I immediately assumed that being with what I imagined as kindred spirits would be a fun-filled way to do my time until I was stamped worthy of being part of society again. I knew whatever happened I was looking at spending my days until my eighteenth birthday somewhere I probably wouldn’t like as much as I liked being free. Freedom at this point just didn’t seem like something I was going to easily obtain. Nope! Freedom was not an option! This time I was going to actually have to work for my freedom. This time I was going to have to prove to someone that I was worthy of being free. I wonder if this is how the slaves felt as they were held in captivity. Of course, I wasn't abused like they were, but somehow it felt like it on some level.
The state of Maine had determined I was a menace to the general population and needed to be locked away somewhere for being what I considered a little hardheaded and just a wee bit corrupt. Geez! Didn’t that describe just about my entire age group? I know the State of Maine wasn’t as lenient as I was in their assessment of me. They had labeled me as a juvenile delinquent with a history of truancy, sexual promiscuity, habitual drug abuse and running away from home. But that didn’t include the label of protestor and general radical pain in the ass which were two things either they weren’t aware of or just didn’t care about. I had no regard for authority and rules. I did as I pleased when I pleased. Each one of my bizarre actions over the past few years, they thought were great examples of why I needed a program like Kinsman Hall, but I didn’t view this opportunity as a way to turn my life around. I only saw it as a way to leave a place I had grown to loath.
I had blinders on and only saw those things that appealed to my hedonistic side and those things that piqued my curiosity in some way. Everything else was insignificant and not worthy of my time or attention. In today’s world, I believe I would have been labeled as being ODD. Yes, you read that right I suffered from being ODD (Oppositional Defiance Disorder). Forty something years ago the sciences of psychiatry and psychology were still in their infancy compared to where they are today. Like so many other juvenile misfits, I slipped through the cracks in society for quite awhile and didn’t receive the type of help I really needed until my problems had ballooned into being nothing short of overwhelming. The term, ODD seems so harsh to me now and actually makes me flinch as I say it, yet it comes so much closer to describing me as a teenager than the diagnosis I was pinned with a few years earlier while being psychoanalyzed by Bangor’s best.
When I was 14, I started attending weekly group therapy sessions consisting of a bunch of females in my age bracket. The group was run by Rick Butler (fictitious name), a PhD specializing in the area of family counseling. His sub-specialty and primary focus was on hard to reach substance abuse cases and while he was quite successful in treating adult alcoholics, teenage girls just didn’t seem to be his forte. What a joke it was for me listening to all my fellow fuck-ups discuss their problems each week during group therapy. Their misfortunes became the source of amusement for me that made group therapy a bearable form of torture.
Each week it was like an episode from some teeny-bopper version of Peyton Place (primetime drama serial which aired on ABC in half-hour episodes from 1964 to 1969 portraying life in a small New England town), but this cast consisted of amateur actors with small insignificant lives and boring, uncomplicated problems. Each member of the group behaved like a spoiled rich kid with nothing better to do than to whine and moan about having a fight with their boyfriend or to cry about not getting a new car or trip to Europe for their sixteenth birthday. I often sat back and wondered what planet did these people live on as I watched each episode of the drama play itself out.
Each girl had been sent to this group by her parents, but each one of them lacked the essential red flags indicating any real need of psychological help. Their problems could have easily been solved with the professional help of a travel agent with an itinerary for touring 10 countries in 20 days, a car salesman with a hot deal on a brand new Mustang Mach I or a pharmacist with a box of condoms and a copy of the Kama Sutra. A few of them smoked pot, but who didn’t? Smoking dope just happened to be illegal and there seemed to lay the crux of most people’s problems with it. This great social lubricant had been deemed unacceptable by people who saw alcohol as being an acceptable way of taking the edge off any problem or situation.
Marijuana is not the drug exploited in the film, Reefer Madness. It does not mystically transform perfectly well-adjusted upstanding citizens into maniacal dope fiends by corrupting their morals and distorting their values. Marijuana, for me, was just a mellow way to start the day or pleasantly end it and it was almost as widely used by people under 18 as alcohol. In many circles, smoking a joint was an accepted rite of passage from the innocence of childhood into the vast teenage wasteland before adulthood and beyond. In reality, it was just another mind-blowing stroll through a labyrinth filled with booby traps and dead ends that we call life, but enabled the user to have a little different perspective of life. Those people who mastered the fine art of successful navigation down the proverbial garden path were revered by all especially those who did it under the influence. Most potheads are just mellow creatures with a terminal case of the munchies and the motivation and determination to do nothing, but to stay stoned. Big deal, right?
As for harder drugs, I seemed to be the only one in the therapy group who obviously indulged in them. I suppose for the majority of the girls, therapy was just a trendy thing to do in order to properly prepare each of them for the lifestyle of the privileged class. What the hell was I doing in this group? Surely, it had to be some fluke that brought me there. Each week I played the therapy game and kept myself amused and I think I amused others as well.
When the pissed-off feeling brought on by being coerced into therapy finally subsided, I decided to have fun with the whole therapy process. I enjoyed belittling and tormenting my peers during those weekly group sessions and playing the psychobabble game during my private sessions. My actions during group therapy could be likened to someone dismembering an insect. Although my comments to certain group members were generally harsh or often sarcastic, they were also amazingly insightful and quite accurate for a 14 year old. Each time they attempted to turn the tables on me and I was confronted, I always said the same thing with the same attitude.
“I don’t have any problems and if I did, I certainly wouldn’t discuss them with any of you! The silly shit all of you cry about is pretty fuckin’ pathetic. Don‘t you have any better way to spend your parent’s money than by throwing it away here?”
“Jesus, Karen, you’re such a bitch!” was the usual response by one or more in the group. To which I always responded by telling them it was a hard job and someone had to do it.
Their reaction to my wall always amused me and each week, I never disappointed them as I singled out one of them to be the recipient of a tongue-lashing. It was never hard to find someone who seemed in need of being brought back to reality by a verbal slap in the face. Within the first five minutes it was always apparent who would be the lucky recipient each week. I often wondered why anyone ever opened their mouth to reveal anything because each participant knew I was perched and waiting to latch onto anything so I could have fun shredding it apart.
What amused me the most was how no one saw my behavior as being my way of keeping people from getting inside or too close to me. No one seemed to see the huge wall I was in the process of constructing or how skillful I had become at the art of masonry. At that time, a select few were regarded as being in my inner circle and even those people were not privy to my deep, dark secrets. By then, I had closed off to everyone. I knew if anyone else had acted the way I did during group therapy, I certainly would have nailed her ass and confronted her on her bad attitude and her rude, unnecessary behavior, but Rick (Mr. Butler) never stepped in to turn the group in my direction. He just sat back week after week and let the group go in whatever direction it went in while he sat back and took notes. I think he silently hoped that someone would have an epiphany and confront me without him guiding her into it, but in order for something like that to happen, it would have required someone to pull her head out of her ass. Since that was unlikely to happen, I continued to behave however I wanted to behave during each group session. I was virtually unstoppable and on the correct path to self-destruction.
Over time, I got more outrageous in the things I said and did as I grew comfortable with the dynamics of the group, but whatever went unnoticed by the group during group therapy, I knew would be brought up during my next private session. Rick rarely let anything slide and when he did, it was for a definite reason. He definitely had my number, but didn’t know how to reach me. I certainly wasn’t going to tell him it was a long distance number requiring one and the area code to be dialed first. Whatever he figured out regarding me would have to be a solo revelation with no help from me.
The hours I sat in those group therapy sessions sponsored by The Counseling Center were a total waste of everyone’s time and my mother’s hard-earned money because instead of getting better, I got steadily got worse. I went from spewing what amounted to being insightful venom at everyone during the sessions to eventually showing up so wasted that I would nod out while I was talking. Why I was allowed to continue attending the group in that condition is one of life’s greatest unanswered questions. The closest I can come to a viable explanation is that the psychologist running the show didn’t want to label me as a “lost cause” or maybe he had an issue with accepting defeat. Perhaps he saw me teetering on the edge and wanted to be there if I should happen to reach out and need his help. In fact, I think he was the only person at the time who wasn’t surprised when I overdosed or when I did anything else equally bizarre or self-destructive. He was well acquainted with the path I was on and how it abruptly and tragically it ended for most.