The Art of Men (I Prefer Mine Al Dente) (10 page)

The first thing I learned that truly helped change my life was that no matter how badly I’ve screwed up, I can always change my condition in life; I
can
get better. And so can everyone else.

We’ve usually been punished enough in our lives. Punishment does not make us better. It can cause us to suppress what we wanted to do, but it creates little lasting change. Knowledge, justice, and understanding can help us change.

When I began doing Scientology, I was a drugged-out mess. I understood hell—depression, anxiety, addiction, failure, and loss. Well, at least, I understood that I’d experienced a fair quantity of each. Through the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard I gained a different point of view of these age-old problems. Depression, anxiety, loss, addiction, sadness, hate, and self-loathing are not new subjects.

You may or may not know this about people who practice Scientology: we don’t use psychotropic drugs, electroshock therapy, or lobotomies to get better from those illnesses. Why is that? It’s certainly not because we are a group of millions who haven’t experienced all or part of their symptoms. It’s not because we don’t believe that all these things exist or that they are not real. Try to tell a man he’s not chronically depressed or a new mother she doesn’t really have postpartum depression, and you might get shot. They do exist. They are real. They are painful, debilitating, gruesome, and at times unbearable. I don’t know anyone who wants to have these crippling disabilities. So the issue is not whether those symptoms exist, nor an accusation that they are fake. The issue is, what do you do to get rid of them?

Addicts crave drugs and booze, among other things. They 100 percent know they are killing themselves slowly or rapidly by using them. People who have suffered great losses in their lives know with certainty that they are so depressed that they literally can’t get out of bed, can’t function, and can’t control their emotional and then physical pain.

A mother who has lost a child cannot be talked out of her grief, nor can she be drugged out of it. Even psychiatrists and pharmaceutical companies will admit that their drugs will not cure anything and that they relieve symptoms in less than one-third of their patients. Their only solution is to change the drug and prescribe a new one or double-, triple-, quadruple-down with additional psychiatric drugs, or add treatments such as electroshock therapy.

Granted, if someone is in a state of shock after being the victim of some gruesome crime, or overwhelmed by unfathomable loss such as the death of a child or loved one, they could be in such a state that they can’t function. In these cases, mild sedatives such as Valium might, for a short period of time, ease the feeling of being overwhelmed. Painful emotion can be camouflaged or suppressed, but drugs will not eradicate the loss or violation.

So the big question arises: what the hell does one do if experiencing some or all of these issues? It’s not my job to diagnose mental disorders, nor do I want to. It’s also not my business to evaluate the paths other people take or the choices they make to help themselves or their loved ones. I do not presume to know what is right for everyone. The choice is always their own. It was my personal quest, as I suffered from anxiety and depression, to find alternatives to drugs. It’s also fair to say I suffered from chronic anxiety prior to taking cocaine. For my own answers, I researched different options and different schools of thought. Being an ex–drug addict, I wasn’t necessarily looking for the next drug to solve my problems, even if it wasn’t a street drug.

I discovered two distinctly different schools of thought on the subject. One school of thought is that of psychiatry, medicos, and Big Pharma. The other is the school of thought I discovered in Scientology. The first school has concluded that these diseases are genetic and/or problems of chemical imbalances in the brain, such as low serotonin levels. Because their assumptions are based on the body itself, their solution is to first treat the body with talk therapy and powerful mind-altering drugs that affect brain chemistry. If that doesn’t work, it’s on to electroshock, and as a last resort, a lobotomy (currently called psychosurgery), whereby holes are bored into the brain with lasers. Many of you might think I’m nuts for insinuating people still get electroshock in the year 2012. You might even think I made it up! Jack Nicholson’s character received electroshock in the 1975 Academy Award–winning movie
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
, and after that electroshock took a dive. There was such an outpouring of public outrage at the brutality of electroshock that it was renamed electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). According to Mental Health America, 100,000 Americans yearly receive ECT. The tally is one million worldwide and includes the elderly, pregnant women, and toddlers.

I didn’t invent psychiatry, psychopharmacology, or psychosurgery—they evolved. According to Medco Health, a leading prescription drug supplier, one in five American adults is now taking psychiatric drugs, to a total of 49 million Americans. That number does not include the 10 million American children currently taking psychiatric drugs. Worldwide, 120 million people are taking psychiatric drugs (including those 49 million American adults). If this is not considered an epidemic, I don’t know what would be.

So there we have the psychiatry school. Recapping, their tools include analysis, drug therapy, ECT, and psychosurgery. Their bible is the
DSM
(
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
), which cites 374 mental disorders and their symptoms. Phew!

Then we have a school of thought that is 180 degrees opposite, and that school is called Scientology. You see people with the same disorders come through the doors with their multitudes of manifestations. But what happens within is different. Mr. Hubbard has no dispute with the various bazillion diagnoses within the pages of the
DSM
. Anxiety, depression, grief, psychosis, and more all exist, and we can see they do with our own eyes. But what I learned from Mr. Hubbard, and what I’ve now experienced myself and witnessed in thousands of others over my 33 years practicing Scientology, is those people can be made better, dramatically better, without drugs, without analysis, and without psychosurgery or ECT. Seems impossible, right?

The function of Scientology churches is to make the able more able. They are not rehab facilities for criminals or predators. There is a social betterment program called Criminon based on the writings of L. Ron Hubbard and geared to help rehabilitate criminals in prison, but it is not part of the church.

Dianetics
was fascinating, but was it just fiction or did it work and do what it said it could do? I’m a curious girl by nature but wasn’t necessarily adventurous. I was cautious yet willing to observe. This is a good quality I believe, so I decided to take a look for myself. By the time I headed out to California to see if Scientology was real or fake, I was a colossal skeptic—another good quality.

I’d gone to a psychologist for about a month before I read
Dianetics
. His best advice was to stop doing cocaine and do manual labor, like cleaning my house and mowing the yard. He also advised staying away from my mother for a while. I immediately did all those things and felt better. On subsequent visits, though, he began to analyze me and tell me why I was the way I was, and he lost me. It didn’t help that he was wearing socks with sandals. And it really didn’t help that his evaluation was dead wrong. No, I hadn’t been molested or wanted to screw my dad, nor was I a bedwetter.

In Scientology it is theorized that you and you alone know everything that has happened to you, and also what you’ve done to others, even while you were unconscious. So I surmised that at least my experiences belonged to me, and yes, I could remember most of what had happened to me. And yeah, I could kinda see how, under the right circumstances, I might be able to recall what was going on while I was sedated. I mean, I was there; Dr. Socks with Sandals wasn’t there, that’s for sure. So I decided to go find out for myself, and against all odds I made it to Newport Beach from Kansas. It took 26 days to make the 19-hour drive because I had to score cocaine along the way, or not along the way, as I backtracked and zigzagged my way across the country.

  •  •  •  

I arrived, immediately got loaded, and called the Scientology place.

“Hi, it’s me, I’m here.”

“Hehe, what took you so long?” Jim, the person on the other end of the line, chuckled.

“Family problems,” I lied.

It really doesn’t seem like I could have been more screwed up and still standing. I was drugged out, depressed, riddled with anxiety, and laced with cocaine, Valium, Percodan, and some drug I snitched from my sister’s medicine cabinet. My weight was 112 and I was five foot eight. I’ll admit, if you didn’t look at my glassy, dilated eyes, just from the neck down, I looked badass in my skintight Fiorucci jeans and five-inch heels. But my mind and spirit were as dead as dirt.

“When are you coming in?” Mr. Scientology asked.

“Um, in a few days, I need to get settled in.”

“Okay, whenever’s good for you. Oh, one question, when was the last time you did drugs?” (You can’t do Scientology counseling if you’re on drugs—mind-altering drugs, that is, and my stash was definitely mind altering.)

“Yeah, let me see,” I pondered, “I think, um, yeah, yeah, it was . . . it was six weeks ago.” It was actually five minutes ago.

“Good, then you can get started,” he responded.

Yes, yes, I couldn’t wait to get started . . . As soon as I hung up I got started all right. My drug dealer guy had just flown in to LA to assist me. Oh yeah, I forgot this part. I’d just broken up with Jake before I left Kansas. It was sad for both of us, but the day Jake left Wichita to work on an oil rig in Texas, I slept with Greg, my drug dealer. How could that have slipped my mind? Greg brought all sorts of pre-Scientology party favors, including heroin. I did enough cocaine to kill four people, plus Valium, Percodan, hash, and booze. But I didn’t do the heroin, thank god. I just sat there and did lines of coke while Greggy chased the dragon. It was quite spectacular, as I’d never seen anyone smoke heroin before. Then I topped it all off with Dalmane—you know, to take the edge off?

Three days passed, and I got a call from Jim the Scientology guy.

“Hey, Kirstie, how ya doin’? Are you coming in?”

“Um, yes, I’m just getting situated here. I have an idea! Jim! Why don’t you come to the beach with me?!!”

“What time?” he calmly asked.

“Now! Come now! It’s insane here! It’s gorgeous!” I asserted.

Something deep inside me was trying to save my life, but it certainly didn’t seem to be me. Jim was this really big, tall guy, sorta handsome, really funny and easygoing. We mostly just joked around for two or three hours. It could have been six minutes for all I knew.

“So, you wanna come with me and see what Scientology is?” he asked.

Now that was the million-dollar question. Did I? I mean, I’d just driven 17,000 miles to LA and all. I’d just broken it off with my boyfriend of four years. I’d quit my job and sold my stuff and packed what was left in my black BMW. I’d lugged my dog and cat to California and told all my friends I was going to LA to go “Clear,” the object of Scientology counseling. I’d endured my mother throwing a dictionary at me on my birthday, demanding I look up the word “cult.” Hadn’t I put everyone and everything on hold just to have a shot at being sane and happy? Why yes, I had. So, DID I wanna go with Jim? Why not?! I was out of coke and I’d just sent Greggy packing to Hawaii to visit friends and advised him to read
Dianetics
because I was so hip to the subject.

“Yeah, let’s go.” I rallied from my drug stupor.

I had Scientology counseling that next week, and after my first session I have never wanted to do another drug. Of course it was a lucky break and probably not something you would see happening every day in Scientology, but it happened to me.

Apparently I was ready to confront the dreadfulness called
me
, and I prevailed. I never turned back. Every day I worked on some part of my screwed-up life until the anxiety dropped away. I handled all the losses of people I’d loved who had died. The depression went away fairly quickly as I discovered the reasons I’d been depressed in the first place. It was like digging for gold. First dirt, then mud, then bits of mica, then bedrock, then bingo! I would find smatterings of gold—I would find the truth.

The reason Scientologists and L. Ron Hubbard don’t support mind-altering drugs is because they only prolong or obscure the truth. They impair a person’s ability to find and dissect the truth of how they got in the state they’re in. Mr. Hubbard’s philosophy calls for zero tolerance of the Scientology counselor evaluating
for
the person or invalidating his answers. The person must come to his or her own conclusions, with the assistance of a counselor guiding him through, kinda like a tour guide. But the counselor is ONLY allowed to acknowledge those conclusions, never interjecting his own personal opinions. Hubbard’s philosophy is analytical, gentle, and effective. It feels like peeling an artichoke, pulling back the leaves one by one, only experiencing the pricks of life, not the degree of physical or emotional pain one felt when it originally happened. It is so full of care; you just peel the leaves back and back and back, one by one, until you get the reward deep inside. In an artichoke it’s the heart, and in Scientology it’s the truth. Scientology isn’t addressing the body. It is addressing you as a spiritual being.

I’ve known hundreds of people who have been diagnosed with chronic anxiety, clinical depression, bipolarity, ADHD, psychosis, and hyperactivity. They, too, went in and peeled the artichoke, leaf by leaf, with no invalidation, no evaluation, no interpretation, no drugs, no hypnosis, no lobotomy, no electroshock, and no restraints. But don’t take my word for it. Ask them. It was their journey, not mine. I’ve often thought it would make for an interesting research project. There are millions of Scientologists out there, and they and their children don’t take mind-altering drugs to end their mental suffering. I think it would be terribly important, even to the medical community, to find out how and why.