After posting a couple of AA-critical links on FaceBook I was told that if I continued to do so, I could get sued.
This was after my therapist refused to speak to me because I was not engaged with the 12-step program recommended by Samaritan Counseling, and after my complaint which was followed up by ‘under no circumstances’ was I to have any further personal contact with anyone at Samaritan Counseling.
Notice what this article describes (sexual assault, etc) without ever mentioning that the 30 million dollar business is a 12-step rehab. That’s quite a feat to never mention the 12-step program, considering the enormous amount of information connecting this kind of behavior to the AA cult.
A DRUG REHAB MOGUL BUILT AN EMPIRE THAT’S NOW BEING PROBED BY THE FBI, DA AND STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder – an article at DisruptedPhysician.com pointing out the misdiagnosis of traumatic psychiatric injury as ‘personality disorder’.
In this article, Executive Director David C. Olsen reassures people that they will not go blind, but that masturbation is a serious problem and has become an ‘epidemic’. He then recommends therapy, an addictions specialist and 12-step meetings.
“Health begins with admitting you have a problem. From there, you must take steps toward recovery. Find a therapist, find an addictions specialist, join a 12-step program.”
Yes, he wants to hear your fifth step.
This is very misleading advice. There are ways to get mentally healthy that don’t involve religious coercion or telling a pastor or a group of self-proclaimed sex-addicts about how you you struggle not to touch your self. Additionally, this article deliberately ignores the problems of 12-step coercion, rehab fraud, systemic abuse and pathologization of normal behaviors and feelings which have been repeatedly brought to the attention of the author, and met with absolute silence. It is unethical for professionals to refuse to acknowledge or address complaints about the 12-step programs.
If you’re not familiar with what 12-step treatment entails, it involves ‘admitting powerlessness’, insanity (that you are incapable of thinking for yourself), and giving your will and your life over to a ‘higher power’ (usually a person who also claims to be powerless but speaks to God on a daily basis about what God wants), and praying to your ‘higher power’ to remove your defects of character, confessing the ‘exact nature’ of your wrongs and doing whatever you are told to do by a sponsor.
If those dynamics seem like a recipe for abuse, you won’t be surprised to learn that there are many people who agree.
The insistence by a state licensed social worker and organization-wide supervisor and trainer that people need to surrender to lifelong participation and promotion of a religious cult is ethically extremely questionable and psychologically harmful to many people who are told that ‘working the program’ is the only way to be truly ‘sober’.
Both the Clinical Director and my therapist expressed concern about 12-Steps WITHIN the organization, but they repeatedly referred me to the 12-step interventionist after they had consulted with David Olsen after my complaints.
My initial complaint to the Office of Professions was less than satisfying, and I tried to get some information about what the Office of Professions did to investigate. But then I also found out that 12-steppers can pretty much ruin the career of anyone who wants to complain about this. I sent a petition of over 140 signatures and 9 letters to the Commissioner of Education of NY, NASW, Samaritan Counseling, Samaritan Institute, and the Department of Health and Human Services of NY, and have received no response from anybody.
I was repeatedly and more and more coercively referred to AA the more I complained about it.
In January we made an agreement that if I went to rehab, I could continue sessions with my ‘non-addictions’ therapist as long as she was in contact with the providers. I was hoping that I’d be able to show to her that rehab was all Alcoholics Anonymous indoctrination, and that the requirements would stop. AA was something I had already decided to quit after a year and a half of daily meetings, and I had already been paying the rehab referral specialist and outpatient rehab for about half a year. The bills were rolling in. It was depressing.
Imagine my surprise after six months of jumping through hoops, when I was not only not allowed to tell her what really happened in a session, but was BANNED from all communications with Samaritan Counseling!
It seems they expected me to surrender to AA if they just kept manipulating me into ‘treatment’. How infuriating is that? And what is the relationship between these state licensed social workers and the 12-step industry? Why did James Garrett say he was ‘encouraged’ that I had an attachment to my therapist, if he was going to discourage her from having a session with me unless I paid him first, indefinitely? Why did David Olsen suggest I need 6-8 months of ‘sobriety’ before I could speak to my therapist?
“Jennifer from Saint Peters Addiction Recovery Center [12-step rehab] called to say that she had had a ‘frustrating session’ with client and requested a consultation with me. I returned call and left message” – Oona Edmands, LCSW Samaritan Counseling Center of the Capital Region 2/7/14
On 2/7 I was given a Step One worksheet after asking for non 12-step alternatives at SPARC (worksheet made me list my faults and told me that “I’m strong enough to quit” was a bad thought that would lead to relapse)
A couple of weeks later I was terminated from the outpatient rehab due to “unethical costs” for the recommended groups. Most people in SPARC are on Medicaid; it cost over $265 dollars to go to a single group per week and get the required drug test. I had complained to the counselor that I was only doing this so I could get back into therapy, and the $100 drug tests were pointless.
On 2/28 I informed Oona Edmands in a phone message about frustration with addiction treatment and was ignored. Also found that none of the rehab treatment was covered by insurance.
3 /4 asked directly whether I would actually be able to get back into therapy, as it seemed impossible to get better in the 12-step trap I was referred to. Therapist said “The answer is yes.”
“Case discussion with Oona Edmands: agreed that Tom will need to have two months of sobriety and weekly sessions with me before he could see Oona Edmands.” – James Garrett 3/17/14
“Client called and left message stating that he wished I would not recommend AA (as I had in my letter) as he felt it deeply contributed to his confusion. Message was cut off after two minutes. Did not return call” – Oona Edmands, LCSW Samaritan Counseling Center of the Capital Region 3/20/14
“Tom Gleason called – ‘I was only doing this so I could get back to see Oona Edmands’” – James Garrett 3/20/14
“See me once a month for ‘trust building’ sessions and get approval to have appointment with Oona Edmands after two months” – James Garrett 3/26/14
After two more months, I got, basically, ‘you didn’t follow the recommendations‘ and all the rehab I claimed to have done was somehow ‘contradictory’, and my request to speak with her was some kind of ‘boundary issue':
“Sober. Debriefing the ‘betrayal’ from [his therapist] and his emotional response to not being able to meet with her. wrote complaint to David Olsen; has meeting on Monday with Dr. Olsen and clinical supervisor [NOTE: David Olsen did not attend]; looking at how his drinking damaged the relationship with [his therapist] and how he may never get the opportunity to resolve/bring closure to that relationship; angry that he feels like Oona Edmands is pushing ‘religion’ on him by ‘making’ [NOTE: scare quotes] him go to AA meetings instead of allowing other alternatives” – James Garrett 5/30/14
“Therapists have the right to their preferred mode of treatment” – David Olsen, Executive Director of Samaritan Counseling Center of the Capital Region, May 2014 in the phone call when I asked about how to complain.
Yeah, and in that last session with James Garrett I told him I didn’t trust any of them anymore, and he told me ‘Maybe you can trust your higher power’.
After being refused any follow-up session with even the Clinical Director Jenness Clairmont, I then received a termination letter:
“Lastly, it has come to our attention that multiple copies of your letters were received by the center. One of which was not by the use of the US Postal Service or any other third party delivery system. It was apparent that the letter had been hand-delivered to our satellite office in Delmar, NY. As a result, this letter is also being written to inform you that under no circumstances will any further personal contact with the center, its satellites or its personnel be allowable.” – David Olsen and Jenness Clairmont
It took me a while to figure out who to complain to, but in the meantime I was so confused by being terminated and banned from any further contact for a letter I thought was very insightful and empowering for me. I was so confused by this in fact, that I checked myself into a psychiatric ward thinking I might be crazy. There, I was prescribed anti-psychotic drugs (by the doctor who told me I’m “fucked and need AA”) to ‘help me stop obsessing about it’.
I eventually found the NYS Department of Education is the licensing board. But that didn’t go so well either…I didn’t realize at the time that Jenness Clairmont is on that board.
I tried to explain to the investigator the ethics issues, and that ended with:
“Nothing you are saying now makes any sense If you have anything further to say please address to:
Office of Professional Discipline
80 Wolf Road-suite 204
Albany, New York 12205I will not be responding to anymore of your emails.
Michael A. Kinley
Supervising Investigator”
I tried filing another complaint to NYS DoE and got a letter from the Director of Investigations at N.Y.S. Education Department, Donald B. Dawson, saying the case was closed.
I tried to get a second copy of my records, and David Olsen made it very difficult:
All correspondance must be by mail. I will not be responding to any further emails. – David Olsen July 2,2015
When I got my records, after consulting with a lawyer about how to make a proper request and having my mother call the office manager Debbie to figure out how I could get my damn records, I found that all my complaint letters had been removed from my records.
After many emails, I finally received a letter from David Olsen. David Olsen said I could buy my complaints (that they never even bothered to address with me) for $.75 per page and they weren’t ‘technically’ a part of my medical record. Here he says that he enclosed additional correspondence previously sent, but that only included the original letter saying I could get back into therapy if I went to 12-steps, and the termination letter referring me to 12-steps.
Then I made a Freedom of Information Law request to try to figure out how this ‘investigation’ went down in such a way that the investigator told me the exact same thing David Olsen told me in the same words (“There is nothing wrong with them using this as their preferred therapy.”)
Throughout this time I was trying to write a Yelp Review but it kept getting deleted.
I made a video while going over my first copy of records:
That connected me with a lot of like-minded people. One of them made an attempt to have a discussion with Samaritan Counseling about this by writing a letter including my signature, but this letter was completely ignored by Samaritan Counseling:
Finally, after having met dozens of people who were familiar with this scam, we gathered
9 letters and 140+ signatures petitioning against the use of 12-steps in mental health, and we sent them to NASW, Department of Public Health, Samaritan Counseling, Samaritan Institute, and the Commissioner of Education for NY:
The Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights responded:
So, still banging my head against the wall.
We are doing these letter campaigns for people in other states too, and will continue to gather more information and pass it along to the government agencies, health workers, and licensing boards whose proper course of action would have/could have been to address the problem, while documenting and archiving all the complete non-response online so everyone can see “How it Works”.
My third attempt to complain to the NYS Office of Professions was also closed in Fall 2016, due to Oona Edmands denying everything (which of course doesn’t make any sense, considering what is written in her own signed session notes). The investigator also said that they ‘don’t look into the AA thing’.
I reported this willful negligence to the NYS Justice Center as well as the NYS Attorney General and the US Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights and am awaiting further investigation.
It’s hard to understand why Samaritan Counseling believes this is the best treatment, and why their accrediting organization Samaritan Institute also does not seem to see any need to address the issue. I’d think most state-licensed mental health professionals would/should see a serious problem with this.
update Jan 20 2020: Samaritan Institute is now called Solihten Institute.
David Olsen, PhD. of Samaritan Counseling Center of the Capital Region has not addressed any of my concerns, since he just kept referring me again and again to AA, (he also told my therapist that I was a bullshitter, taking her for a ride, and was a ticking time bomb) and he never met with me to address my complaint, other than a brief phone call telling me it’s my therapist’s right to her preferred mode of treatment. Apparently Oona Edmands LCSW is obsessed with the 12-steps, or it’s her job to participate in coercive interventions to get 12-steppers paid regardless of feedback from the client.
The one session I had with David Olsen was him telling me I needed to go to inpatient rehab and be ‘in recovery (which is code for being an AA member)’ if I wanted to discuss anything of this my therapist. Over the course of many months, she seemed to agree to discuss it with me during several times that I asked for a discussion, but then changed her mind after talking to the interventionist James Garrett or her supervisor David Olsen. My last correspondence with him sent me two prior 12-step referrals and told me my complaints are not ‘technically’ a part of my clinical record.
Jenness Clairmont the Clinical Director (now in private practice as Forest Clinical Services), is on the New York State Office of Professions who manage licensing of therapists, and officially see nothing wrong with 12-step rehab coercion according to two State Education Department Investigators). She also refused to address any of my concerns; she simply re-referred me to the 12-step interventionst and banned me from any future communications with any Samaritan employee. I don’t see how that’s clinically addressing anything.
The weirdest thing was that I couldn’t even post a Yelp review about this. Yelp repeatedly told me that my review had some kind of problem with it, brought to their attention by ‘community request’.
The last I heard from James Garrett, the creator of the coercive ARISE intervention method which is in wide use by 12-step rehabs, was that he told my therapist to keep clear boundaries with me (ironically right after I told him I wanted to file a complaint) and he ‘confirmed’ I’m Axis 2 (personality disorders/mentally retarded) for wanting to tell her what he does (coercive rehab referrals).
update 2020: I’ve since found out that James Garrett was charged with five felonies by state police and pleaded guilty to a reduced misdemeanor crime. Samaritan Counseling has not acknowledged it.
For some reason, after 6 months of James Garrett advising everyone to keep ignoring my complaints about his 12-step ‘treatment’, David Olsen, Jenness Clairmont and Oona Edmands all seemed to find it surprising and sad that I had no intention of paying him another dime. They had lost me. There was absolutely nothing they could do to help me see that I was crazy for thinking 12-step rehab is a big fraud.
Why is the New York State Office of Professions not acknowledging any problem with the 12-step programs and 12-step referrals? I think not wanting to be involved with two-hatters is more than just a personal matter between therapist and client, as NYS Office of Professions Supervising Investigator Michael Kinley tried to tell me. I think it’s a big systemic problem and a lot of people are flat out lying about what they do and censoring the truth.
I should have sent these letters to the supervising investigator. I can only do so much.
I also don’t understand why my Yelp accounts would be removed just because I said I don’t like that Samaritan pushes 12-step programs, which they DO and that’s just a fact.
This is not what I expected from faith-based counseling.
I didn’t go into therapy thinking there was anything wrong with AA. I spent a full year trying to understand what was wrong with me instead. When I decided for sure that AA wasn’t for me, that’s when I really started to realize that that was not an acceptable conclusion for Samaritan Counseling. By the way, my ‘treatment’ was all voluntary, until it wasn’t. Here is a letter I wrote for a friend who has given up her nursing license because of the EAP program that repeatedly demanded 12-step participation.
This is the film I’ve been posting about for almost a year now available on DVD. It was Monica Richardson’s three year effort, and in that process we’ve all learned a lot about the real AA. It’s far from the ideal program the public knows. It’s more like a destructive cult business that has little or nothing to do with alcohol treatment.
After she saw people get murdered by violent people repeatedly sentenced to AA as plea deals who had learned how to speak the AA language and appear to be wise old-timers, she (a member for 35 years) tried to get AA to provide safety guidelines to its members letting them know that members do not have to ‘maintain the anonymity’ of another person if they see a problem.
This was a simple request. AA world headquarters chose to ignore it as if it was an irrational resentment that disturbed their serenity.
Actually, it’s becoming clear that they ignored that simple request because it would open a huge can of worms. Since then she’s interviewed hundreds of people who were harassed or financially scammed or abused by people or professionals in AA who had learned through AA how to ‘blame the victim’, and uncovered the fraud inherent in the 12-step rehab industry.
Now AA is getting sued, and they are getting exposed here, just like the Boy Scouts and the Catholic Church and the Jehovah’s Witnesses. The film contains some disturbing material, but it is all true, and important to watch because it is enlightening. I hope everybody buys a copy.
The 13th Step available on DVD!