Sunday, February 24, 2008

What's a "dry druggie"?

Lately you may have heard a lot here about "dry druggies." What is a "dry druggie"? It's a completely bogus concept, and that's why I mock it.

Someone told me a few months ago about the "dry druggie" theory being a mainstay of youth behavior modification centers. I vaguely remembered hearing the phrase before, but I couldn't recall where. The sham "dry druggie" concept isn't so much guilt by association. It's actually guilt by lack of association. Under this concept, teenagers in confinement facilities are regularly called "dry druggies" if they do not abuse drugs but do not conform to the program's thinking.

Get it? They're not druggies, because they're not on drugs (and in most cases never were). So the program calls them "dry druggies." Yes, they use that phrase. The facility's stance is that the teens will become actual drug abusers if they don't follow the program or if they do anything the facility doesn't approve of, such as listen to the "wrong" music.

But the concept is a lie. It's yet another example of the War on Drugs being a War on People. And a lot of it is rooted in greed. Some of these torture centers are marketed as drug treatment facilities. Even ones that aren't specifically billed as such can use the "dry druggie" excuse to keep people confined longer and Make more Money.

I encountered this concept myself. I was illegally confined to a behavior modification gulag as a teenager. Nazis insist that I and other victims of this industry deserved it. But they're full of shit, because all I did to get put there was get expelled from a Catholic high school and disagree with a conservative. I encountered the "dry druggie" theory when they made us attend mandatory drug counseling - even though I did not use illicit drugs. They didn't use the words "dry druggie", but it was the same idea. At my first session, the counselor asked me, "What do you use?"

"Use?" I replied. I had no idea what he was talking about.

"Yeah, use. Everybody here uses," he said.

"I don't use."

He looked at me like I was just telling a childish fib. I'm sure a majority of the kids there didn't "use." But the party li(n)e was that unless we followed the program, we would all become dope fiends. We were expected to believe this. The facility's line was that even though I didn't use illegal drugs, getting in trouble at school was "druggie behavior."

I think I heard the words "dry druggie" at the school I attended later. This was sort of like an alternative school, because I was considered "bad" after getting expelled from my old school. We hardly learned shit at this school, but they had someone come in every week to lecture us about staying with the school's program so we don't become "dry druggies." (This incidentally was not the regular public school that I recall fondly as the source of my diploma.)

I've read and heard more about this scam lately. The "dry druggie" racket has cost American families countless dollars and destroyed an untold number of lives.

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