Justin C.

I was in a very dark place, and was in need of treatment. My mom came across a table of theirs and was given the pitch. She was told they have a house on the beach, its completely free, they have a chef, workout room, is a Christ centered program and basically sounded too good to be true... which it was.
I was told i would be going to their location in Carlsbad but last minute they changed it to Gallup, New Mexico. Since i had made arrangements to go to treatment i couldnt make different arrangements last minute. They didnt pay for transportation as promised, so i book a GreyHound for $300 and arrived at 3AM. (While claiming to be free they did pressure my mom into giving a standard $500 donation) I am driven to the "treatment center" and it's a freezing Cold warehouse. The warehouse consists of three sections a kitchen which is off-limits to everyone, bathrooms and a bunk room with bunkbeds made out of two by fours. Main room is filled with plastic chairs this is the only place you can go and sit there is nothing or nowhere else you can go to do anything. If you wanna go anywhere you have to have somebody go with you as an accountability partner. They have this hillbilly rule called the gun line which is basically old Termanology for back when you're in prisons where you couldn't cross a line or else you get shot things like this were placed around the kitchen entrance and the table where the "pastor" would sit and you would hand in your homework which is ironic because you're turning in homework to someone who didn't graduate high school and has no religious or drug treatment education whatsoever. My main complaint is the fact that 3 to 4 days out of the week you get in a busted up minivan not fit for driving and you drive for six hours to various parts around the surrounding states and stand in front of a Walmart for 12 hours (minimum) yes stand, no sitting and beg people for money in exchange for T-shirt's, homemade necklaces and CAD boards with thing like "live, love, laugh" stuff like that but god related all in order to get people to give you money on the basis that you've pitched them that you are helping feed clothe and house the homeless. Which you are not they feed you hotdogs and beans, no clothes and you're in a warehouse.

The best experience my last day leaving was the "pastor" saying "Y'all keep acting up and you're gonna find out real soon why I got these flames on my hands" basically he was threatening us with violence because one person decided to have an attitude. I guess in prison he used to fight and this was back when he weighed about 180 currently 300 lb. This was the pastor.

On our trips we would stay in trap motels and we're allowed three dollars for food at McDonald's every morning we were then allowed another 3 to 5 dollars for lunch at Jack in the box at the end of our three day sessions of begging for money for 12+ hours depending on whether we hit our $1200 a day goal we would then have to drive regardless of the time we left for about 6 to 12 hours home with the person driving running on nothing but energy drinks in a hoopdee mini van where our lives were seriously at risk because of the tiredness of the driver and the junker vehicle.

Sundays when we arrived home even if we got home at 5:30 - 7 o'clock in the morning we had to go to church, Church would start at 8 o'clock and even if we got one hour sleep we still had to go even though we had just worked 40+ hours out of the last 72 hours and those extra hours were spent in a minivan where you could not sleep the rest of the time again you just had an open space with plastic chairs and all you could do is sit there you could not lay in your bed during the day there was no television to watch there was no Wi-Fi you had to sit in a plastic chair and even if you wanted to go into one of the other rooms you had to have accompaniment less you steal someone's I don't know wife beater or axe deodorant spray or whatever hillbilly items were brought in if I had a nickel for every time someone use the word y'all I would have enough money to afford an actual drug treatment program.

The program is about money and money alone and they do it in the name of God they think they hang the banner of Jesus and claim to be helping people but at the end of the day someone is just making money and that is all it is, very very sad because that person is going to be judged many people are going to be judged. I had to sneak out when I tried to call my mom I could not even reach her because when I mentioned the issues with the program they hung up the phone and said no badmouthing the ministry, click. So I had to wait another two weeks for my next phone call in order to know when I could leave. I had to speak to my mom in code in order for her to book a greyhound ticket. Somehow I managed to get past them, they dropped me off at the bus station eight hours before my departure next to a liquor store knowing the problems I had but they didn't care because they got what they wanted from me and they were moving onto the next person who would be brought in from the jail would be faced with either doing 3-15 years or completing one year of slave labor raising funds for the apostle Mark as he likes to be called.

It's sick, those people are sick everything you read about this program is true all the ones you read that have five stars are written by them, you can tell because they are written in the same country hillbilly accent that I heard while I was in the program by staff. I was lied to, I was manipulated and it was the worst month of my life. Christ would have compassion these country hucksters and I'm sorry if I call these people names that I shouldn't as I am a Christian man but I'm so angry they put me through the worst month of suffering I've ever been through in my life. If I didn't get a ticket out my next best option would have been to commit a crime and spend the time in jail.