What was the last straw for you?

[Lovesnightsky]

I recently met with a couple of exes and one of the questions that came up was, what was it that made you to finally leave the CofS?

Personally speaking I was aware that the CofS was a cult from very early on, but it didn't seem to matter to me. I was still curious and I loved the tech. The moment I realised I had to leave (although I thought it could be done standardly) was when I was at the airport reading a novel by Terry Prattchet and when my flight was called, I started counting the pages on my novel as I would do every single day in study while on staff. At that moment I thought, "oops, I think I have overdone this game. There's no way they are having my mind."

Things went downhill after that as when I told the ED I was leaving staff I became persona non grata overnight.

[DartSmohen]

The B1 guys had asked me for some support in resolving an issue. I gave it, being a Flag Legionnaire and World Tour speaker. As usual. the Scilons made a complete dogs bollocks of the matter and looking for a scapegoat decided to expel me with a ludicrous and libellous expulsion order.

I looked at it and decided that in order to resolve the matter, the Scilon management needed to do a full liability formula. The policy was never to spologise (Hubbard ser fac - one of them). So, we parted company.

Life moves on. Of course, these drones (mostly untrained) had no concept of what happens to a person when you give them a wrong item.

Newton's Law of Motion applies, over and over and over.

[Thrak]

There were certain comments made to me by reges that made it clear that I would be put under continuous pressure to destroy myself financially in order to have the privilege of showing up for course and auditing. The guys who talk about not punishing an up stat are the masters of punishing up stats.

[Mark A. Baker]

"De-dinging" came in ('82) and I was "expected" to conform my personal sense of ethics to the practices of local mission management (SOC -J.Woodruff, et al).

In particular an unethical reg cycle involving a friend of mine occurred and I did a KR on the reg/executive involved. That got me sent to ethics, which amused me as I was one of only two then posted to HCO. I was assigned a condition of "doubt" which was ironic as I had no doubt at all about what was occurring. I did my "formula" like a good scientologist and then told them I was routing off of staff since clearly the management's view of "ethical practices" weren't in alignment with mine.

This was not the "correct" answer as far as the Ethics Officer (ex-GO, brought in to "toughen" the "ethics presence" at the mission) was concerned but nonetheless I routed off of staff with little real trouble.

The most amusing thing about the cycle is within the year the SO came down HARD on the mission (ultimately assimilating it into an org) and required the Ethics Officer to ask me in so she could apologize PERSONALLY to me. It was clear she HATED having to do this but it had been ordered as it was a precursor to attempting to recover me to staff.

I accepted the apology but declined the opportunity for further employment.

I was at the airport reading a novel by Terry Prattchet ...

Which one?

"Small Gods","The Truth", & "Jingo" are my faves so far, but they are all enjoyable.



Mark A. Baker

[gomorrhan]

My moment of truth came when I was sitting in Treasury at Boston Day one day, doing my job as D/Dir Disbursements, when I realized I had become frantic. My then-wife had told me she was pregnant about a month earlier, and we were making about 120 a week between us at the Church. I was working in a convenience store on weekends and late at night, and I was burning the candle at both ends. I have a pretty strong constitution for such treatment, but after about a month getting up at about six in the morning, commuting to the Church, working a full day, doing a full 2.5 hours of staff study, and then commuting back, working a six hour shift from 11:00 to 5:00 in the morning, and sleeping an hour or so here or there every day, I finally admitted to myself that I simply couldn't do this. It was beyond my capacity, and when the baby was born, there was no way I could be there to care for the child, or possibly afford to feed another human being. As it was, I was eating on a 2 dollar a day budget for me. Seriously. 23 hours on the go, and 2 bucks to power it. And I still couldn't pay my rent, and so I was always in "lowers" at home, doing extra chores when I came in at 5:00 in the morning and needed (desperately) my sleep.

I was sitting in Treasury, freaking out about being missing an invoice for a transaction, and I just started to sob uncontrollably. I just couldn't do it. I went down to HCO, argued with Janice Plumb and Mitra Ghobadi (Hall) for about three hours, and finally just walked out, flipping a bird, and just QUAT. No more LOA forms, no more forms to route off, no more sec checks on no sleep, I was fucking gone.

Ultimately, when I was hungry and tired, stressed and in a box, I realized I was losing who I really am. Which was the opposite of why I was there.

I did try to get back in after they declared me, about three years later, but not so I could be on staff. I was just still considering myself a scientologist, but I thought there was something wrong. I considered it could be me, but I thought there was a lot wrong with the way the orgs functioned, and the bottom line was, every time I got a paycheck (ha, it was small bills, paid in cash, per the units I had as D/Dir Disbursments), I felt like someone kicked me while I was out of breath.

I used to literally pan-handle to eat. I saw it as a game, but it was a game that I played to the tune of a loss of dignity.

Scientology makes a lot of money (or they did). They could afford to pay their staff a working wage. I simply couldn't escape that "out-point". It was threatening my independence and my survival, and the future of my child and wife.

That was it.

[Kathy (ImOut)]

The last straw for me was seeing my "program" after completing Grade IV, which I never needed in the first place. I figured it would be another $100K before I actually would be allowed onto the OT Levels and I was already Clear. I'm sure if I'd stuck around I would have been told I wasn't Clear. And at that point, had I been there and been given that R-factor I would have gone "postal".

[Amadeus Einstein]

It was simply a case of one KR too many.

I was working my socks off trying to do a good job, but certain colleagues obviously had mocked up that they had a monster in their midst.

I'd been minding my own business in a meeting, patiently listening to the presentation when another staff member interrupted the meeting and started snarling something about me looking miserable. Obviously too many late nights were starting to show on my face.

I wrote a KR on her HE&R and instead of following policy on what to do with a report the staff member doesn't agree with, she wrote a nasty KR back. This was ignored by Ethics, as was the cram I wrote.

There was a cabal of about 4-5 staff plus a frequent visitor from the CLO who were always HE&Ry and nattering about me. The sour looks on two people's faces in particular told me everything I needed to know.

A favourite trick seemed to be to sandbag things to write up, so that reports on some alleged event might be written weeks or months later, rather than write it at the time it supposedly happened, when my stats were up.

The final, final straw was a P.S. addended to some report, something about my production being in a low range. Well, what about all the years that particular stat was a big, fat ZERO before I took on the post, plus the fact I wasn't being flowed the particles I needed to do my job by other staff. Couldn't be to do with the fact my colleagues had already been soured against me by that little coterie of opinion leaders, could it?

[asagai]

For me it was when I was told I would be declared if I continued what I was doing on post and that I would be declared if I stopped! My stats were in Affluence at the time.

A SO exec said he didn't want to see me declared. I wrote up a workable solution to the situation and it was rejected.

So guess what? I got declared! No CommEv, no other ethics gradient.

It took me about ten more years to realise that Scn was a mad cult! How dim could I be to take that long to work that out!

[Wisened One]

One of the last straws for me was: I was EXHAUSTED, working nearly 80 hrs a week, NO TIME OFF...(except a day or two here and there and then it was to do laundry, try to sleep, feeling guilty that you HAD the day off if your stats weren't up, and even if they were, you mind is stuck on that person ya didn't Reg, etc..etc..).

And it was the 'never-ending' job of 'Clearing The Planet'. I could see, that if I continued working at the 80 hrs a week, with very little to no money, very little food,etc.etc...that I would be working that way this entire lifetime!

Also it was seeing all these Pre-OTs and OT VIII's still having problems of all kinds....gee, WHAT exactly did the three hundred grand get ya?

OUTTA HERE!

[anon_kat]

the last straw for me was when I was working nearly 90 hours a week, no pay (because I was down-stat), no days off (EVER) again because I was down-stat. I was also exhausted all the time, I was skint, and depressed.
I lost the strength to wake up in the mornings to report for post and ended up barricading myself at home, in bed. I remember marvelling at what my flat looked like in daylight, I had only ever been there at night!