I’m not a sociologist or anthropologist. I’m not currently trying to start a cult.
I had two goals when I started writing the Dead, Insane, or in Jail (DIJ) book series:
- To chronicle what happened, to compose an accurate description of events while I was living in Northern Idaho.
- To demonstrate the impacts made by regression and quack therapies by self described “behavior modification program” techniques used at a teen-program called CEDU.
If describing what it feels like to be a kid in that place makes a reader vicariously experience the positive and negative peak moments and realizations made over time there, and brings the emotional pressures of that system to bear, then I have succeeded.
Am I qualified to define what life at CEDU is?
I lived it, so I wrote that, first in Dead, Insane, or in Jail: A CEDU Memoir, and now in the second book, Overwritten.
I do not feel qualified to write about bio-ethics, informed consent, institutionalized coercive persuasion, the manipulative tactics used by cults, thought reform, or behavioral psychology – more broadly speaking.
Somehow, I’m writing about the ontological; how could I feel qualified to write about semiotics and the social communications of teens captive in such an insular world? Neuroscience. How to convincingly demonstrate conformity to such a system where adapting to the quackery and artificial environment was viewed as the expected personal growth, or describe the chemical signaling that seemed to happen during moments of trauma bonding with kids and adults alike? All of this simultaneously must be taken in during a suspended natural puberty and while natural social brain development is being consistently detoured…
Yet these topics show up over and over in two volumes of Dead, Insane, or in Jail.
I may not even be qualified to tell you why I wrote the books, because my own unraveling of CEDU’s rewiring methods and intentions will be continuous.
What qualifies me for your time in reading this account, is that I have taken the time to tell my story.
If you are interested in the truth, or any of the subject matters I may be unqualified to write about, but did anyway, you will appreciate Overwritten!, Book 2 in the Dead, Insane or in Jail book series. Learn more here about the DIJ book series and Overwritten!, the new book, launching soon.
The cover for Overwritten! is evolving…
Final Cover Reveal COMING SOON!
