What was the last straw for you?

[sallydannce]

One of my last straws would have to be assigned to the completely batty, entirely off the wall, "findings" that a sea org unit dished out to me on a board of review. I'd requested a B of R to standardly investigate why I had had some out-tech run on me (which I believe contributed to spinning me in, an illness & subsequent freeloaders bill due to being a pile of sick shit). Loooong story but the finale was spectacularly nutty.

The board of review was requested by me. I NEVER heard ONE word from the CLO on it. I gave up trying to communicate to them. About a year later an old mate from the SO was in town - we talked - she went back to the CLO and checked into my request. She phoned me to say I'd had the B of R - months ago - and the findings were odd.

The findings included but were not limited to "discovering" I had withheld vital info about myself the entire time I had been in scientology (related to drugs I had taken) and this was why things had f***ed up with my auditing/my health, etc. The problem was this LIE about me had been addressed by various C/Ses over the years and I'd even had several related auditing actions on it. On the second DAY I was in scientology my full drug history had been documented! No secrets ever about my drug history. So much for looking in the folders and getting to the truth. No one spoke to me from the board team - might have been a good idea but hey when the elite get elite, they get elite.

This CLO B of R took incompetence, arrogance, stupidity & incompetence (hell did I say that already) to a new level. Their "findings" categorised me as a person to ignore - a type of PTS who should be ignored - big trouble source person.

Like a puppet in a cult, I then attempted to get this sea org issued ethics order reversed which eventually involved me travelling to the nearest AO. I did get the ethics order revoked. Then.. shit can't be bothered with the rest of the story. Much too convoluted to convey in less than eight pages.

I knew then that things were horribly off-the-wall in scientology from the top to the bottom. I had international persons in the loop on this cycle - a protective back-up, or so I thought. They were no help either. I knew there was no caring - the casual insincerity, the hard focus on money - it all started to paint a very dark picture. There were too many out-points to count. After this I started pulling back and well, here I am.

[Neo]

Working two full time jobs so I could pay the bills (Org staff, and non-staff job), leaving not enough money to eat properly, spend time with friends and family. Left constantly feeling like I just wasn't doing enough.

And then having a heart attack (in part, certainly because of the stress). And then when asking to be allowed to leave staff to sort my health out, being told 'no, you should have thought about that before you signed a contract.'

So I left.

[Free Will]

You're a guy sharing a house with two girls. You've just spent the best part of 2 years without sex, hugs or kisses. You've just managed to hook up with one of your house-mates. Your org wants you to go back to Flag. What do you do?

Correct Answer:
Run god dam it, run.

With the house-mate?
Yep. Correct answer!

[sallydannce]

Working two full time jobs so I could pay the bills (Org staff, and non-staff job), leaving not enough money to eat properly, spend time with friends and family. Left constantly feeling like I just wasn't doing enough.

And then having a heart attack (in part, certainly because of the stress). And then when asking to be allowed to leave staff to sort my health out, being told 'no, you should have thought about that before you signed a contract.'

So I left.

A damn fine example of the ridiculous insanities. Sorry you had to go through this & though you write it so succinctly, it was obviously no small event in your life.

[gomorrhan]

Glad you're here, Sallydance. Glad you had the fortitude to fight, and the wisdom to learn. Reading your story reminded me of Beghe's comment "I'm having a moment". The realization that what you thought you were a part of wasn't what you thought it was. Takes a while to completely sort out what it actually was. It boils down to the simple words scam and cult, in terms of the effects it causes on people, and it preys on the idealistic. I'm very glad we have the internet, these days, because the Church of Scientology cannot stand the scrutiny it has brought upon them.

And with Anonymous on the scene, I think it's safe to say that the chickens have come home to roost.

[sallydannce]

Glad you're here, Sallydance. Glad you had the fortitude to fight, and the wisdom to learn. Reading your story reminded me of Beghe's comment "I'm having a moment". The realization that what you thought you were a part of wasn't what you thought it was. Takes a while to completely sort out what it actually was. It boils down to the simple words scam and cult, in terms of the effects it causes on people, and it preys on the idealistic. I'm very glad we have the internet, these days, because the Church of Scientology cannot stand the scrutiny it has brought upon them.

And with Anonymous on the scene, I think it's safe to say that the chickens have come home to roost.

Gomorrhan! So true! Cult & scam, cult & scam, cult & scam...

The internet is the sunlight. And Anonymous is without a doubt the sweetest chickens I ever did see.

[Lee_from_phx]

In my case I was kicked off staff.

I was the treasury secretary at the time. It was my job to "handle" the vendors and utility companies. Well the right way to handle them is to pay them what you owe, but Hubbard's insane money laundering scheme didn't leave enough cash to do that, so the bills didn't get paid.

Through some sort of twisted logic this made it my fault that the bills weren't being paid.

My response to this was that we weren't bringing in money because we were charging too much for what we were trying to sell. Economic demand consists of both the desire and the ABILITY to pay for a good or service. It doesn't matter how much someone wants something, if they can't afford it then you can't sell it to them. This is econ-101 kindergarten stuff, but not to the clamdroids, oh no! To them what I was talking about was "wog tech" and therefore wrong, evil, subversive, suppressive, etc, etc, etc.

I also didn't act like a cultie. This point is difficult to explain exactly, but I didn't don the blinders that the rest of them wore and were so fearful to remove. I kept looking for ways to bring the outside world into the org and to promote the org to the outside world WITHOUT targeting people who were predisposed to falling into a cult.

I was only 20 at the time and in my naivete I actually believed that I could change scientology so that it was not a cult anymore. I was interested in scientology as a subject, but I hated the brain-damaged way that most scientologists behaved. I wanted to integrate scientology into society and open the doors of the org to the outside world. One of my catch phrases at the time, which I still use today was: "No one has a monopoly on the truth." In other words, scientology doesn't have all the answers and never could. If you want the whole truth you have to look beyond your own back yard.

Now of course I know that scientology is what Orwell was talking about when he said "Propaganda lies, even when it tells the truth." Unlike many false and flawed ideologies, Scientology isn't even an honest attempt at finding the truth. It consists of lies deliberately told in order to enslave and destroy people. I'm not a religious man, but Hubbard has my vote for Anti-Christ. I don't know of anyone else who fits the bill more closely.

Needless to say, I didn't fit in very well.

When I first got involved in Scientology, a big deal had been made about the fact that I'd been given ritalin when I was a young child for a short time. Well the senior C/S int had said I was ok.

I still had some questions about exactly what it was that I'd been given and so forth. It was suggested that I have a particular scientology chiropractor obtain my medical records for me, which I did. When those records arrived, instead of passing them on to me like she was supposed to, she violated the law by giving them to the org's C/S without my permission.

The C/S looked at the records and took the opportunity to throw a fit and fall in it. She had no medical training but still felt herself qualified to comment on the dangers of another drug they'd also put me on at the same time I'd been on ritalin called adderal. Looking back on all of the nonsense and histrionics today, it strikes me as a textbook case of what happens when crazy meets stupid.

The C/S determined that I was an illegal PC and therefore not qualled for staff. I have no doubt that this judgment was heavily influenced by the ED who didn't like me much.

So I got kicked off staff. At first I came in to volunteer, but was told that I wasn't wanted, so I stopped coming around. This was in late 1994. The Senior C/S Int later declared once again that I was not an Illegal PC. But by then I was long gone from staff and would not ever want to return.

In the spring of '96 I started college, something I'd never have done had I continued to waste time with the cult. It was in the university library that I found most of the books that are now available on Dave Touretzky's site. Those books knocked my socks off. I couldn't believe half of what they were saying, but I also couldn't deny how much of it fit in with my own experiences and the things I'd seen.

At that point I didn't want anything more to do with the cult in any way whatsoever. But I did still think that Scientology as a subject was something of value, just as I always had. I didn't yet realize that the subject is just as worthless and corrupt as the organization created to exploit it.

As time went by I realized that any correlation that scientology has with the truth is spurious. It is complete horseshit and was intended to be from the start. Its purpose is to enslave and destroy. As such it contains just enough truth to mask its lies. It was at that point that I became not just an ex-scientologist, but a NON scientologist.

Today I come to sites such as this one to find out what sorts of things are going on with the ongoing effort to destroy this cancer upon the world. But Scientology isn't something that is a part of me anymore. I don't apply "tech" or "policy" in my daily life, and the culture and prejudices of scientology don't influence my thought processes or how I deal with the world. It has become something that I look back upon and think "What the hell was I thinking?"

It is hard to say what the last straw was really. When they kick YOU out the question doesn't mean as much. I guess the real change came from learning the truth about the cult in the university library. If there was a last straw, it was that, because that is when I began turning away from scientology.

[gomorrhan]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adderall

Adderall came out in 1996.

I started turning away from scientology when I realized that the effective bits were enhancements (in my opinion) of older techniques, and I didn't have to have a connection to the Church or that subject in order to use the parts I found useful.

I had been in the FreeZone for about five years when this occurred. I think the subject is not worthless and corrupt, but I do think it was created to keep people in, and only give them "wins" when they were conforming to Rondroidishness. Corrupt is definitely the word for the Church. However, I don't credit them with just being worthless. I consider them to be an active liability within any community that they function. Their stated aim is in the "Special Zone Plan". They will do whatever they can think of to put their people in positions of power. They also distract people from finding real help or care or growth, and destroy families in the pursuit of isolating the members and extorting money out of them to see each other.

The only solution I've been able to think of is to make people aware of the danger the Church represents to them and their family. The internet is a real beauty for that.

[Emma]

The final straw for me was when my then husband finished his contract and was trying to route out standardly.

This man had done two contracts amounting to probably 10 - 12 years on staff. He had kept the HGC alive as the only auditor for years, got fabulous results on PCs, worked 50 - 70 hours a week every week and was never in ethics trouble.

His contract expired, we were destitute (both on staff), had a toddler and beyond exhausted. He tried to do the right thing and route off standardly.

I've never seen someone be treated worse in my life. He was yelled and screamed at, belittled, mocked, taunted, harrassed and in the end he just had to leave. The result was that I was still there and I copped the fallout. I was sec checked, KRd, screamed at, blamed etc until I had enough too. I was the only GAT auditor at the time and you'd think they'd have tried a little kindness to keep me.

The day I was given a non enturb order was the last straw for me. That in itself is a whole other story.

I went home. Turned on my puter knowing that what I was about to do would change everything (although I had no idea just how much) and yahoo'd "Scientology - opposing views".

Game over.

[johnAnchovie]

aside from seeing this material: http://www.enturbulation.org/

Well, the real beginning of the end was during the Afro-Carribean/Muslim race riots in the Lozells, Birmingham back in 2005, I was in the org, listening to this unfold on the news, I jumped up, grabbed my VM jacket, a VM backpack, a bunch of TWTH and then told the EC that we needed to get up there right now, this being our city, our people, our responsibility. I was stonewalled, shocked at some of the racist comments I was getting about these 'DBs' up there. I said fuck you, and spent three days and three nights or so up there on the streets, it was mad, burning cars, riot police and TV crews. Me like a twat in the yellow VM gear, talking to shop keepers, gang members and police.

I eventually volunteered in various capacities in the community, I was blown away by just how dedicated, honest, kind and deeply compassionate and human some of these Muslin and Afro-Carribean 'DBs' were. It was then that my eyes began to open and the material posted on the interwebs began to get through to me, 'my church' did not give a hoot about the real tragedy and suffering going on just a mile down the road, no, they had to get their stats up.

Then HAWKIE posted a statement to Alanzo on the belief.net and announced that he was out.