A number of testimonies from Blue Fire Wilderness

A number of people who have been forced to stay in this wilderness program, has reported back to us and well as some of the parents. Here are their testimonies found on Google and Yelp

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I went to bluefire in the summer of 2020 it was not a good exprice i am at home now but after 2 years at a therapeutic boarding school after the therapist made a bad decision to send me to a boarding school i lost all my friends and now i don't have any and I am still addicted to Fortnite like in the beginning

Connor Mangold - Google review

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One of the biggest mistakes I have ever made. My child was struggling immensely, and we found bluefire through their therapist. It seemed like the only option so we sent them, but I promise it is not. They have bee back for 7 months, and I have never seen them this unhappy. I talked to other parents of children who went, and they shared similar experiences. Some kids will not even speak to their parents anymore, which I am incredibly thankful is not true for my family. This place should only be used as a very very very last resort. Please do not send your child here.

abc 123 - Google review

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Absolutely awful. I am considering filing formal complaints with the State of Idaho. The therapist we worked with broke one of the main agreements we entered into within the first week and then tried to convince me 'it wasn't really an agreement.' This lack of accountability, outright dishonesty and unprofessionalism only grew throughout my experience as the father there. Their 'one hour of family therapy every two weeks' is absolutely subpar. Families like mine with struggles this intense need at the least, one hour every week if not two to three. In the first two weeks of her being there my daughters therapist said she needed to go to a transition program....within the first two weeks. Suggesting a young adult should attend a six month to one year residential transition program AFTER blue fire when she was only at blue fire for two weeks was, to me, absolutely irresponsible and indicated a strong sales position the school was taking that is totally at odds to what real therapy actually requires - individual consideration, time and thorough review. I submitted a nearly 17 page complaint to the school and had to record a conversation I had with the therapist in order to show how much lying and lack of professionalism this person was engaging in. In their 'agreement' they try to have the parent and client sign away their right to complain openly/publicly about the program. We voided that section and refused to sign it. I should have left the program right then and there when they even suggested we sign that. They all but admitted guilt to having a huge string of disappointed and hurt clients and parents, so much so that they try to ask new ones to agree to never speak poorly about their program.
Stay away from this place and sadly, I wish I could say where to go but the intense lack of truly helpful and supportive programs for struggling youth and their families is staggering.
Also, search Blue Fire Wilderness Therapy on YouTube and notice how every one of their video's has comments turned off.

Imagine Do - Google review

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I voluntarily went to bluefire when I was 14 (I am not 19 and in my freshman year of college), my parents suggested it and I agreed. If I could go back in time and tell myself to say no I would. I lost many of m friends because I was gone for so long, and it took me a very long time to make new ones. It may sound easy, but it is really hard to get back to the same level of friendship you had with someone after not speaking to them for 3 months. Even now 5 years later I regret going there.

Oscar Untruelove - Google review

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Hi i am a past student of blue fire and I am writing this for struggling parents who feel like they have no option but so send their kid here DONT DO IT this place can care less if you come out better and even less that you actually go home. At my time at blue fire they used cruel punishments on me and the kids in my group we were constantly deprived of food when I first got there it was 8 kids when I left it was 16 kids and we were still getting the same amount of food it was used against us as punishment and what made it worse is the staff knew what they were doing because me and the kids would constantly say you can’t use food as punishment and even are therapist tried to help but once the therapist left and it was just the unsupervised staff with the kids they were free to do as they please and punish how they pleased so we were genuinely scared that whatever we said about the staff out of fear that it would be used against us or that our “privilege” of talking to our family be taken away much of the program is hiking and I remember an occasion when we actually ended up getting lost in the desert and they forced us to hike 25 miles all the kids had blistered feet and we were out of food but of course the staff still had food and they were eating beef jerky in front of us when they knew damn well we were deprived of meat there I could write a whole other review talking about the food they fed us horrible beans and rice almost every meal also forgot to mention to have any contact with your parents you have to write them a letter saying how good of a program you are at and how much of an opportunity it is for you to be there and if you don’t your not allowed to talk to your parents these people who run this place are sick in the head and see basic necessities as privileges

carter kessing - Google review

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Get rich quick scheeme, you have a bad kid? Theyll make your kid good in just a few weeks? This is bs. I attented bluefire for more than 2 monthes and it ruined my entire social life it ruined my family life, how are they going to help your teen when they have only 2 theripists, and you only meet with them once a week. They have the say weather u go home or not. They have more than 10 other kids cases there working on too if and if its not working out how they see it they will just say your kid needa boarding school... this is how they make there money its sad. I stay intoucu with everyone i was at bluefire with and there lifes all went down the drain as did mine. One of the biggest issues is there website is a lie. We sleep on the floor eat out the same cup have no chairs nothing and during family spark they bring out tents and chairs and acual good food only when the parents come to visit than right when the parents leave its right back to sleeping on the floor no chairs or nothing. Everyone i was there with agreed it was a front. Please dont waste your money on this scheme, dont put your family thru what mine went thru, dont put your kid through what i went through. It made me worse off as a kid made me way worse i had to learn everything myself amd i had years of therepy because of bluefire and they all agree bluefire is a scam a scheme.. they literally have tents bur won't let you sleep in them unless ur familys there. This wont help your kid dont give them your hard earned dollars just to make things worse for your family

Highway Racing - Google review

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Ruined my life - it was an abusive experience. I could talk for days about how disgusting this program and the staff are. Don't send your kid here unless you are a parent who is sick in the head

julia thornton - Google review

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The experience turned out to be irrelevant and a waste of hard earned money. After blue fire, our son went to one of their recommended high schools in Texas. After he graduated, he fell into the same group of people (even though we were 1500 miles away). Blue Fire did not help him. We would have been in the same position if we had not sent him there. It did not work for us.

Matt A. - Yelp

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Additional resources

• BlueFire Wilderness (2013-present) Gooding, ID (Anti-Troubled Teen Industry Activism & Survivor Support)
• Matt A's testimony on Yelp

Reddit testimony about SUWS of the Carolinas

All rights goes to the original author who posted it on Reddit

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In 2016 I was sent to SUWS of the Carolinas because my parents found a joint in my purse. The kidnapping and camping were nothing compared to dealing with one camp counsellor in particular.

His name was Jimmy (I think his last name started with a B?), he was a very lanky granola type. Told us he was "mellow" and a "nice guy" but he was the most evil pathetic man I'd ever met.

He loved finding out our traumas, tell us we were making them up and would punish us if we said we weren't lying. Anyone who didn't comply would get a letter sent to their parents, telling them how "out of control we are" and would recommend they disown us when we turn 18 to "teach us a lesson". Now I know he was the liar.

He was very touchy with me, nothing inappropriate but was weird since I was 15 and he was in his twenties. I told him I didn’t like to be touched because I was s*xually *ssaulted when I was in middle school. He continued to touch me and whispered in my ear “stop making up stories for attention.” The hairs on the back of my neck stood up and I struggled to get away from him, he leaned in again "you probably liked it anyway". I wanted to punch him but I knew if I reacted, I would be the crazy one and I'd be punished.

I learned to stay away from him and made sure I was never alone with him.

But I saw him do the same thing to other kids. They'd talk about what they went through and he'd tell them that they were exaggerating for attention, then he'd tell a story that was always somehow one step worse than what the kid went through.

Like one kid said he watched his dad die from a car accident, and then he'd say he also watched his father die but it was way worse because "he was a baby when it happened". He told another kid his dad died in Iraq.

Another, that his mom died of an overdose. He told the same kid his mom was in a mental hospital for schizophrenia. When the kid confusedly asked, "I thought your mom passed away?", he was denied showers and Jimmy recommended to his parents that he needed to stay at SUWS to work on his lying problem. Jimmy made him his scapegoat for the rest our stay. Isolating him, making up rumors about him, and falsely accusing him of stealing his things. Which led to even more punishment. Eventually he learned to stop talking and reacting to Jimmy. Jimmy got bored and moved on to someone else.

I'm so angry at what I went through, and what other kids went through, and being left in the care of terrible people who had all the power and could use that power to punish me on a whim. And I'm so angry that this program designed to "help" only traumatized us further.

It's six years later, after years of therapy with an actual therapist (not a camp counsellor with a high school degree), I'm starting to get my life together.

I did learn one valuable lesson: I will never allow anyone to have that much power over me ever again and I will fight tooth and nail to make sure it doesn't.

Sources

The originally testimony on Reddit

Sent to SUWS for 9 weeks

This testimony was located on Reddit. All rights goes to the author

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I'm sorry if 100% of this isn't relevant, these are 10 year old thoughts I've never told anyone or writen them down before.

TW: Suicide

In 2011 I pretended to be sick to stay home from school and tried to hang myself. My home life was completely controlled by my mother after I got a D on my report card and I wasn't allowed to see friends, go outside, play games or anything until my grades went up, which, no matter what I did, couldn't actually happen for months until my next report card came in. Ironically that day was a breath of fresh air because I wasn't walking on eggshells around my mom, or being harassed by teachers who's classes I was failing. But my mom came home early and caught me, and I was sent to a adolecent psychiatric facility. I won't go into too much detail, but it's the white-walled places that put you in solitary for acting out and won't let you leave until you do thier therapy packet and do whatever they say without question.

My parents threatened to send my back to the psych ward for the rest of the school year every time I acted out or cried from frustration. 100% of my everyday was at school or with my parents who controlled my every action and I felt trapped. I failed my 8th grade year and they sent me to SUWS the day after school let out.

My parents already had me where I would say yes to anything so I willingly flew to North Carolina to this "summercamp", only to find out the majority of kids there were kidnapped and brought there. I went hiking the first day and passed out from exhaustion in a few hours and apparently rolled down a hill for awhile. I'm from a completely flat city and didn't like sports, so physical exertion and uphill were foriegn concepts to me.

I wasn't as scared of the counselors there as I was of my parents so I acted out regularly. Everyone had daily tasks they had to do in order to progress through the program and I didn't even try for the first week. I tried my best to be polite to the counselors, all but 1 who worked with my group were in their 20's and were actually nice people. They told me about the consequences of my actions before they got physical and they did try thier best to de-escalate things without putting me in holds. By the time I was adjusted to living away from my parents I somehow got a little hope for my future back and tried to complete the program. I was immediately stonewalled by the daily requirement of drinking 4 liters of water a day. I was 13 in a group of 14-17 year olds and was the smallest by far. They even had the rule of thumb of 'a liter a day for every 25 pounds'. I was only 80 pounds at the time but they didn't believe me. I either couldn't drink enough everyday or was throwing up water. I started having liquid shits every day and having to go multiple times a day cause I couldn't hold it in.

The group therapy was all but pointless and I felt out of place. The literature was all Alchoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous and I had never touched either my whole life. Everyone had to go through the 12 steps and I was a sheltered kid whose mom wouldn't let me have access to the internet, or see friends outside of school. I adamantly refused to "surrender to a higher power" and started recusing myself from group. The problem is that in order for someone to progress through the program they had to follow all the rules EVERYDAY. One of the veteren kids who was there for months in the 'community' stage or whatever, basically had to start the packet over because he missidentified a kind of tree and had to do the basic therapy exercises again from day 1.

There was no showering and I was covered in rashes pretty much the whole time. I have a ton of allergies and one of those is pine trees, and basically everything in nature has touched a fucking pine tree. We all got to wash our clothes and shower and every 4 weeks for 10 minutes, at the same time. I shit my pants 4 times while I was there and was punished for taking steps to not do so. Some new kid with severe OCD was taking over an hour to put a trashbag in a 5 gallon bucket and I kept screaming I had to shit. I ran and shit into the creek and was scolded for not holding it longer. No disrespect to that kid, he did not respond well to their "therapy" either and I don't blame him.

We had to write letters to our parents every week. If you didn't you started the program over. I started out pleading with them to let me come home. It then turned into anger and those letters were blocked until I wrote a nice one. I made a cipher for my dad in a letter and threatened to kill myself if they didn't let me go home. He let them know and I was put on safety watch for 2 weeks. Thats when a counselor is in arms reach of you 24/7. You're only allowed to sleep if a tarp is over your body and 2 counselors sleep ontop of the tarp on either side of you. You can only shit if you shout your name every 5 seconds whike they weren't looking at you to make sure you didn't run.

We had to do equine therapy as well. Basically we just stand around a horse while someone talks about horses. I refused because I have a phobia of large animals. They told me that horses react to fear and will act out if you're scared so just don't be scared. I already knew that, I was trying to explain that it's a phobia, and I'm not going around horses BECAUSE they will react to my involuntary fear. I started the program from day 1 after that.

The worst thing day to day was the food. Everyday was beans and rice. Everyday. There was saltless and bland oatmeal and grits for breakfast. We each got a bag of personal food but it basically just a stick of pepperoni, a pound of cheese, and some granola. I can't stand the taste of cheese and it makes my stomach turn, but after forcimg myself to eat it I discovered that it coagulated my poo so that it came out somewhat pasty and solid instead of shitting water, and that was better than nothing.

Luckily I had an infected ingrown toenail about 6 weeks in. I say luckily because they had to drive me into the city to get surgery and I didn't have to hike for a week. I stayed at base camp and tried to prepare all of the scared new kids of whats to come. I used a stick as a crutch to walk around and base camp rules were kinda lax as it was all new kids. As long as I was within eyesight of a counselor I could walk around as I please. I used this to steal stuff from the counselors. I stole a lighter and a bunch of parachute chord, which is what they used to pitch all the tents and tarps. I nabbed ones gatorade and it was the tastiest thing I had there. Its was so sweet I almost threw up cause I was only used to hot creek water and beans.

While I was at base camp a kid woke me up in the middle of the night and asked if I wanted to run away with him. He had saw the numbers on the lock for the bearbox and gotten our bags of food. I said sure and we ran off into the woods in the dark. Our stupid plan was to hop on one of the trains that ran all through the mountains. The trains were going way faster up close so we just kept walking until we found a road. The counselors warned us that the locals knew to call the cops if they saw kids in SUWS clothes walking around so we weren't about to go into civilization. We ended up walking in a kindof circle and there were cars sent out looking for us. Once they spotted us I just surrendered cause I'm not about to get tackled by these assholes. It was kindof fun to have actual alone time, short lasted as it was.

7 weeks in I still hadn't progressed through the program. The counselors wouldn't budge on the water requirments so I drank what I was comfortable with and told them to fuck off. All this time there wasn't anything done to address my very real anxiety and depression, because the program was completely geared towards drugs and alchohol. I felt like my life was over. Everything my parents believed in was good grades, then good college, then good job. Anything else was a failure at life and a bum. I flunked out of a good school and I didn't even understand that something like that isn't the end of the world. I couldn't even do therapy right. So I tied a noose with the rope I stole by the light of a lighter and tried to hang myself from a small tree in the middle of the night. I couldn't fall so I just swung there looking at the moon until some counselors came over cause they heard me. I was starting to black out but they grabbed me and cut me down. I was on a very strict safety watch for the remainder of my time there.

They told me not to bring it up in group cause it might distract others from thier treatment. They told everyone else I was running away at night and that's why I was on safety watch. In all honesty the counselors who we actually had to interact with were genuinely nice people. I think they had a missplaced passion for helping kids and were persuaded by the high pay to do it there. I poured my heart out to one of them and told her how I felt trapped and this was the only way out I could see. That I wasn't sent here for misbehaving neccessarily, but for trying to kill myself. She didn't have great advice but talking someone down from suicide wasn't in her job description so I can't blame her.

In the middle of my 10th week I was woken up early and told I was going home. We hiked back to base camp and instead of the camp's grand graduation ceremony I did a trust exercise with my parents who had flown in. Basically my mom put on a blindfold and I had to walk her around the courtyard for a bit. I felt angry but also like I had a gun to my head. I wanted to push her over. I wanted to hurt her for what she did to me but I was scared of what would happen. They already spent 40,000$ to send me to that hellhole and when I saw my mom again I almost wanted to go back.

After I got home my parents were following the regimen that SUWS gave them. Rigid home life structure, and lots and lots of family therapy. Basically my mom paid hundreds of dollers to professionals to tell her that she didn't do anything wrong and that I should take responsibilty for making her feel bad by trying to die. She's never regretted her actions or gave me an apology. She wouldn't even admit in hindsight that it was a shit thing to do to me.

I hope SUWS and places like it burn to the ground and everyone in charge is in prison for life. I have 3 ruptered disks in my spine and damaged knees from hiking so much at that fucking place. I can't work anywhere I have to stand for 8 hours and I don't have the grades or motivation to get a meaningful college degree. I don't have the means to seek therapy for this either.

Fuck wilderness therapy.

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Sources:

• The original testimony on Reddit
• About SUWS (Domestic Prisoners of Conscience)

Gavin Cruz speaks about his time detained at BlueFire Wilderness Therapy

This testimony was located on Google. All rights go to the original author.

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The staff were nice but the over all help they had with targeting certain kids including myself was horrible. The staff would mess up the re rash and we would have way less food and we were stuck barely eating. Also your pictures of blue fire on your website is completely false we had horrible quality clothes I was in there when it was five degrees and below and the gloves and layers of clothes were not meant for that environment they were horrible it’s basically cruel punishment for people trying to get help. What’s the point of putting someone with mental issues or drug or alcohol addiction in weather where they can’t feel there hand or body while having kids cook horrible food with horrible ingredients giving during re rash.

I was there for eleven weeks I enjoyed my therapist a lot but I didn’t make any progress at all he was a great guy but didn’t help me at all. I went to a treatment center after and they couldn’t help me either I struggle with depression and anxiety i am the exact same person as before. There is no point of sending a struggling kid to a wilderness therapy especially one that does not give you the tools to be safe. If we didn’t bust a cold we were stuck sitting around the camp site freezing then going into a green wall which y’all said that we were going in a yurt every night on y’all’s website when we went into one only at three camp sites. I remember waking up in a fetal position and I used one of my nalgens filled with my urine and put it on my stomach to keep me warm. And they would only let you sleep in a long sleeve skin tight shirt and pants that matched the shirt with no jacket or anything so you would basically be sleeping in your underwear they also took your shoes so you would have to wake up and pee outside with no shoes and in a shirt and pants in the snow. This was punishment my parents still think it was a fun experience when in reality it was a living hell.

I’m begging you from the bottom of my heart don’t send your kid here they lie to you. Just get a therapist at home and if needed send him or her to a mental hospital. Also don’t send your kid to a treatment center it’s the same process as wilderness but in a building it’s not helpful there at all. Don’t ever consider this.

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Source:
The original testimony on Google

Carter's experiences at Bluefire Wilderness program

This testimony was found on Google. All rights goes to the original author

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Hi i am a past student of blue fire and I am writing this for struggling parents who feel like they have no option but so send their kid here DONT DO IT this place can care less if you come out better and even less that you actually go home.

At my time at blue fire they used cruel punishments on me and the kids in my group we were constantly deprived of food when I first got there it was 8 kids when I left it was 16 kids and we were still getting the same amount of food it was used against us as punishment and what made it worse is the staff knew what they were doing because me and the kids would constantly say you can’t use food as punishment and even are therapist tried to help but once the therapist left and it was just the unsupervised staff with the kids they were free to do as they please and punish how they pleased so we were genuinely scared that whatever we said about the staff out of fear that it would be used against us or that our “privilege” of talking to our family be taken away much of the program is hiking and I remember an occasion when we actually ended up getting lost in the desert and they forced us to hike 25 miles all the kids had blistered feet and we were out of food but of course the staff still had food and they were eating beef jerky in front of us when they knew damn well we were deprived of meat there.

I could write a whole other review talking about the food they fed us horrible beans and rice almost every meal also forgot to mention to have any contact with your parents you have to write them a letter saying how good of a program you are at and how much of an opportunity it is for you to be there and if you don’t your not allowed to talk to your parents these people who run this place are sick in the head and see basic necessities as privileges

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Source:
The original testimony

A testimony concerning the BlueFire Wilderness Therapy program

This testimony was located on Reddit. All rights go to the original author known as reds2032

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How I was abused at BlueFire Wilderness Therapy

Fuck ok I really really don’t want to write this shit down but it needs to be known. I, and many others, were abused at BlueFire. I was there from fall of 2020 to February 2021. Im extremely nervous to put any more information out in case of being recognized.

An incomplete list (because I can possibly remember them all):

I broke a bone and was left untreated for 4 days before being taken to a hospital. They tried to convince me I was making it up for attention, but once my skin started turning black and purple I realized I wasn’t making anything up. We were forced SO MANY (2 dozen plus times) times to sit in the snow without fire or shelter for countless hours in silence. This was a “consequence” for “misbehaving”. I was not allowed contact with any family for the first six weeks as punishment because of the panic attacks and hysteria I had my first week. We were made to force-feed eachother TO LITERALLY DEMONSTRATE WHAT ABUSE WAS LIKE. We had to backpack one day with our legs tied together to represent how being depressed keeps you away from being free. We were told several times to shut up because we were the ones in crazy camp and we didn’t deserve to be listened to. I was told my dog died then told she didn’t to test how I reacted to grief even if it wasn’t real. That one just makes me mad. We weren’t allowed to talk to eachother at all unless we were being watched and recorded by staff. We had to walk barefoot in several feet of snow to use the “bathroom” (any bush) Our shoes/socks were taken away at night. This was so it would make it harder to run away. We had to do layouts in our under garments in below freezing temperatures while it was raining.

I can’t make myself write anymore. My legs are literally shaking right now.

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Source:
The original testimony on Reddit

Redcliff Ascent experiene

The testimony was found on Qoura where the question was whether it helped.

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As someone who spent 5 months in a wilderness therapy program (in the Utah desert, in a program that is supposed to last 28 days or less), I can tell you the answer is both yes and no. In short, it depends on the person. Most people I encountered were there involuntarily (including myself). You could consider the experience character changing, to say the least (my experience has stuck with me 10 years and one child later).

After having been highjacked from their beds in the middle of the night, flown out against their will across the country, blindfolded for hours on end during a never-ending-car-ride-from-hell until reaching their final destination, the first impression is understandably unfavorable. However, coming out of the program, I can say with confidant certainty that ”complete rehabilitation” was 0%, while “partial rehabilitation” was (at best) 50/50.

I know of more than one program “graduate” that went home only to kill themselves (one camp-mate of mine with her own fathers gun), and several more that ended up in very bad places. This was due to a variety of factors. What parents don’t realize upon sending their “troubled teens” out there, is that they are handing their kids over to people who are largely unsupervised in an extremely harsh and unforgiving place. A place where basic, common sense laws don’t seem to apply to children or ADULTS. Many of these programs are male/female, so there are both male and female staff to supervise. Just because they are “trained staff” does not mean they have ANY business around children. Several girls (from 13–16 years old) were raped or molested during my time there, and the adults were never held accountable or punished.

During my time there I had witnessed multiple staff members breaking down and sobbing hysterically (completely unable to function) either because our water sources ran dry or were frozen solid (and there was barely any snow to melt, so water was rationed by the sip, or at best by the ounce), the “food drop” trucks (that came once every 2 weeks) were several days delayed (for different reasons) so we would go hungry, they would get LOST in the desert which would require 15+ mile pitch black night-hikes (on top of the 15+ already hiked during the day) on steep mountainsides (where kids were rolling down the mountain every 10 minutes while carrying 80+ pound packs, only to be saved from certain death by smacking into one of the many trees that littered the edge just before the cliff drop-off)….

If that is not enough, there were smaller (but considerable) issues with kids getting frostbite, no helicopter for emergencies (it would take 4–5 hours minimum on a good day for a truck to come pick you up, only to drive another 4–5 hours back to get to the hospital-no ambulance service out there), so if you broke a bone or severed a limb you were SOL. Plus pneumonia from the physical toll of hiking all day with an 80 pound pack, 20 pound gas can of water (held by hand in my case, after someone maliciously ripped open my water bladder for no legitimate reason) and a 20 pound tarp on top. Then after all this you have to set up camp (the “tent” consisting of a thin tarp and some rocks) and dig a fire pit, latrine, and washing hole using a dull stick and your hands. THEN make a fire using literally sticks and stones (god help you if it rained), and if you couldn’t build a fire you had to eat raw dehydrated food out of dirty pouches. And if it did rain, you could enjoy an all night bath of flood water in your sleeping bag and wake up soaking wet and freezing cold (in winter) and watch the water dripping from your hair turn into icicles in 3 seconds flat (I seriously CANNOT make this up).

In a wilderness program like this, you can say goodbye to hygiene (no showers and not enough water and soap to sponge-bathe), you can say goodbye to pooping in private (enjoy talking to your whole camp as they debate what kind dump your taking, a mere 5 ft. away), say goodbye to toilet paper (enjoy finding a leaf big enough to wipe your ass if you poop), say goodbye to feminine hygiene products (although the manual labor was so hardcore my period stopped for 4 1/2 of the 5 months I was there) and say goodbye to personal health and safety.

You can, however, say hello to creatures you have never seen crawling up your legs from the inside of your zipped-and-cinched sleeping bag. Dark red scorpions half the size of your forearm, large exotic spiders, monster ants over an inch long, huge fire red ticks …these are your best-case-scenario sleeping buddies. I don’t even know the names of the worst, only that they are in the stay-away-or-you-will-literally-die category, and look fresh out of your worst nightmare (another cause for the “Responsible-Adult-Staff psychotic breakdown”, after we had to abandon several camps infested with these demons from hell-seriously, what kind of pale/fleshy poisonous monstrosity should be able allowed to exist that bites, stings, AND pinches with 3 inch claws???)

Believe it or not I could keep going, but I do have enough sense to stop here. Long story short, just take your family and go camping for the weekend.

Whether you are a parent debating sending your child (don’t do it, they literally just want your money and will milk it until you are broke with a second mortgage taken out of your house, while sending your child back to you even more damaged than before), or a teen considering your options (see above), you would be better off taking a safe weekly stroll in the park and hiring a therapist.

I apologize for the excessive rant-kudos to anyone that makes it through the whole thing, and I hope whomever reads this finds a safer alternative to self-betterment than this type of program.

-Went anonymous for this out of concern for personal safety and legal repurcussions, as well as privacy- since this is my first Quora post (I am still learning how this works). I have not made my troubled past in “wilderness therapy” or “therapeutic boarding schools” (another story) known to certain friends/acquaintances/parents of my child’s schoolmates, so I am employing an overabundance of caution even though I would prefer complete transparency. Godspeed.

*EDIT: To answer question below, this was 10 or so years ago at a place called RedCliff Ascent. Many people transferred to RedCliff from similar programs, and many of their story’s were similar (but often much worse) than this. I believe the program is still running because they have somewhat improved safety over the years, but other “sister” programs (run by the same people) have been shut down after reports of abuse, neglect and “suspicious deaths”.