Dead, Insane or in Jail: Overwritten

The Book

“Choose to be here… to believe what this special place can offer you. It’s your choice, you see.”

As Overwritten begins, the bounty hunter and an armed sheriff escort Zack back to Rocky Mountain Academy, six weeks after his escape. This time, Zack changes his tactics and stops overtly opposing the authoritarian program. Some kids crumble under the pressure. Others become “look-goods” who’ll do anything for approval. And young Zack may be kidding himself that he can remain immune to the coercive persuasion and thought control that permeate the place. With coarse, brutal dialog and authentic source materials, book two in this nonfiction memoir series takes the reader deeper into the vortex.

After five weeks of intense wilderness Survival, a disorienting trip back to Rocky Mountain Academy, and a package from his parents which further severed communication, Zack Bonnie found himself right back where he started.

Welcomed back by staff who called themselves family members and who were determined to change his behavior through pseudo-psychological methods like raps, bans, propheets, and restrictive agreements, Zack found himself at a breaking point. He no longer had the energy and will to resist. He let them in.

“Dissent was a virtual impossibility since we were all now part of our webs of parent, older brother and sister, and staff messaging. The only way to escape this web was to turn eighteen, lose one’s mental faculties, or maybe die… The trap was as simple as a Chinese finger trap, and at the same time complex like the movement of wave energy. The more we struggled to learn and succeed over weeks and months here, the more enmeshed our lives became…”

Overwritten is the story of how the CEDU program at Rocky Mountain Academy systematically dismantled and restructured the mind of fifteen-year-old Zack Bonnie through unrelenting propaganda during the winter of 1988. Zack writes, “eventually I would buy into almost all of it, to the point of emotional bankruptcy…” and, “There was no escaping the program’s required intimate bonding, smooshing, and hand joining. There was no escaping the effect it had on me, either.”

Zack Bonnie, now an advocate and resource in the Troubled Teen industry, has spent years unraveling exactly what happened to him at Rocky Mountain Academy, and researching its parallels to cult activity and brainwashing. Overwritten is a continuation into the personal narrative Zack began in Dead, Insane, or in Jail: A CEDU Memoir and is a self-aware, intimate window into the tactics used to break, rebuild, and rewire young minds.

Reviews

In Overwritten, the second volume of his well-written memoir, Zack Bonnie explains some of the standard methods of mind control used to break down people’s identities, to force them to dissociate, and to overwhelm them. I applaud Zack Bonnie’s bold, honest description of his journey through abuse. I commend him for wanting to understand it, dissect it, and digest it – and integrate it in a way that will help others.

Healing happens for people who are willing to courageously and honestly look at what happened, and undertake reparative strategies and therapies with skilled and trained practitioners. I believe that having had these experiences ultimately makes us stronger as human beings. I applaud Zack Bonnie’s bold, honest description of his journey through abuse.

—Steven Hassan, author of Combating Cult Mind Control and Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People Cults and Beliefs

Zack Bonnie recounts the well-intentioned, but ill-informed, ways that we attempt to deal with attachment issues, impulsivity, and substance abuse. His book serves as a reminder that healing trauma must begin with targeting the underlying brain state, a concept still largely misunderstood in treatment facilities.

—Sebern Fisher, Author, Neurofeedback in the Treatment of Developmental Trauma: Calming the Fear-Driven Brain

Zack Bonnie has provided us with a book which is well written and engaging, edgy and humorous, in his continuing memoir of doing time in the troubled teen industry. If speaking out, like art, can be an antidote to the impacts of abuse, then I think Zack’s book will be a helpful tonic for those who were in teen re-education camps, and for those who want to understand.

—Diana Pletts, Director, The Phoenix Project

This book walked me through Zack’s journey – I was able to see how CEDU reform schools in the 90s broke down individualism through sometimes cruel and sometimes very unusual measures, and then used tactics to brainwash and control the teenagers who lived there. This critical insider’s look into the “troubled teen industry” is so powerful because it highlights the emotional challenges that someone must face when going through a program like this AND when recovering from one. To be told that everything you think is wrong – that thinking itself is wrong… it is truly a frightening place to be. —Amazon reviewer