Wed Mar 05, 2008 11:27 pm
Another one chimes in!
Hey everyone! I realize that I broke usual form and started posting before introducing myself properly. So, hello there! I'm a Los Angeles anon, a pixel-pusher by trade and a student of film and animation. Can't wait to get to know you all, and I'm sure I'll see several of you on the 15th! I'll be one of the ones with camera in hand. 
I've never been a member of the CoS, but I had a near-miss run-in with Scientology several years ago that I thought I might share, since it helps explain where I'm coming from. I was one of those super-precocious kids that's been on the internet since I was a wee sprout with pigtails (cue pedobear.gif), and one of my earliest internet-circa-mid-90's memories was stumbling across xenu.net. So thanks to that, I had already been sort of "inoculated" against the whole Scientology package, and knew what to look out for in the way of them posing as something else or another organization (CCHR, CAN, etc).
Fast forward a couple of years, and 'round about puberty I'm starting to come down with some mysterious undiagnosable illnesses that seem to be linked to an anxiety disorder (from the looks of Eli Lily thread in Gen. Chatter, there's a lot of ladies here that had similar problems; we should talk shop sometime
). Early on I discovered that a lot of the drugs they tried me on (SSRI's mostly) actually made the problem worse, or the side-effects would become more trouble to deal with than the anxiety itself. So I started seeking out alternative treatments.
See where this is going yet?
I had really good success with doing biofeedback therapy, and managed to get a pretty good grip on my anxiety by simply being more conscious of it as that form of therapy trains you to be. For anybody that doesn't know what the treatment entails, you're connected to a device that measures galvanic skin response, blood pressure, heart rate and whatnot, and you try to modify your "stress response" to various stimuli by watching your reaction on screen and becoming more aware of when it happens and how to consciously suppress it. So I suppose it's kind of like the e-meter in function, at least enough to be passably similar to the uninitiated. Anyway, using biofeedback techniques I was actually able to go about 5 years without having any kind of intervention in the way of therapy or medicine, but the stress of starting college brought all the old problems bubbling right back to the surface. My mother, doing the proper worried mom thing, starting searching for anybody in the area (Phoenix, AZ at the time) who could help me get back into biofeedback. One day, she called me up with all this information on a "biofeedback" therapist an acquaintance had told her about; absolutely glowing reviews of this lady, how she was able to cure all these people's psychosomatic disorders for good, nothing short of miraculous. Mom's friend even had a handy brochure for her (
), and I got her to read me this person's website address so I could check it out myself.
Well, I'm not on the page more than 30 seconds before I see what looks like the Dianetics pyramid logo. The second I saw the word "auditing" I had my phone in hand dialing my mom back to tell her what I had found. This lead into a two-hour conversation about Scientology and the information I had gathered from the internets during my wasted youth. She was stunned, and I think taken aback that she had honestly intended to call and make an appointment on my behalf.
I saw the movie "Safe" (with Julianne Moore) a while ago, and it scared the living piss out of me (I watch a LOT of horror movies for chuckles, and this remains the most genuinely scary movie I've seen). If you've ever watched the film, you know it's not about Scientology, but the parallels are too much to be coincidental. I could have easliy become the main character from that story had things gone differently that day. This was the start of me being actively involved in trying to disseminate information about the CoS and its abuses; how could I sit by and do nothing while this organization targets vulnerable people - people like ME - and takes them for everything they're worth? I just don't have it in me to forgive that.
So basically, the tl;dr is this: if it weren't for Andreas Heldal-Lund and Operation Clambake, my family and I might have been deep into Scientology by now. I was at such a point that I would have done ANYTHING just to feel WELL again, and had I not been exposed to that damning information prior I would have jumped straight down that rabbit hole without much thought.
So to all of you fighting the good fight to get this information out there, I salute you. You are truly an inspiration to me, and I thank you for having the courage to speak out and do what you do. CHEERS!
I've never been a member of the CoS, but I had a near-miss run-in with Scientology several years ago that I thought I might share, since it helps explain where I'm coming from. I was one of those super-precocious kids that's been on the internet since I was a wee sprout with pigtails (cue pedobear.gif), and one of my earliest internet-circa-mid-90's memories was stumbling across xenu.net. So thanks to that, I had already been sort of "inoculated" against the whole Scientology package, and knew what to look out for in the way of them posing as something else or another organization (CCHR, CAN, etc).
Fast forward a couple of years, and 'round about puberty I'm starting to come down with some mysterious undiagnosable illnesses that seem to be linked to an anxiety disorder (from the looks of Eli Lily thread in Gen. Chatter, there's a lot of ladies here that had similar problems; we should talk shop sometime
). Early on I discovered that a lot of the drugs they tried me on (SSRI's mostly) actually made the problem worse, or the side-effects would become more trouble to deal with than the anxiety itself. So I started seeking out alternative treatments.
See where this is going yet?
I had really good success with doing biofeedback therapy, and managed to get a pretty good grip on my anxiety by simply being more conscious of it as that form of therapy trains you to be. For anybody that doesn't know what the treatment entails, you're connected to a device that measures galvanic skin response, blood pressure, heart rate and whatnot, and you try to modify your "stress response" to various stimuli by watching your reaction on screen and becoming more aware of when it happens and how to consciously suppress it. So I suppose it's kind of like the e-meter in function, at least enough to be passably similar to the uninitiated. Anyway, using biofeedback techniques I was actually able to go about 5 years without having any kind of intervention in the way of therapy or medicine, but the stress of starting college brought all the old problems bubbling right back to the surface. My mother, doing the proper worried mom thing, starting searching for anybody in the area (Phoenix, AZ at the time) who could help me get back into biofeedback. One day, she called me up with all this information on a "biofeedback" therapist an acquaintance had told her about; absolutely glowing reviews of this lady, how she was able to cure all these people's psychosomatic disorders for good, nothing short of miraculous. Mom's friend even had a handy brochure for her (
), and I got her to read me this person's website address so I could check it out myself.
Well, I'm not on the page more than 30 seconds before I see what looks like the Dianetics pyramid logo. The second I saw the word "auditing" I had my phone in hand dialing my mom back to tell her what I had found. This lead into a two-hour conversation about Scientology and the information I had gathered from the internets during my wasted youth. She was stunned, and I think taken aback that she had honestly intended to call and make an appointment on my behalf.
I saw the movie "Safe" (with Julianne Moore) a while ago, and it scared the living piss out of me (I watch a LOT of horror movies for chuckles, and this remains the most genuinely scary movie I've seen). If you've ever watched the film, you know it's not about Scientology, but the parallels are too much to be coincidental. I could have easliy become the main character from that story had things gone differently that day. This was the start of me being actively involved in trying to disseminate information about the CoS and its abuses; how could I sit by and do nothing while this organization targets vulnerable people - people like ME - and takes them for everything they're worth? I just don't have it in me to forgive that.
So basically, the tl;dr is this: if it weren't for Andreas Heldal-Lund and Operation Clambake, my family and I might have been deep into Scientology by now. I was at such a point that I would have done ANYTHING just to feel WELL again, and had I not been exposed to that damning information prior I would have jumped straight down that rabbit hole without much thought.
So to all of you fighting the good fight to get this information out there, I salute you. You are truly an inspiration to me, and I thank you for having the courage to speak out and do what you do. CHEERS!
Last edited by anonalogue on Thu Mar 06, 2008 2:31 am, edited 2 times in total.