
SPEAKER_00
They sort of shun you.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s like getting labeled an SP in Scientology, a suppressive person.
1
SPEAKER_01
You re persona non grata and a threat to everything.
1
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
1
SPEAKER_00
And as more women and more people started dropping out and they started talking, they re like, something isn t right here.
1
SPEAKER_00
And then finally, when she heard that Sarah Edmondson had spoken up about it, she decided to be one of the witnesses that went against him in court.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh, wow.
1
SPEAKER_01
She was part of that trial.
1
SPEAKER_00
She was part of the trial.
1
SPEAKER_00
She ended up writing a book about her whole experience in it too, because it was a lot of ups and downs.
1
SPEAKER_00
Was she one of Keith s girlfriends?
1
SPEAKER_00
No.
1
SPEAKER_01
That s what I m wondering.
1
SPEAKER_01
I can totally understand being enamored.
1
SPEAKER_01
The person s like a Dalai Lama or something.
1
SPEAKER_01
They re on some different spiritual plane.
1
SPEAKER_01
But when the rubber meets the road, when you actually end up in a bedroom with them, there s got to be a moment where you re like, whoa, wait, this godly creature.
1
SPEAKER_02
Not if you think so highly.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_02
You re in love with them.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I m happy for you.
1
SPEAKER_01
Cause I could imagine he would have very much wanted you to be a part.
1
SPEAKER_01
Cause I watched the doc and I feel like you were a bullseye of what he was looking for.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, oh God.
1
SPEAKER_00
It was an experience and a wild story to tell, especially when all of the documentaries and the stories were coming out.
1
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it must be so wild for you to watch the doc and know you were a part of it.
1
SPEAKER_00
And see all these people that I was with, mind blowing.
1
SPEAKER_00
But I m so grateful that my family, A, got a lot of good things out of it, and also didn t go too deep.
1
SPEAKER_01
Also, weird to be thankful for, but epilepsy.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh.
1
SPEAKER_01
I mean, literally, that might be how you don t end up getting deeper and deeper and deeper.
1
SPEAKER_00
Are you on Keppra?
1
SPEAKER_00
Keppra didn t work for me.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m on Lamictal, Zonagran, and Excopri, because my epilepsy is drug resistant.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh, wow.
1
SPEAKER_00
So every time they put me on one,
1
SPEAKER_00
It ll work and then I ll have breakthrough seizures.
1
SPEAKER_00
I actually just did a procedure where they test to see if I m a surgical candidate.
1
SPEAKER_01
To do a little corridor in your brain?
1
SPEAKER_00
They put in 17 depth electrodes and opened up my cranial to put in strip electrodes on my brain and found out I am a candidate.
1
SPEAKER_00
So next year I ll be getting the surgery.
1
SPEAKER_00
Oh my gosh.
1
SPEAKER_02
We re sending you lots of love for that.
1
SPEAKER_01
Big time.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then look for the prompt.
1
SPEAKER_01
Have you ever gotten brain surgery?
1
SPEAKER_01
That could come down the pike.
1
SPEAKER_01
Have you ever gotten radical?
1
SPEAKER_02
Wait till you ve done it before we add it.
1
SPEAKER_01
All right.
1
SPEAKER_01
Sharing that.
1
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, this was delightful.
1
SPEAKER_01
I hope you have so much fun in Spain.
1
SPEAKER_00
Thank you.
1
SPEAKER_00
I m so excited.
1
SPEAKER_00
It s time for me to be with my love.
1
SPEAKER_01
Oh, wonderful.
1
SPEAKER_01
All right.
1
SPEAKER_01
Well, have fun.
1
SPEAKER_01
Nice meeting you.
1
SPEAKER_02
Nice meeting you guys.
1
SPEAKER_01
Bye.
1
SPEAKER_02
I guess she was wearing a medical bracelet.
1
SPEAKER_01
She was wearing one of those... Cuffs.
1
SPEAKER_02
She was wearing a bone cuff.
1
SPEAKER_02
It s fashion.
1
SPEAKER_02
But also she was wearing a medical bracelet.
1
SPEAKER_02
That was kind of fashion-y.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was pretty.
1
SPEAKER_01
But what s the name of that one that s... Tiffany Bone Cuff.
1
SPEAKER_01
Tiffany.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
But I thought the bone cuff was a big boy like you wear.
1
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m talking about the one that a lot of people have.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s thin and it has circles in it like with the screws.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s popular.
1
SPEAKER_02
Oh, I don t know what that one s called.
1
SPEAKER_01
Okay, I ll figure it out.
1
SPEAKER_01
Colts.
1
SPEAKER_01
This is awesome.
1
SPEAKER_02
It is really cool.
1
SPEAKER_02
I mean, it s awful.
1
SPEAKER_02
It s really awful and cool.
1
SPEAKER_01
Hello.
1
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
1
SPEAKER_01
Look at this bizarre microphone.
1
SPEAKER_01
I know it lets me know when it s on just for the listener.
1
SPEAKER_01
You re holding a very phallic and the shaft is glowing blue.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s got lights in it and you sound great.
1
SPEAKER_01
Thanks.
1
SPEAKER_01
Is this a quadrillion dollars, this thing?
1
SPEAKER_01
No, I got it on Amazon.
1
SPEAKER_01
It was recommended.
1
SPEAKER_01
I m a podcaster as well.
1
SPEAKER_01
I think I might want this.
1
SPEAKER_01
It s very high tech.
1
SPEAKER_01
If we ever did a night episode.
1
SPEAKER_02
Okay.
1
SPEAKER_01
That d be fun to do like an armchair in the dark and we have glowing microphones.
1
SPEAKER_01
We have gone past when the sun went down and there s no lighting in here.
1
SPEAKER_02
Okay, I feel like I have a memory, but maybe it was a dream where we did one in the dark.
1
SPEAKER_01
We should do one in the dark.
1
SPEAKER_01
I don t think we have.
1
SPEAKER_02
Okay, then I made that up.
1
SPEAKER_01
And then let s get these glowing microphones.
1
SPEAKER_01
Ruan, you have really opened up the door for a whole new thing for us.
1
SPEAKER_02
Glad I could contribute something.
2
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so Ruan, you were involved with a cult.
2
SPEAKER_01
I was.
2
SPEAKER_01
Oh my gosh.
2
SPEAKER_01
Tell us.
2
SPEAKER_01
Please tell us.
2
SPEAKER_00
A little over 10 years ago.
2
SPEAKER_00
Do you want me to say how I got into it?
2
SPEAKER_00
That thing s glowing blue.
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SPEAKER_00
It means you re hot.
2
SPEAKER_00
Let s go.
2
SPEAKER_00
I used to watch TED Talks a lot when I was in college.
2
SPEAKER_00
One I kept going back to, it was titled Orgasm, The Cure to the Hunger in the Western Woman.
2
SPEAKER_00
Oh my.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was a 19 year old man.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I clicked on it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Obviously it was the founder of the cult I was in.
2
SPEAKER_00
She gave a talk that was kind of about sex was really about connection.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it really spoke to me as a kind of lonely, very anxious 19 year old.
2
SPEAKER_01
What was the premise of her Ted talk?
2
SPEAKER_01
I ve heard this one thing that s maybe it s a cult, but it s about orgasm yoga.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
Orgasmic meditation.
2
SPEAKER_01
Is that what the topic was of her Ted talk?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it was about how she found it, how intimate touch was a way to deeply connect in a way that most people didn t connect in society.
2
SPEAKER_00
So that spoke to me.
2
SPEAKER_00
I never thought about that, although I was quite socially disconnected and awkward and pretty lonely without realizing it.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right.
2
SPEAKER_00
So a couple of years later, Tim Ferriss, whose books I really enjoyed, had a chapter, the Orgasm chapter, and his second book was written with One Taste, the cult I was in.
2
SPEAKER_00
No one knew I was a cult back then.
2
SPEAKER_00
That was a couple years after college, and I kind of decided that I really wanted to take classes with them.
2
SPEAKER_00
They seemed to have the answer to my dysphoria, or quarter-life crisis, if you will.
2
SPEAKER_00
Or loneliness, we might call it.
2
SPEAKER_00
All of those things.
2
SPEAKER_00
I had a lot going on.
2
SPEAKER_00
They were based in San Francisco, but they were setting up a New York branch.
2
SPEAKER_00
I started going to their intro events.
2
SPEAKER_00
I didn t really understand what they were about, but they got me to speak vulnerably in a way that I was not used to as a, at that point, 23 year olds.
2
SPEAKER_00
And one thing led to another, it seemed like this magical group of people that were super expressive and could read people in an amazing way.
2
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, there was sexuality as part of their practice that was intriguing.
2
SPEAKER_00
What was the extent of that?
2
SPEAKER_00
Well, they taught this practice called orgasmic meditation.
2
SPEAKER_00
It actually
2
SPEAKER_00
is an iteration of a practice other cults from the 60s did.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s a whole, like, family tree of cults.
2
SPEAKER_00
Maybe you ve discovered this already with your other interviews, but it was a practice where a man strokes a woman s clitoris in a meditative fashion to achieve various benefits.
2
SPEAKER_00
Some were greatly exaggerated, but it was like, you feel a level of connection that you don t normally feel in day-to-day.
2
SPEAKER_02
Well, we know biologically— That s just regular sex.
2
SPEAKER_01
Sure.
2
SPEAKER_01
And we know biologically.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_01
After an orgasm, a woman gets a big release of oxytocin, which is the love hormone.
2
SPEAKER_01
That is true.
2
SPEAKER_01
You do connect from post-orgasmic activity.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
The idea is you re entering a state of high sensation together where the man is not being stimulated.
2
SPEAKER_00
I ve worked for them, so I know how to explain this in their fashion, of course, but the man trains his intuition to put his attention on a woman, which most men are not trained to do.
2
SPEAKER_00
So I mean, within a couple of months, I moved in with them.
2
SPEAKER_00
They had a residence in Harlem.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was a penthouse.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was kind of like a reality show mixed with like a yoga ashram.
2
SPEAKER_00
We got up at seven every day.
2
SPEAKER_00
We did the OM practice.
2
SPEAKER_00
We meditated.
2
SPEAKER_00
We did yoga.
2
SPEAKER_00
We ate super healthy.
2
SPEAKER_00
Did you feel great?
2
SPEAKER_00
It was amazing.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, the first couple of months, it was very weird because it was a totally different world.
2
SPEAKER_00
There s also a female-run cult, which I think is kind of unique.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was like kind of anti-patriarchal and feminist and egalitarian and all about connection and not competition.
2
SPEAKER_00
So this spoke to me at this time in my life.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then within a few months, I started working for them.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s when I started to see the dark side of how they mixed sex and seduction in with sales.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, a lot of it was driven about trying to get people s money, essentially.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right.
2
SPEAKER_00
They sold personal development courses for really high prices.
2
SPEAKER_00
A lot of people went into debt, including myself, to pay for their courses.
2
SPEAKER_00
And I was basically in for two years and I saw a lot of things that were both incredibly positively transforming for me, but also a lot of the dark side of human nature, people getting mind fucked and brainwashed and gas lit, emotionally shattered.
2
SPEAKER_01
Had you fallen in love with anyone there in that two years?
2
SPEAKER_01
Could you have a girlfriend?
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, well one of the things they did, and probably all cults do this to some degree, is they wanted to control how people fell in love.
2
SPEAKER_00
So if you entered in a relationship, that relationship usually was broken up, and then somehow you d be encouraged to be with someone else, but it was kind of within the cult structure.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because everyone was kind of in love with the cults, ultimately.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s what they wanted.
2
SPEAKER_01
I d also imagine too, like when you fall in love with somebody and then you develop this real bond of trust, you re going to maybe start airing some of your questions that normally you wouldn t bring up to someone that you don t trust.
2
SPEAKER_01
So as two people get closer and the trust bond gets there, they might defect.
2
SPEAKER_01
It seems potentially damaging for the cult.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s like they wanted to have control of the reality.
2
SPEAKER_00
And when you re in love separately, you kind of have your own personal reality.
2
SPEAKER_00
So they made people fall in love.
2
SPEAKER_00
I did fall in love a few times while I was there, but it was almost under the guidance or approval of my cult mentor.
2
SPEAKER_00
Cause the cult is kind of like a family and my mentor jokingly, she would say she was my mom, like a work mom in like a office, but she actually was my mom as far as our behavior.
2
SPEAKER_00
But did you have to stimulate her ever?
2
SPEAKER_00
No one had to do anything.
2
SPEAKER_00
That was kind of one of their principles.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like everyone acted by desire.
2
SPEAKER_00
But then they found ways to twist people s desires of course.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right.
2
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
2
SPEAKER_00
So to answer your question, I didn t have to, I did, because everyone did this, but it always felt weird.
2
SPEAKER_00
We really did have like a mother-son bond.
2
SPEAKER_00
Even for her, I think it s kind of strange for us.
2
SPEAKER_01
I find it a little comforting because all these men, when you give them unlimited access and power, they will indulge in this way.
2
SPEAKER_01
And obviously we re terrible.
2
SPEAKER_01
I m at least comforted that women too will do this.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I m your mother, but also stimulate you.
2
SPEAKER_01
That s very scumbaggy too.
2
SPEAKER_01
I think it s a dynamic of power that corrupts people in this weird way.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, one thing that was interesting about this group, and I think it s because it was female run, is that because women were encouraged to be expressive and outward with their desire, it kind of flipped the script where women were kind of the hunters and a lot of men were like, uh, please leave me alone for a second.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
2
SPEAKER_00
They were pushing off the sexual advances.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I got to feel what it s like to be a woman in like a normal dating environment for that time.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, probably make you more compassionate, I d imagine.
2
SPEAKER_00
Totally.
2
SPEAKER_01
So when did the wheels start coming off within my first year there?
2
SPEAKER_00
And I was working for them.
2
SPEAKER_00
I saw how them using sex for sales and also like romance for sales.
2
SPEAKER_00
That s when I was starting to get knots in my stomach and like my conscience, I was having trouble with this because I really looked up to.
2
SPEAKER_00
My mentor, the group itself, they d helped me a lot.
2
SPEAKER_00
They did have a lot of wisdom.
2
SPEAKER_00
I still think that s true.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
2
SPEAKER_00
They also do all these weird things.
2
SPEAKER_00
So it was a little bit challenging.
2
SPEAKER_00
But I did spend another year kind of as a leader within the community, trying to distance myself.
2
SPEAKER_00
But in that year, they became pretty successful in the mainstream.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like they got endorsements from Tony Robbins and CrossFit and a bunch of other celebrities.
2
SPEAKER_00
Inc magazine listed them in the top 10 female run companies are top 10 in health and wellness.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like they were really blowing up really quick.
2
SPEAKER_01
I just want to put a point on what you just said, which is like, people have to acknowledge these things have good things to offer.
2
SPEAKER_01
People wouldn t be there.
2
SPEAKER_01
It doesn t surprise me at all that you say some percentage of it, you still really cherish.
2
SPEAKER_01
If it didn t have anything appealing or transformative, you wouldn t have been there.
2
SPEAKER_01
We just talked to someone from next to him.
2
SPEAKER_01
Like, yeah, a lot of this shit is appealing and works until you get into the zone where it s not.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, they had a really good front end product.
2
SPEAKER_00
I mean, they got you into their sales funnel.
2
SPEAKER_00
Everyone in the cult that I was in, but also culty people I ve met, they all are powerful in the sense that they can create an effect in you.
2
SPEAKER_00
And of course, they re going to give you a positive effect at first.
2
SPEAKER_00
Actually, in the ex-One Taste community, there s a saying that One Taste shows you your power and then sells it back to you piece by piece.
2
SPEAKER_00
Because the first few months are amazing when you re there.
2
SPEAKER_00
Guys get off porn addiction.
2
SPEAKER_00
Women who are shut down physically have orgasms for the first time or fall in love for the first time in years, get over trauma.
2
SPEAKER_00
They really did amazing things in the first six months for almost everyone.
2
SPEAKER_01
Maybe the move is to go through all of these cults and just do the first three months and then bounce.
2
SPEAKER_02
Well, I think if it s an effective call, you probably won t.
2
SPEAKER_01
Right.
2
SPEAKER_01
But if you go in with a game plan, okay.
2
SPEAKER_01
Were you starting to have any physical ailments?
2
SPEAKER_01
Like, was your body telling you you re not comfortable with all this, but you re pushing it down the first few months I was working for them.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was hired with like a bunch of other young people and all of us, you know, we didn t have a career.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like, this is awesome.
2
SPEAKER_00
saving the world, we re going to help people get connected.
2
SPEAKER_00
And we had this like maybe two month period of barely sleeping, doing all sorts of stuff.
2
SPEAKER_00
Over a hundred hour weeks, we were working seven days a week and not tired.
2
SPEAKER_00
And we were like, wow, we re like so spiritually charged up.
2
SPEAKER_00
We re charged up with orgasm, so to speak.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s amazing.
2
SPEAKER_00
But of course we all crashed.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like after two months, we all had red eyes and we re zombies and we re shamed for being zombies.
2
SPEAKER_00
Not to be too pervy, but is the dude ever allowed to come in this?
2
SPEAKER_00
It was an advanced practice.
2
SPEAKER_00
You know, it was something that only after some amount of time you were considered able to do.
2
SPEAKER_00
Responsibly cum.
2
SPEAKER_00
And also like they changed the definition of orgasm.
2
SPEAKER_00
There was like a sequence of definition changes through every course you took.
2
SPEAKER_00
Like in the intro class, they said people think of orgasm from the male perspective of cumming.
2
SPEAKER_00
Whereas orgasm for a woman is a state of high sensation.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then when you take another class, it s like, well, orgasm is also all the emotions that come with feeling good.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it s also kind of the Tao, like in Taoism, it s kind of like chi in Chinese medicine.
2
SPEAKER_00
And eventually it becomes God.
2
SPEAKER_00
Slowly over time, the definition shifts where it s like, oh, the orgasm is telling, or I m serving the orgasm.
2
SPEAKER_00
And it s kind of joking at first, the first time you say it, but all of the terminology, it starts off facetious.
2
SPEAKER_00
And then you kind of take it seriously because you ve been talking that way for so long.
2
SPEAKER_00
right?
3
SPEAKER_03
you desensitize your shock to it.
3
SPEAKER_03
Was anyone in your life, like parents or siblings or friends outside, were they like, hey, this feels a little... Culty.
3
SPEAKER_03
Or did they call anything out?
3
SPEAKER_01
I joked about it as it being my cult with everyone.
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I just thought that was a good way to talk about it because it was a strange environment, but it had so many benefits.
3
SPEAKER_01
And especially when I was working for them, I learned how to speak about the benefits well that no one could really argue with me.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, wow.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so when does it crash and burn for you?
3
SPEAKER_01
So after I worked for them officially as an employee and burned out, I left the company as an employee, but I was still in the cult.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was still in the community and I knew I wanted to leave eventually, but I was having a great time and I was growing as a person.
3
SPEAKER_01
I wanted to stay for a while.
3
SPEAKER_01
But they were putting a lot of pressure on me to work for them again.
3
SPEAKER_01
In my eyes, at least, I was becoming a liability because I wasn t directly controlled by them, but I had some influence because I used to work for them.
3
SPEAKER_01
I was like the protege of the second-in-command, so I kind of had some status.
3
SPEAKER_01
I reached out to the cult leader, the founder, because I wanted to write a book with her.
3
SPEAKER_01
I always wanted to write a book.
3
SPEAKER_01
I am writing a book about my cult experience, maybe ironically, but she agreed to write a book with me.
3
SPEAKER_01
But in exchange, without saying it directly, I had to commit my life because that would have given me a lot of status.
3
SPEAKER_01
And after a lot of pressure, I just decided I had to leave because I couldn t commit my life.
3
SPEAKER_01
And that was basically the choice.
3
SPEAKER_01
Commit your life or leave right now.
3
SPEAKER_03
Well, this is one of the few cults I feel like I haven t followed the trajectory of.
3
SPEAKER_03
Have they been exposed as one?
3
SPEAKER_03
Are they still thriving?
3
SPEAKER_03
Anything happened to them?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, in 2018, there was a Bloomberg expose that I was a source for, and that kind of brought a lot of the negative attention.
3
SPEAKER_01
The FBI is now investigating them.
3
SPEAKER_01
The founder was just indicted a few months ago, I think.
3
SPEAKER_01
There s also a Netflix special that I m in.
3
SPEAKER_03
Wait, it s already out?
3
SPEAKER_01
Last November.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, what s it called?
3
SPEAKER_01
I gotta watch it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, no, sorry.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was two Novembers ago.
3
SPEAKER_01
Orgasm, Inc.
3
SPEAKER_03
Orgasm Inc, we haven t seen that.
3
SPEAKER_01
I didn t love the documentary personally, but you know, it was a complicated story to tell.
3
SPEAKER_01
You thought it was what, too sensational?
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think they went for kind of the typical sensational story structure.
3
SPEAKER_01
I think they missed the nuance.
3
SPEAKER_01
And it might ve just been challenging, because I think the only people that were willing to talk to them were either really traumatized or men.
3
SPEAKER_01
It kind of gives like a weird impression, because it was a mostly female cult, but I think five of the seven people who speak are men.
3
SPEAKER_03
Oh, interesting.
3
SPEAKER_01
What was the ratio?
3
SPEAKER_01
At least in New York, it was, I think, 60-40.
3
SPEAKER_01
In California, it might have been actually the opposite, but the New York part of it was mostly women.
3
SPEAKER_03
Oh, man.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s fascinating.
3
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_03
Thank you for sharing that.
3
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, that was incredible.
3
SPEAKER_03
How do you feel now?
3
SPEAKER_03
You ve been out of it for a while, I guess.
3
SPEAKER_03
Do you have a hard time reconciling that you were susceptible to that?
3
SPEAKER_01
I overall had a positive experience, honestly, even though they did some really bad things.
3
SPEAKER_01
Right.
3
SPEAKER_01
Sometimes I think I wish I didn t have to do something like that.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like if I wasn t anxious.
3
SPEAKER_01
As a teenager, I probably just would have had a normal life.
3
SPEAKER_01
It was definitely an adventure, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Quite a bit of life experience forever.
3
SPEAKER_03
Well, Ruan, that was incredible.
3
SPEAKER_03
I appreciate you telling us that.
3
SPEAKER_03
Thanks for coming on.
3
SPEAKER_03
Thanks for having me.
3
SPEAKER_03
You don t have a title for your book yet.
3
SPEAKER_03
Do you tell us the name of your podcast, Rwanda podcasts, and the book is orgasm, a memoir.
3
SPEAKER_03
All right.
3
SPEAKER_03
So everyone looked for that.
3
SPEAKER_03
Well, thank you so much.
3
SPEAKER_03
Good luck with everything.
3
SPEAKER_03
Thanks guys.
3
SPEAKER_03
Bye.
3
SPEAKER_03
These are phenomenal.
3
SPEAKER_03
There s so many.
3
SPEAKER_03
I didn t even know about this.
3
SPEAKER_03
Sorry, we re late.
3
SPEAKER_03
These have been juicier than anticipated.
3
They ve gone a little longer than we were expecting.
3
SPEAKER_00
No worries.
3
SPEAKER_00
I plan to stay in the same vein.
3
SPEAKER_03
So Seth, where are you?
3
SPEAKER_00
I m currently in Los Angeles, California.
3
SPEAKER_03
Oh, okay.
3
SPEAKER_03
All right.
3
SPEAKER_03
So you were involved in a cult.
3
SPEAKER_03
Please tell us what happened.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
3
SPEAKER_00
So when I was 14, I was actually sent away to a cult against my will for two years.
3
SPEAKER_00
I wasn t.
3
SPEAKER_00
able to communicate with my family for the vast majority of the time that I was there.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s going to feel like I m jumping around, but it s important for just the context.
3
SPEAKER_00
We found out years later that the communications that were allowed were done via email and were thus altered so that they could decide what information I was given from my family.
3
SPEAKER_00
And what information they thought my family needed to hear from me.
3
SPEAKER_03
Is this a similar situation to like the Paris Hilton thing?
3
SPEAKER_00
It s exactly that.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh my god.
3
SPEAKER_00
It is.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
3
SPEAKER_00
So the staff at my school had opened a previous school 10 years or so before and it had been shut down.
3
SPEAKER_00
And mind you, I was 14.
3
SPEAKER_00
I didn t know all these things.
3
SPEAKER_00
The internet was
3
SPEAKER_00
a baby at this time.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s like 2007.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I remember hearing about one of my staff members being like, yeah, Paris Hilton went to our program and she was airlifted out of here.
3
SPEAKER_00
I remember being like, Paris Hilton s cool.
3
SPEAKER_00
You re just saying cool people s names.
3
SPEAKER_00
12 years later, she s in front of Congress talking about this and I have goosebumps like no fucking way.
3
SPEAKER_03
What behavior were you exhibiting that your parents wanted to send you there?
3
SPEAKER_00
So externally, my behavior had a lot to do with like drug use.
3
SPEAKER_00
At 14, I had done ecstasy.
3
SPEAKER_00
I had smoked a lot of weed.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was drinking.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was stealing.
3
SPEAKER_00
I had driven a car illegally.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was just defying a lot of what my parents wanted from me.
3
SPEAKER_00
It also had a lot to do with like me being gay.
3
SPEAKER_00
That wasn t something that I had said out loud.
3
SPEAKER_03
Sure.
3
SPEAKER_03
You were having a crisis.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
to say the least.
3
SPEAKER_03
Okay, so you did that for two years, 14 to 16.
3
SPEAKER_03
Was sexuality discussed in there?
3
SPEAKER_03
Were they like, hey, no one can be gay?
3
SPEAKER_03
Was that the premise?
3
SPEAKER_00
Sexuality was off limits completely.
3
SPEAKER_00
We were only allowed to talk about sexuality in the form of drama, which a lot of times
3
SPEAKER_00
was based in, like, shame, and a lot of the staff would use it against us.
3
SPEAKER_00
So there were a lot of times where, like, we would do disclosure circles.
3
SPEAKER_00
There was workshops.
3
SPEAKER_00
This whole school program is built off of this thing called CEDU, C-E-D-U.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s the beginning for all of these programs from Paris s to mine, Provo Canyon, Discovery Ranch, Carl before I went, like, all these places.
3
SPEAKER_00
They use that as the incubator of, like, their ideas.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like, that s where these, like, shame ideas came from.
3
SPEAKER_00
and things like that.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so I personally went to a school that was supposed to be for 12 to like 18 months, and they had an IQ threshold.
3
SPEAKER_00
They like specifically wanted to get ahold of people of a certain echelon, people that they could influence and people that they felt were like affluent or important.
3
SPEAKER_00
I knew I was a bad kid.
3
SPEAKER_00
I felt that way my whole life.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I went there with the understanding like I m a bad kid, and this is supposed to help me.
3
SPEAKER_00
It became very clear to me like this was on a
3
SPEAKER_00
plantation in South Boston, Virginia.
3
SPEAKER_00
So really beautiful homes on the sprawling area.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was meant to look really nice.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it wasn t registered as a mental health institution specifically for the reason of protecting our reputations so that we can get into good colleges.
3
SPEAKER_00
What that really meant was they didn t have to abide by the mental health laws.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right.
3
SPEAKER_00
I felt very quickly, this place is really phony.
3
SPEAKER_00
Everybody here is really fake.
3
SPEAKER_00
Everybody s putting on this drink the Kool-Aid and everything will be fine.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I m not a Kool-Aid drinker.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was an obstinate defiant kid.
3
SPEAKER_00
It translated really poorly for me while I was there.
3
SPEAKER_00
We were incentivized in these group attack therapies to invite each other for like almost any minor interaction and to then scream at them or accost them.
3
SPEAKER_00
And like, as a group, you were supposed to get in on it.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that was called doing work.
3
SPEAKER_03
Oh, really quick.
3
SPEAKER_03
The C do foundation.
3
SPEAKER_03
Who came up with that?
3
SPEAKER_03
Where s that come from?
3
SPEAKER_00
The guy who started, it s been around from like sixties or the seventies, but it just became more and more popular throughout like the eighties and the nineties.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then a lot of these troubled teen industry programs are based off of his ideas or their ideas.
3
SPEAKER_00
All right.
3
SPEAKER_03
And so this is very cadre system communism where you re incentivized to write each other out and constantly be telling on each other.
3
SPEAKER_03
So you ll trust nobody.
3
SPEAKER_00
It becomes really frustrating because at the time, I m a 14-year-old who s just like, this feels wrong.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t have all these words and all these things to express why this feels so wrong.
3
SPEAKER_00
Even the staff were duped.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is the middle of nowhere, Virginia.
3
SPEAKER_00
No one s from here.
3
SPEAKER_00
By the way, none of these people are licensed psychologists.
3
SPEAKER_00
These weren t people who were qualified to be like, live in residential therapy.
3
SPEAKER_00
advisors for all of us and they had like caseloads that were way beyond their means and we would be encouraged and the staff would participate in these shame therapies and in these screaming assaults of each other like you d have like in like a suggestion box and someone s name found so you could make sure they were in group with you so you could frail the shit out of them.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh my God.
3
SPEAKER_00
That was terrifying.
3
SPEAKER_03
And did you feel uniquely picked on by everyone?
3
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
3
SPEAKER_00
I was a gay Southerner Jew.
3
SPEAKER_00
I came out three weeks before I got sent to this place.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s like a wilderness program that s a prerequisite for a lot of this.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so I went to that, came out there, then got sent to this program.
3
SPEAKER_00
It very much was like, why do you keep bringing up that you re gay?
3
SPEAKER_00
We don t care that you re gay.
3
SPEAKER_00
You have these other things you need to deal with.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I m like, actually I just came out.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is a pretty crucial element.
3
SPEAKER_02
This is what all the other things are built on top of.
3
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_02
I think we need to get into this.
3
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
3
SPEAKER_00
But then all of my sexuality was used to shame me.
3
SPEAKER_00
I had one staff member who knew I felt really dirty and disgusting for things that I had done at 14, which weren t bad.
3
SPEAKER_03
They weren t biblical.
3
SPEAKER_03
Yes.
3
SPEAKER_00
She in one group in front of 30 of my peers told me, how do you feel?
3
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, I feel disgusting.
3
SPEAKER_00
And she was like, that s right.
3
SPEAKER_00
And if you don t buy into this program, if you don t do what we re all here doing, you re going to end up being
3
SPEAKER_00
dirty faggot who sucks dick for money.
3
SPEAKER_03
Oh my God.
3
SPEAKER_00
This was a reference to something someone else had said in the group to me.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I m sure you just feel like a dirty faggot.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, yes, I do.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I m just like, play along.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because I can t fight it.
3
SPEAKER_00
What am I going to do?
3
SPEAKER_00
Say I m not?
3
SPEAKER_03
So dark.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is horrible.
3
SPEAKER_00
That sentence, I ve said it in my head like a million times, like a grown woman said to a 14 year old boy, like if I don t do this program, I don t
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
fix them and they ll get such a great education.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was put in isolation, which is out of school suspension, and that s their word for it.
4
SPEAKER_01
For six months, I wasn t allowed to go to school.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I was like held back.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was set in a room for 12 hours a day.
4
SPEAKER_01
I had to face forward.
4
SPEAKER_01
Security guards sat in the back of the room and I was allowed to raise my hand if I needed to go to the bathroom.
4
SPEAKER_01
I wasn t allowed to turn my head to look out the window.
4
SPEAKER_01
I wasn t allowed to turn to look at anybody walking in or out of the room because the women s bathroom was also in this room.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so I was not allowed to make any type of reference to what was going on.
4
SPEAKER_00
You re describing like a POW experience.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s like so fucking wild.
4
SPEAKER_00
If your parents are only reading edited transmissions from you, how do you get out of this at 16?
4
SPEAKER_01
What ended up happening was like, this was right around my birthday.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was about the 16, 17 month mark.
4
SPEAKER_01
At this point, I had had my phone calls taken away, which you were given one phone call a month.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was monitored.
4
SPEAKER_01
Someone sat in there and listened to you and turned off the phone call.
4
SPEAKER_01
It became manipulative.
4
SPEAKER_01
which meant crying or saying what was really going on.
4
SPEAKER_01
So they had removed my phone call.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was about three weeks before I was actually kicked out of the program.
4
SPEAKER_00
Thank God.
4
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I had called my parents.
4
SPEAKER_01
They gave me a birthday phone call and I used it to just say everything.
4
SPEAKER_01
I was like, Mom, it s too far gone.
4
SPEAKER_01
I can t redeem myself here.
4
SPEAKER_01
Every group I m in, I m annihilated.
4
SPEAKER_01
I have no interest in building me back up.
4
SPEAKER_01
I am here as an example.
4
SPEAKER_01
You guys are wasting your money, which, wow, was this so expensive.
4
SPEAKER_01
We re talking multiple six figures.
4
SPEAKER_01
People went bankrupt trying to help their children.
4
SPEAKER_01
This was just a nightmare.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I got kicked out because I was just so defiant.
4
SPEAKER_01
And my parents eventually at some point said like, we can t keep paying you if you re going to put him in this room.
4
SPEAKER_01
We ve done this for six months.
4
SPEAKER_01
Are you kidding me?
4
SPEAKER_01
So I got kicked out and sent to another program in New York.
4
SPEAKER_03
That s a similar program?
4
SPEAKER_01
So Utah s the hub of all of this.
4
SPEAKER_01
Mormons run this whole industry.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the hubs of Mormons are obviously in Utah.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m not saying all Mormons are bad.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m saying 90% of troubled teen industries are run by Mormons.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I was sent to a different program.
4
SPEAKER_01
And at this program, when I would tell them about what the other program was like, because the new one was like registered, they were horrified.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so it was a big improvement.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was a noticeable difference.
4
SPEAKER_01
I felt like there was way more structure and a lot more rules about why and how versus just the dogma and you ll die if you don t do what we say.
4
SPEAKER_01
At the first school, we had this thing called smooshing.
4
SPEAKER_01
At the end of every day, we were all supposed to like lay together and touch each other and like spoon, staff included.
4
SPEAKER_01
Ew!
4
SPEAKER_01
It was bizarre because it was so manipulative.
4
SPEAKER_01
You d stay at this like heightened, aggressive, angry, attacking, like nobody s safe ever.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then at night they d be like, no, pet your friends and coddle them and everything s going to be okay.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we re all in this together and the staff aren t touching you.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s like beating a dog and then inviting the dog up onto your lap.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s Stockholm syndrome.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s how we re like building it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yes, Stockholm.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_01
Fuck.
4
SPEAKER_01
So when I described the attack therapies with the smooshing alone to the new school, they were like, that s not legal.
4
SPEAKER_01
Staff can t cut you.
4
SPEAKER_01
I just was so brainwashed at that time.
4
SPEAKER_01
I like to say that I sipped the Kool-Aid.
4
SPEAKER_01
I didn t really drink the Kool-Aid.
4
SPEAKER_01
I did what I had to, to like survive.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think ultimately what protected me and the reason I get to be like a normal, well-rounded, successful person in my 30s,
4
SPEAKER_01
compared to the unfortunate percentage of people who have committed suicide or have died from overdoses from this school is the fact that I inadvertently put myself in isolation.
4
SPEAKER_01
I think the fact that I missed out on so much of the program, the workshops, I only got to go through two of the five workshops.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the third workshop is the one that apparently like breaks your brain.
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, also like I think a lot of people listening and be like, yeah, that wouldn t work on me.
4
SPEAKER_00
This would work on everyone over a long enough period of time.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like no one s conviction is so strong when your community around you is all doing one thing.
4
SPEAKER_00
You can only resist that for so long.
4
SPEAKER_00
It is the reality you live in.
4
SPEAKER_00
So you have to contend with that.
4
SPEAKER_01
You live in a one mile bubble.
4
SPEAKER_01
You are never not monitored and everyone that you trust, the focus is either on me or it s on someone else.
4
SPEAKER_01
So if I don t want the focus on me, I have to.
4
SPEAKER_01
kill one of my friends.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s hunger games.
4
SPEAKER_01
If you didn t talk in group, someone would be like, why aren t you talking?
4
SPEAKER_01
What are you hiding?
4
SPEAKER_01
Everyone would dog pile on you.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then everyone would encourage it because well, as long as we re yelling at him, my ass is safe.
4
SPEAKER_01
Sorry, Charlie.
4
SPEAKER_00
Everyone s just trying to protect themselves.
4
SPEAKER_00
So did you stay at the Utah one all the way to adulthood?
4
SPEAKER_01
No, because I was sent away at 14.
4
SPEAKER_01
This full experience was two years.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I spent the vast majority of the first program.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then like the last four or five months I was at.
4
SPEAKER_01
This Utah program, which because it wasn t so mind fucky, I could manipulate and play my way through.
4
SPEAKER_01
I just understood you climb the ladder, muck the stalls, feed the cow.
4
SPEAKER_01
It was a ranch.
4
SPEAKER_01
So I was able to like navigate that one a little bit better and get out at 16.
4
SPEAKER_00
When you got home, did the bad behavior continue or did it stop?
4
SPEAKER_00
I m putting bad in quotes.
4
SPEAKER_00
The cries for help, did they continue?
4
SPEAKER_00
I guess I could also say.
4
SPEAKER_01
The cries for help had different lyrics.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_01
When I came back, Carlbrook is the original school.
4
SPEAKER_01
I can say it has been shut down.
4
SPEAKER_01
It doesn t exist anymore.
4
SPEAKER_01
But I still lived what I call the Carlbrook machine, which is just like my mental need to process things through the lens of the people there and what they wanted from me.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so once I got out, I definitely had a Stockholm syndrome.
4
SPEAKER_01
I first got home even after the other program, I was like, I have to go back and prove to them that I can finish this program that I m just as good as all those other kids and like, I m not gonna die and I can do it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And my mom was like,
4
SPEAKER_01
You re nuts.
4
SPEAKER_01
A, we re not sending you back there and be like, what is going on?
4
SPEAKER_01
Like, why would you want to go back?
4
SPEAKER_00
What is your resentment level towards them and what s their guilt level about this whole experience?
4
SPEAKER_01
It s been 15 years in February when I got out.
4
SPEAKER_01
It took about 10 years of me processing before I was able to be honest with my parents about what had happened.
4
SPEAKER_01
My father s very empathetic, but if you ask them today, my dad will tell you we had to do something and we did something.
4
SPEAKER_01
If you ask my mom, she feels terrible.
4
SPEAKER_01
I harbor a lot of guilt in the fact that like my parents needed to do this.
4
SPEAKER_01
You felt you put them in a position.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, in such a corner that they were so desperate.
4
SPEAKER_03
which at 14, I didn t have that conscience.
4
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, kid doesn t do that, by the way.
4
SPEAKER_03
Like, you didn t.
4
SPEAKER_03
You were a kid.
4
SPEAKER_03
Right.
4
SPEAKER_01
But nonetheless, like, I felt a lot of disappointment in myself because I know my parents financially took a big hit to try to protect me.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I know that my parents did all of this stuff out of love and affection and, like, care for me and belief in me and my success.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I know that ultimately sharing with them that what they did
4
SPEAKER_01
It s probably one of the worst things that s ever happened to me in my life.
4
SPEAKER_01
Feels really shitty.
4
SPEAKER_01
Even now, like you can tell I m a little bit steamy about it.
4
SPEAKER_01
You will be for the rest of your life.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s the people that are there to protect you, put you in a situation where you were harmed.
4
SPEAKER_01
I a hundred percent forgive them because I saw my peers.
4
SPEAKER_01
Many of them have died of overdose and did not have the caring, loving parents that I did.
4
SPEAKER_01
They were sent away because their parents didn t want to raise them because they were difficult.
4
SPEAKER_01
They were rich and they just didn t want to deal with it.
4
SPEAKER_01
My family was none of that.
4
SPEAKER_01
My parents wanted to protect me from myself.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Fuck man, it s just a rough situation all around.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then also 15 years ago, the vibe was different.
4
SPEAKER_00
You d see these people on daytime talk shows and they re like success stories.
4
SPEAKER_00
Popular culture is kind of supporting that this is a good solution.
4
SPEAKER_00
No one s speaking out yet at that point.
4
SPEAKER_01
No.
4
SPEAKER_01
Hearing Paris Hilton talk about it.
4
SPEAKER_01
I know that she s been on the podcast with y all and talked
4
SPEAKER_01
briefly about all of that within her long interview and it makes me so happy to know not something like that would happen to her but more people like us exist that industry still exists people are still profiting millions of dollars off of insecure parents who just want to help their kids and it takes somebody like her
4
SPEAKER_01
giving somebody like me or whatever a platform to tell that story so that like maybe we can fix this stuff.
4
SPEAKER_01
We could stop doing this to children.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, absolutely.
4
SPEAKER_00
Seth, I m very sorry that you had that experience.
4
SPEAKER_00
So unfair.
4
SPEAKER_01
I appreciate that.
4
SPEAKER_03
We appreciate you sharing and I do think it will help people to know more about it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, as she was saying, the numbers are outrageous.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s like tens of thousands of kids who ve gone through these programs and yes, just to not feel alone.
4
SPEAKER_00
The comfort she gave you is that you weren t alone.
4
SPEAKER_00
That s why fucking AA works.
4
SPEAKER_01
Exactly.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s community.
4
SPEAKER_00
Well said thanks so much for sharing that with us.
4
SPEAKER_01
Absolutely.
4
SPEAKER_01
I appreciate you both for having me on and letting me share my story.
4
SPEAKER_00
All right.
4
SPEAKER_00
We ll be well likewise.
4
SPEAKER_01
Bye.
4
SPEAKER_00
That was heavy.
4
SPEAKER_03
That s so sad.
4
SPEAKER_00
I know.
4
SPEAKER_03
What the fuck?
4
SPEAKER_03
What is wrong with, like, who could be doing this to children?
4
SPEAKER_00
Unfortunately, you have two options.
4
SPEAKER_00
You got to either chalk the whole thing up to that there s someone evil who wants to hurt kids versus more likely, in my opinion, someone really believes this works and they re wrong, which is even trickier to confront.
4
SPEAKER_03
Well, it should just be illegal.
4
SPEAKER_03
We can have regulations that make these things illegal.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Good for Paris.
4
SPEAKER_00
No shit.
4
SPEAKER_00
Do you have a bad knee?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, can you hear us?
4
SPEAKER_00
I just punched Monica in the knee and it turns out she has a bad knee.
4
SPEAKER_00
I didn t even know.
4
SPEAKER_00
Is it Rosie?
4
SPEAKER_02
Yes.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
4
SPEAKER_00
That E I God could go any way.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s because all the Rosie I E was taken.
4
SPEAKER_02
I was like, I gotta be unique in some way.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay, great.
4
SPEAKER_00
One of my Cardinal complaints about the English language is I before E except for after C, but that s not even close to the truth.
4
SPEAKER_00
There s so many examples.
4
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, it s a lie.
4
SPEAKER_00
One of the many lies.
4
SPEAKER_03
Well, it s a cult.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s a cult.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yes, this English language.
4
SPEAKER_00
Okay, so you have very exciting eye makeup on.
4
SPEAKER_02
Oh, thank you.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then you have angel wings behind you.
4
SPEAKER_02
So part of my journey through healing religious trauma has been, there s a lot of cosplay, makeup, that sort of thing.
5
SPEAKER_00
This was from a demon cosplay that I just ended up putting on the back of my streaming set up here.
5
SPEAKER_00
And that s very dramatic.
5
SPEAKER_01
Those are kind of like white feathers.
5
SPEAKER_01
I m going to try to not get derailed on cosplay because I think we need a prompt about cause because I m so intrigued and dumb about what that means and what people do.
5
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
5
SPEAKER_01
Cult.
5
SPEAKER_01
Where are you from?
5
SPEAKER_01
Where did this occur?
5
SPEAKER_00
I am a pastor s daughter from the Seventh-day Adventist organization, or what I refer to online in my content as a cult-cher for legal reasons.
5
SPEAKER_01
Tell me about Seventh-day Adventists.
5
SPEAKER_00
Seventh-day Adventists originate in kind of the same place with a cult of personality, which is William Miller.
5
SPEAKER_00
From William Miller, you go from Adventist, the guy who started Jehovah s Witness, he was a former Adventist preacher.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s all under the same umbrella of William Miller back in the day.
5
SPEAKER_01
From upstate New York as well?
5
SPEAKER_00
With Aventus, that is actually Michigan and it s all from a spot called Battle Creek.
5
SPEAKER_00
And there s a prophetess, a lot about how the government s going to hunt us down for our beliefs.
5
SPEAKER_00
I basically grew up believing that my family was going to be murdered in front of me someday.
5
SPEAKER_00
We were going to have to run for the hills.
5
SPEAKER_01
So Battle Creek, Michigan, home of the cereal brands.
5
SPEAKER_00
Kellogg is one of the founders of Adventism.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, wow.
5
SPEAKER_00
There s a lot we could go into with just Kellogg alone, which includes eugenics, female genital mutilation.
5
SPEAKER_00
There was a device he invented to shoot about four gallons of hot water up.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, he was way into enemas, right?
5
SPEAKER_01
He had like a spa retreat where he thought he could cure people of their common maladies.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
5
SPEAKER_00
So Adventism and sanitariums go way back.
5
SPEAKER_01
Did you see the movie about him?
5
SPEAKER_01
Sir Anthony Hopkins played him, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
I haven t seen the movie, but that would probably be a very good casting.
5
SPEAKER_00
He could play a creepy guy pretty well.
5
SPEAKER_00
So Adventism is one of the ones that went almost like an MLM route.
5
SPEAKER_00
Most people would not see something wrong.
5
SPEAKER_00
Their basis is their health message.
5
SPEAKER_00
So people look at it and they re like, oh, that s a good thing, right?
5
SPEAKER_00
So I was raised on a lot of very odd dietary programs, restrictions, of course, no alcohol stuff, no coffee.
5
SPEAKER_00
Protein was quite often replaced with soy and tofu, which causes a lot of long-term health issues.
5
SPEAKER_01
Kellogg s obsession was the stool.
5
SPEAKER_01
He was obsessed with having a big, fluffy stool.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so they re very big on veganism, vegetarianism.
5
SPEAKER_00
So for myself, I m about fourth generation Adventist, at least on my mom s side.
5
SPEAKER_00
My dad was brought into it through an evangelistic series.
5
SPEAKER_00
They both met at like an Adventist school.
5
SPEAKER_00
Adventism is a contained environment.
5
SPEAKER_00
They have their own hospitals.
5
SPEAKER_00
They ve got their own educational system.
5
SPEAKER_00
Like you can exist within Adventism, essentially, and never really go outside of it.
5
SPEAKER_01
like Amish or something?
5
SPEAKER_00
Practically, however, Adventists are very performative.
5
SPEAKER_00
To look at them, you wouldn t know.
5
SPEAKER_00
They do exist out and about in the world, but they are very much, in their minds, the protagonists of the planet, as most of these organizations think they are the main characters.
5
SPEAKER_00
So to them, they ll go out there, and essentially, you can t work on Saturday.
5
SPEAKER_00
So you get all of these prescriptions for how to get out of tests,
5
SPEAKER_00
how to talk to employers, things like that.
5
SPEAKER_00
There s a lot that s closed off for you employment wise because you can t work on Saturday or do a whole bunch of stuff.
5
SPEAKER_00
So Adventism keeps to itself as much as possible, but it s big money.
5
SPEAKER_00
This is one of like the big earners in terms of religions.
5
SPEAKER_01
Where are they primarily concentrated?
5
SPEAKER_01
Are there big pockets?
5
SPEAKER_00
Loma Linda is one, Walla Walla Washington s another, of course, Michigan.
5
SPEAKER_00
They show up in things like Time Magazine for the Blue Zones.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh.
5
SPEAKER_00
Adventists are known as one of the organizations that lives for a very long time due to their health message is what they claim.
5
SPEAKER_00
But if you actually look at a Blue Zone, it s lots of money, very warm climate.
5
SPEAKER_00
access to medical care.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so there s a little bit of confirmation bias in what they sell you with a Blue Zone.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s so true.
5
SPEAKER_01
I like you pushing on Blue Zone.
5
SPEAKER_01
People are obsessed with Blue Zone.
5
SPEAKER_00
There s some stuff I could say about that, having been raised in it.
5
SPEAKER_00
And when I was a student, I was put through their educational system, especially in university.
5
SPEAKER_00
The nurses all knew us at the local hospital.
5
SPEAKER_00
They d be getting fluids into us immediately because we would all be low on vitamins, nutrition.
5
SPEAKER_00
We were all malnourished.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, wow.
5
SPEAKER_00
God.
5
SPEAKER_01
How did they deal with that reality that they have an express diet that s going to result in peak health, but they regularly have to send their kids to the hospital to get infusions of vitamins?
5
SPEAKER_01
Like, how would they write that off or dismiss that fact?
5
SPEAKER_00
It s something that they don t necessarily acknowledge.
5
SPEAKER_00
Because Adventism, and as a pastor s kid, I can tell you this, masking is the big thing.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s all about presentation.
5
SPEAKER_00
And you don t really want to tell other people you re having health issues, because then you re not right with God.
5
SPEAKER_00
So usually what happens is it s not going to be discussed.
5
SPEAKER_00
You re not going to be open about it.
5
SPEAKER_00
Students would be with each other, but on a higher level, you re not going to talk about it.
5
SPEAKER_00
So that s kind of how it ll continue.
5
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
5
SPEAKER_01
So there s a ton of food things.
5
SPEAKER_01
And then what are the other kind of restrictions?
5
SPEAKER_00
I don t know if you ve seen the shiny happy people thing that happened with the Duggar family.
5
SPEAKER_00
Their whole thing was on the Learning Channel.
5
SPEAKER_00
They pumped out a bunch of kids and they got their stuff from a guy, I believe his name is Bill Gothard.
5
SPEAKER_00
And Gothard is one of the darlings of the Adventist church.
5
SPEAKER_00
His thing was the umbrella model of Christian marriage.
5
SPEAKER_00
So consent is not exactly a thing.
5
SPEAKER_00
Your body is owned by your father and then to your husband.
5
SPEAKER_00
They do an umbrella, God, father, wife, kids.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then if it s the opposite, it s Satan, wife, husband, kids.
5
SPEAKER_01
Interesting.
5
SPEAKER_01
So then dating, I presume, is completely off the table.
5
SPEAKER_00
leave room for Jesus type of dating.
5
SPEAKER_00
But a lot of my friends, myself included, you get married very young.
5
SPEAKER_00
Does your dad pick your husband?
5
SPEAKER_00
So Adventism, it s not arranged marriage, it s conversion therapy.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s the one that Adventists are big on.
5
SPEAKER_00
They re one of the first and possibly the first religious organization to fund conversion therapy.
5
SPEAKER_01
To make gay folks straight.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
But conversion therapy goes also under the umbrella of you re starting to
5
SPEAKER_00
deconvert and bringing you back.
5
SPEAKER_00
So part of how I got out of the whole situation, I married another pastor s kid.
5
SPEAKER_00
So essentially some of the timeline for myself is that my mom passed away under mysterious circumstances as the pastor s wife.
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh boy.
5
SPEAKER_00
That started a deconversion process for me.
5
SPEAKER_00
However, I married back into it.
5
SPEAKER_00
So their family put in a lot of effort to try to get me back in.
5
SPEAKER_00
So the person I married, there was some non-consensual stuff happening.
5
SPEAKER_00
Social media was
5
SPEAKER_00
basically the shield.
5
SPEAKER_00
At the time, I was telling people, if you don t see me post in 72 hours, call somebody.
5
SPEAKER_00
2020 was a rough year.
5
SPEAKER_00
Basically, at the time, he was saying things like, I m the only thing standing between you and disappearing into conversion therapy.
5
SPEAKER_01
Your husband?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
A lot of people wouldn t look at Adventism from the outside as being that intense.
5
SPEAKER_00
However, from the back end of it, my side of the family and the family I married into, they re high up, at least in the Canadian side of Adventism.
5
SPEAKER_00
I took it very seriously when I started getting that messaging from him because with what happened with my mom and the way that
5
SPEAKER_00
My dad s employers reacted to that.
5
SPEAKER_00
It was creepy and very much like a, oh no, I m in an organization that has a lot of money and doesn t treat women well.
5
SPEAKER_01
What was your journey mentally?
5
SPEAKER_01
At any point, did you buy in fully?
5
SPEAKER_01
When did it start cracking?
5
SPEAKER_00
I was fully bought into this because I was born into it.
5
SPEAKER_00
I was dedicated as a baby, baptized into it.
5
SPEAKER_00
When you grow up in those organizations as a woman, you re very much the caregiver and our eldest daughter.
5
SPEAKER_00
So you take care of the family.
5
SPEAKER_00
So I got into some psychology program stuff because I wanted to be a counselor.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then I started to realize I can t be an effective counselor and an Adventist.
5
SPEAKER_00
that started really clashing.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m supposed to be converting people, but all of what I m learning about ethics says otherwise.
5
SPEAKER_00
So when I started getting out of that, I had a friend who works in the oil field because I m out in Alberta.
5
SPEAKER_00
He would be gone for a few months at a time.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, hey, could I just like crash at your place for a little bit?
5
SPEAKER_00
At one point, I just didn t go back home because certain types of people in a relationship, as they start losing control, they get
5
SPEAKER_00
weird.
5
SPEAKER_00
They start doing things that are just trying to get control back.
5
SPEAKER_00
So I started posting all the time on TikTok and Insta and basically being like, if I do disappear, something happens to me along those lines.
5
SPEAKER_00
Cause when my mom passed, no one asked questions.
5
SPEAKER_01
And was your father largely emotionless about her passing?
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, that was the weird thing about that is I was at an Adventist university and it was my third year.
5
SPEAKER_00
I got a call from him very early in the morning where he was sobbing about how she had passed and how she had, in his words, suffocated in her sleep.
5
SPEAKER_00
Keeping in mind, she s about 43.
5
SPEAKER_00
Also, you don t suffocate in your sleep on your own.
5
SPEAKER_01
Accidentally.
5
SPEAKER_01
Unless you re in like a crazy drug user.
5
SPEAKER_00
Well, that s.
6
SPEAKER_00
what he was claiming is that her pain medication, because she was in a lot of chronic pain.
6
SPEAKER_00
However, your central nervous system, and I talked to a few medical experts since, they ll tell you that ll still roll you over.
6
SPEAKER_00
So when I showed up, I m fully expecting him to be a mess.
6
SPEAKER_00
But for the week I was there, I flew home the same day.
6
SPEAKER_00
When I walked in the door, all of her journals had been collected and he was hauling them out in a garbage bag.
6
SPEAKER_00
Whoa.
6
SPEAKER_00
basically telling me that she had written that he d done this, that, and the other, and he didn t want the police finding it as evidence.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s weird, but at that point, I still trusted him.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then for the week I was there before the funeral, it was like deadpan, nothing had happened, normal.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then as her family started showing up, siblings, that s when the tears started.
6
SPEAKER_00
He can cry on cue.
6
SPEAKER_00
I ve seen him do it for sermons.
6
SPEAKER_01
This is life on planet Earth for people.
6
SPEAKER_02
I know, I know.
6
SPEAKER_02
It s so scary.
6
SPEAKER_02
Oh, this is scary.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and I will disclaimer, this was a few years back.
6
SPEAKER_00
I ve been through therapy, all that stuff.
6
SPEAKER_00
I know it sounds very heavy.
6
SPEAKER_00
You were born into this.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yes, man.
6
SPEAKER_00
No one picked this.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s like you re playing the lottery when you come out of somebody.
6
SPEAKER_01
Like, what household are you gonna land in?
6
SPEAKER_01
And it could be insane.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I ve thought about that before, where I was like, why did I get the doomsday parents, the conspiracy theory parents?
6
SPEAKER_00
Lucky me.
6
SPEAKER_00
But I eventually got my hands on her autopsy report.
6
SPEAKER_00
And what the autopsy said obviously did not align with what he said.
6
SPEAKER_00
But of course, like immediately, as I say, accidental suffocation, you say that shouldn t be a thing for a grown woman who is mobile, even on heavy pain meds.
6
SPEAKER_00
The autopsy says
6
SPEAKER_00
something completely different.
6
SPEAKER_00
Nobody questioned anything, not her siblings, not all the employers.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so at her funeral, her friends were not there.
6
SPEAKER_00
It was all these guys from the SDA conference.
6
SPEAKER_00
I look around and it s just like men.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s a handmaid s tale.
6
SPEAKER_00
It felt very dystopian.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then within a couple of months, my father had moved on to dating somebody else, had married them.
6
SPEAKER_00
They re much younger.
6
SPEAKER_00
I have a younger brother.
6
SPEAKER_00
He called them us 2.0.
6
SPEAKER_00
He basically got a more functioning family for the pastor s commercial that they sell.
6
SPEAKER_00
Then he was promoted to working in the capital of Canada after that situation.
6
SPEAKER_00
So.
6
SPEAKER_00
As I m trying to get out of my situation where I m experiencing not a safe relationship, I ve got him plus our dads, plus the whole conference behind them.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so I was like, oh dear, this could turn out really terribly for me.
6
SPEAKER_00
Hence me going through social media and being like, hey, I exist to anybody out there and started talking about it.
6
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so you stayed with your friend.
6
SPEAKER_01
He was drilling oil.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh, right.
6
SPEAKER_01
You got to have some alone time, unbrainwashed, stop receiving the signals.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
After my mom passed, I started to very gradually move away from the church, and it started to become a trigger point for me.
6
SPEAKER_00
And during the time that I was married,
6
SPEAKER_00
I basically stopped attending and was really pulling away.
6
SPEAKER_00
And then we were in the same city as his parents.
6
SPEAKER_00
So we had a lot of things, including his father attempted to make us do marriage counseling with him.
6
SPEAKER_00
He s a pastor.
6
SPEAKER_00
He s not qualified to do that.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s also his dad, for Christ s sake.
6
SPEAKER_00
It was weird.
6
SPEAKER_00
Very controlling environment.
6
SPEAKER_00
And we actually had somebody from the youth group come into our home and then report back to the youth pastor about what was going on in the house.
6
SPEAKER_00
According to them, I was an alcoholic because I had a bottle of wine that I used for cooking pasta sauce.
6
SPEAKER_00
There s a lot that could be laid out, could probably keep you for hours.
6
SPEAKER_01
How d you get a divorce?
6
SPEAKER_00
That is actually still being processed.
6
SPEAKER_00
I ve been separated for a while, but because of COVID, everything s backed up.
6
SPEAKER_00
But they let you?
6
SPEAKER_00
For the first little bit, it was tough.
6
SPEAKER_00
But fortunately, because of social media, they wanted to distance themselves from me as fast as possible because
6
SPEAKER_00
I became the fallen woman, according to them.
6
SPEAKER_00
I met one of his coworkers and they claimed that he told them I hexed him with COVID.
6
SPEAKER_00
They claim a lot of spiritual warfare stuff, where essentially I m a witch.
6
SPEAKER_01
But then you re dressing up like one.
6
SPEAKER_01
You re kind of playing into their hands.
6
SPEAKER_00
Lean in.
6
SPEAKER_00
You should lean in.
6
SPEAKER_01
I bet that s your way of empowering yourself.
6
SPEAKER_00
You should become a witch.
6
SPEAKER_00
I like witches.
6
SPEAKER_00
I absolutely played into it.
6
SPEAKER_00
I think for a little bit I rode that like good Christian girl to pagan pipeline.
6
SPEAKER_03
Right.
6
SPEAKER_00
But it definitely played into that shield because
6
SPEAKER_00
Adventism is all about image.
6
SPEAKER_00
They want to look as professional as possible.
6
SPEAKER_00
They want to look as put together, competent, smart.
6
SPEAKER_00
Like it s all about selling you the lifestyle.
6
SPEAKER_00
So Adventism didn t go the route of like child marriage or anything like that, that would set you off.
6
SPEAKER_00
They re trying to sell you almost in the same way an MLM would sell you essential oils.
6
SPEAKER_00
Oh man.
6
SPEAKER_01
Well look, I guess I would hope for you
6
SPEAKER_01
that the gift you have now is that you can talk to people who have gone through what you have gone through and you can comfort people and you have spidey senses now and you are going to be intuitive and helpful.
6
SPEAKER_00
Funny you should say that because I ended up building a whole life and platform around that concept where essentially a community of deconstruction that also became like a big part of the social media side is a whole bunch of other people are deconstructing from this stuff at the same time.
6
SPEAKER_00
Inside that organization, they ll tell you that you need their community.
6
SPEAKER_00
The world s out to get you.
6
SPEAKER_00
If you go out there, your whole life is going to fall apart.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it will feel like that for a bit.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s going to feel
6
SPEAKER_00
awful, you re going to feel disoriented.
6
SPEAKER_01
All alone in the world, the scariest feeling you can have.
6
SPEAKER_00
It is.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s very scary.
6
SPEAKER_00
And what I tell people is essentially if you re in that feeling of deconstructing your questioning stuff, you have to get past that time period that they re counting on.
6
SPEAKER_00
You re going to feel so awful that you come back just for the comfort of what you know.
6
SPEAKER_00
You have to get past that point because there s a whole world of people waiting for you, waiting to interact with you that are going to love what you do, that are going to want to be part of your life.
6
SPEAKER_00
You got to get past the drop of exit.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
If someone that s listening can relate to this and wants to find you, how could they do that?
6
SPEAKER_00
They can find me under Rosie quartz, just about anywhere with Rosie, like the R O S E I and then quartz.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
Quartz like quartz crystal.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
6
SPEAKER_01
Okay, great.
6
SPEAKER_00
Thank you for sharing that.
6
SPEAKER_01
What a story.
6
SPEAKER_00
Honestly, I just want to say thank you for the opportunity to talk about it because whenever I can, I just try to put out there, hey, there is this organization that you might be vulnerable to because they intentionally target people who are struggling with health, physical or mental, and also lack of community.
6
SPEAKER_00
So this is something to be on guard for and be careful of.
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, thank you.
6
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
6
SPEAKER_01
That was insanely informative.
6
SPEAKER_01
I wish you a ton of luck.
6
SPEAKER_01
I hope a lot of people find you and can hear what you re saying.
6
SPEAKER_00
Thank you very much.
6
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
6
SPEAKER_01
Take care.
6
SPEAKER_01
I feel so lucky.
6
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_03
I do think many people walk around thinking, okay.
6
SPEAKER_03
I would never, and it s all circumstance.
6
SPEAKER_03
No one s picking anything.
6
SPEAKER_01
Everyone s way more like their parents than they want to acknowledge.
6
SPEAKER_01
You know, you re just brought home to a house, and then they tell you what reality is, and it is until some crazy intervention happens to break that.
6
SPEAKER_03
And most of the time it doesn t.
6
SPEAKER_01
Well, this is heavy.
6
SPEAKER_03
Heavy, but I m really glad we did it.
6
SPEAKER_03
It was all things.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, me too.
6
SPEAKER_03
We hit it all.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, we really hit it all.
6
SPEAKER_01
I love you, I m so glad you re not in a cult.
6
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
I m in one, so it s kind of tricky.
6
SPEAKER_03
No.
6
SPEAKER_03
No, because there s multiple definitions of it, and one of it is high controlling.
6
SPEAKER_03
That was all four of these, and yours is not.
6
SPEAKER_03
So it doesn t qualify.
6
SPEAKER_03
It s not high controlling.
6
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
There s also no- We re talking about AA, by the way.
6
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
There s no charismatic leader at the top either.
6
SPEAKER_01
Money.
6
SPEAKER_01
You can t elevate.
6
SPEAKER_01
There s no status to be gained.
6
SPEAKER_01
All right.
6
SPEAKER_01
Well, I love you.
6
SPEAKER_03
Love you.
6
SPEAKER_02
Do you wanna sing a tune or something?
6
SPEAKER_02
Or a theme song?
6
SPEAKER_02
Oh.
6
SPEAKER_02
Okay, great.
6
SPEAKER_02
We don t have a theme song for this new show, so here I go, go, go.
6
SPEAKER_02
We re gonna ask some random questions, and with the help of our Jerrys, we ll get some suggestions on the fly around this show.