The Dead Inside by Cyndy Etler. So. How should I put this? I started this book thinking it was going to be a tragic story about a girl who went through some harsh sort of fake rehab environment. It was, but it wasn't what I was expecting. It's not like I can exactly criticize the author on their plot, because they were writing about their real life experiences, but I was left feeling like there was more to be said after I read the book. The book started out with a long intro about her life before she went off to the drug rehab place before jumping into the main story. This part was necessary but also very gruesome. There were scenes in this book that I really wish were not. I know she was simply writing about stuff that happened to her, but did we really need to know every detail? I think we could have gotten the message from a short sentence at the most. It was helpful in emphasizing her way of life however - hanging out with older men, smoking, trying to fit in with the druggie kids.
She showed the worst things she did in order to emphasize that even in her worst spots, her condition was not so bad that she had to be sent to this extreme center. The introduction to the center started out great. Everyone was harsh and very shocking to her normal life. They did things in that first moment that were abusive and absurd to the average person. She was in shock. When she drove home that night with her host family, the description there was also good. She got in trouble for recognizing "druggie music symbols" on the road when she pointed out a sticker on a car that represented The Rolling Stones. At the house, she was also forced to uncomfortable situations and she had to sleep in a locked room full of only mattresses.
Then she moved on to the next stripping of her humanity: the beast. Emotional torture where people are forced to confess the horrible pasts they never had, and ignore the ones they actually did. People were sent to this rehab place for no reason sometimes, but that wasn't acknowledged. It was a money-sucking company, and if you didn't confess to using multiple types of drugs and hanging out with "druggie friends" then you weren't going to fit in. People were beat and shouted at until they confessed, and this was rewarded. When Cyndy tried to talk about the actual emotional torture she had at home with an abusive, raping man who was her mother's boyfriend, she got in trouble. She was shot down and told she should never talk about her parents in that way, even though this was probably a lot of what started to lead Cyndy down a bad road.
In time they learned to be mean. Encourage the others to confess, make them confess, show your anger, and make everyone "better." They became numb. Shells of themselves. Fearing of all people, fearing that they would go back to the way they were. They didn't only stop them from using drugs, they stopped their true personality from coming through. It took a long time before Cyndy could be herself again. Even after that, she was scarred for life from this experience.
There was a lot of helpful information at the end of this book, showing how extreme these money-stealing "rehab centers" were. There were reports of people going into these centers for no reason. Some did drugs, but many did not do as many as they were forced to say they did. At one point, someone was admitted for simply sniffing a marker. A marker! As I was reading one review about this book, someone remarked how it is amazing that Cyndy survived and is able to help others today as a writer and a teen life coach. Cyndy only did the things that she did because she was searching for people for something to give her love, as she found a lack of it at home. This is an excellent story to show how someone took a horrific event and turned it around to spread some help and love to others, to prevent the same things.
Straight Inc. is still a company today, although it has morphed and change its name many times. Places like these should be further inspected and stopped from causing damage to people like these.
-Finished in January
