Because these things are real and pervasive. And no one has unearned immunity.

I'm going to keep trying to tell young girls how men might try to take advantage of them and how to protect themselves. I'm going to keep trying to make people aware of the slow, methodical way an abuser, authoritarian, or brainwashing system coerces you out of your own mind.

This happens all over the place, in AA and out of it, in many different ways. And so l am going to keep trying to talk to parents of teens about changing their approach instead of trying to change their kid.

Eventually, at 22, I did leave.
It's never one thing that snaps you into reality when you've been brainwashed. It's a hundred little things that collide into one moment, when the lights come on and you realize, this has all been a façade.

And on it went for 7 years.
I tried to leave a few times but always came back. People who left were cut off, all contact instantly severed. I had no real relationships outside of them anymore. Id have to start life from scratch. And each time I left, I feared it was my brain trying to kill me.

But he had an army of cats, and after months of evading and outright protests, he quite literally cornered me in his house.
The consequence of resistance outweighed enduring the act.
After time, it got easier.
Eventually, I too became a cat who brought him fresh prey.

Once my restrictive diet produced the desired results, I was eventually sent to Mike, the Midtown Group leader in his 50s. I did not want to sleep with him, and naively thought I could out-scurry him like a mouse.

When I wasn't the prey, I also served as the bait, sent to sleep with men the group wanted to recruit or win favor with.

I began to be nudged towards older men in the group. It started with the ones in their late 20s and 30s. We were structured like a pyramid, with the old-timers at the top, holding the power. The higher up the pyramid I was nudged, the more privileges and less labor I had to perform.

That's when it all began. Amidst the fun and events, there was lots of labor and daily confession of all the ways in which you were selfish and problematic. There were verbal lashings, restrictive diets for the girls, and a constant cycle of fear, shame, love bombing, and relief.

My most costly concession: I was convinced that my brain was diseased and trying to kill me.
And as such, I had to follow their direction for my life on all matters, in all ways. At 15, with all my hormonal angst, and with parents who agreed, I turned my life over to them completely.

I had to give up a lot, but they replaced all that was taken away: I couldn't talk to my old friends, but I got a huge new crop of friendships with a packed social calendar of constant activity.I had to stop seeing the therapists and doctors and stop all meds, which I was thrilled to do.

Everyone was attractive, incredibly welcoming, funny, and seemingly happy.
There were lots of cute high school and college-aged boys, one in particular that I liked and paid attention to me. I did what I was told and kept coming back so that I could see him each night.

I did not need a 12-step program. My only problem with drugs or alcohol was that experimenting with them was against the rules. But a lot of the other kids at Midtown had similar stories.

I was a rebellious teen with
overprotective, controlling parents. This got me in the troubled teen "system" - therapists, hospitals, meds, treatment. After a year in and out of these places, I was sent to a Washington D.C. young people's A.A. group called The Midtown Group at 15 years old.