God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.Wait a minute! I didn't even believe in God, but nobody here needed to know that. It could be my little secret. If they did recite that hokey prayer here, I’d be one-step ahead of them. Maybe I’d even impress someone by already knowing the prayer. I kept getting a creepy feeling that I was about to find out just exactly what this fine mess I had gotten myself into really entailed and what impact it would have on my life. I might even finally find out how long I signed on to be Maine’s guinea pig.
Jill chronicled her time on the chair awaiting her interview. At the time of her entrance into the program, Kinsman Hall was located in Hillsdale, New York, a small hamlet in upstate New York nestled along the western edge of the Berkshire Mountains. Kinsman Hall’s history paints it as a vagabond never quite finding where it was meant to put down permanent roots and flourish. Its genealogy can be traced first to Long Island where Kinsman Hall was conceived and was born as a well-meaning concept to help drug addicts. As the population grew in number, the facility was relocated to Upstate New York in Hillsdale. When the Jackman, Maine location was opened, all the residents from the Hillsdale facility were eventually transferred to Jackman. The exodus from New York to Maine became legendary and was often talked about amongst the older residents who had resided in Hillsdale before coming to Jackman. In my mind, I always got the impression from anyone who made the exodus that they looked at the Jackman facility as the land of milk and honey. I always felt a void in never having been to Hillsdale. That group of residents had a much-envied bond. They were a tight knit group whose parameters were next to impossible to infiltrate. Acceptance wasn’t an easy undertaking especially being viewed as an outsider from Maine. How was I ever going to survive while being surrounded by a majority of New Yorkers and beyond?
In Jill’s own words, she describes her impressions of the chair and her time awaiting her interview:
At sixteen years old, I walked into Kinsman Hall in Hillsdale, New York, on a Friday night in March of 1971. "I'm here to enter the program," I said smiling with my luggage at my side. That caused a bit of a scuttlebutt. No one was quite sure what to do at first. This was not the normal mode of entry into the program. Although Elizabeth had done so before George and me before her, my entry was unexpected. Someone said, well, then, put her on the chair.
So, one of the girls brought me into the office, had me sit on a chair and started asking me questions and filling out a form. You know, like an application. What's your name, address, date of birth, why are you here? They told me they had to search my luggage to make sure I wasn't bringing in any drugs and they took my luggage away. Then the girl told me I had to stay on the chair until they were ready for my interview and off she went. I wasn't alone. There was always someone stationed in the office with others trickling in and out. Nothing unusual was taking place around me as the whole family was gathered in the dining room for open house night, dressed in their best clothes and on their best behavior. I kept turning around to smile and say hi to anyone who entered the office. "Turn around and face the wall!" I was told.
At sixteen, I was a cute, sweet, little flower child with a winning smile. These attributes I had used extensively in my young life. But these charms had no power here and the sweet disposition was about 12 hours away from disappearing and being replaced by a raging green monster of superior strength! In the meantime, with my charms falling flat, I was beginning to wonder just what I had gotten myself into!
The chair was a wooden straight-backed chair without a cushion and I had been sitting so long I thought they must have forgotten about me. Finally, I spoke to someone in my sweet little innocent voice,
"I was supposed to have an interview, I think they have forgotten about me."
"No, talking, face the wall!"
Nope! They hadn't forgotten.
I must have sat on that chair that first night for 2 hours! Now, you have to realize that this is absolutely hysterical because it was probably the record for the SHORTEST time anyone ever spent on the chair! It certainly became the record for the SHORTEST time I ever spent on the chair! My time on the chair had been shortened and my interview expedited as I had arrived in the evening and they wanted it all finished before 'lights out'.
When or if a person reached the breaking point and had enough of Kinsman Hall, they definitely got another opportunity to get acquainted with the chair if that breaking point led to the decision to leave the program. That was definitely one rule that was carved in stone. No exceptions were made! If you wanted to leave before you finished the program, you sat on the chair. You would leave the same way you came into the program, but with one HUGE difference. In order to leave Kinsman Hall, a person had to sit on the chair for seven days straight.
During those seven days, twenty hours of each day was spent sitting on the chair and the remaining four hours was to be spent sleeping on the hardwood floor without a mattress. In my two years as a resident, the most memorable chair incident for me was when one person lasted the whole seven days and actually left. Damon became a sort of folk hero who was often envied for his tenacity. People might think, “What’s so hard about sitting on a chair for seven days?” Maybe the before mentioned description of the chair by both Jill and I didn’t do the chair the justice it deserves, so let me go into a little more detail.
The chair was a simple, unpadded, armless, straight back, wooden chair on which a person was expected to sit upright with their feet flat on the floor at all times. Not only did a person's backside get extremely sore from that prolonged position, but also just about every other muscle ached from inactivity. Most likely the other muscles were just sore with sympathy pains, but regardless of the location and reason, the pain was real and extremely difficult to ignore.
Most "druggies" were cigarette smokers as well, so along with being physically uncomfortable, withdrawal from nicotine was another bonus a person could look forward to while sitting on the chair. Any deviation from the rigid rules governing the chair made the person's seven days begin again. Staff had all the bases covered to make the seven days seem like seven years in hell. Most people lacked the kind of mental discipline it required to last seven days in order to leave. We, the weak-minded substance abusers and hedonists of the world, just weren’t cut out for that type of physical and mental abuse. At least not while we were straight, that is! We preferred our abuse to contain some instant feel good sensations that over time caused horrible health problems or caused our life expectancy to be much lower than the normal population’s life expectancy.
The third reason a resident might sit on the chair was as a disciplinary tool. I'll delve further into other disciplinary tools and terminology later, but for now, let's just say the severity of the rule that had been broken and the length of time the person would remain on the chair were in direct correlation with each other. When staff felt the person had completed enough “time out” on the chair, it was always followed up with some equally hideous punishment.
Once again, Jill explains her experience with the chair, but this time she had been in the program a substantial amount of time. In her own words, she tells of the anguish and pain she endured awaiting punishment for trying to split. This episode with the chair takes place in Jackman, Maine where Jill and I shared the same day-to-day experiences, but from very different vantage points. Her words are told from the perspective of an older resident and at the time Jill had her coup de grâce (deathblow) with the chair, I had only been at Kinsman Hall a few months. Because of Jill’s time on the chair, the rules governing the chair were altered, but even with those alterations, the chair still was most people’s Waterloo.
Once again, Jill explains her experience with the chair, but this time she had been in the program a substantial amount of time. In her own words, she tells of the anguish and pain she endured awaiting punishment for trying to split. This episode with the chair takes place in Jackman, Maine where Jill and I shared the same day-to-day experiences, but from very different vantage points. Her words are told from the perspective of an older resident and at the time Jill had her coup de grâce (deathblow) with the chair, I had only been at Kinsman Hall a few months. Because of Jill’s time on the chair, the rules governing the chair were altered, but even with those alterations, the chair still was most people’s Waterloo.
A year or so later my next run in with the chair was after my “split.” I spent two weeks on the chair waiting for my GM (general meeting). My legs swelled up. I lost the arches in my foot (temporarily). They actually became converse giving my feet the appearance of rockers on a rocking horse. I could barely bend at the knees because the back of my knee had also become converse. It was Charlene who noticed my legs even before I did myself (as I had lost all feeling in them) and she summoned Sally, our facility’s nurse.
Sally wanted to see if the swelling would go down by morning, but the next morning my legs were as swollen as they had been the night before so I was brought to the French speaking Doctor in town to find out what was wrong with my legs! He said it was from sitting on the chair in one position for so long! He really had to use his medical degree on that diagnosis! (By the way, he was not told how long I had actually been sitting on the chair.) The cure would be to keep my legs elevated and no salt. When I was brought back to the house I was placed back on the chair, but another chair was placed in front of me with a pillow on it and I was to keep my legs up on that chair. Later during my GM, some people screamed at me for acting like a princess on the chair with my legs up! It really is funny and was so even at that time!
After my leg swelling incident there was a major rule change for people sitting on the chair. Every hour a staff member would take the people who were sitting on the chair out front for some exercise and there were no more leg swelling incidents.
During my time at Kinsman Hall, I sat on the chair for all three reasons. My introduction to the chair gave me enough time to come to the conclusion that Kinsman Hall was a strange place to be and that it might take me awhile to figure out all its ins and outs. After all, I walked into this whole “guinea pig” thing blindly asking little to no questions beforehand about the program. My decision in hindsight seemed like nothing more than a knee-jerk reaction to Stevens. I really wondered how well I would fit in here as I moved from cheek to cheek trying to relieve the pressure and pain I felt without drawing any attention to my movements. I just wanted to get off the chair after sitting there several hours and have my interview. I was tired and wanted this day to finally end. Tomorrow would have to be a better day!