About EXIT THE GAME
ANONYMOUS PROGRAM ROOTS
While those who are going through, or have gone through, the transition from the "game" to other careers feel they share the common bond of how difficult this process can be, others such as the courts, churches, law enforcement, judges, etc., seem to have strong feelings about the labels they want to attach to us. Search engines and social media are even blocking ANYTHING to do with words we use to help us find each other for support. On top of this, the United States has started even targeting us to be held or even incarcerated and forced to "testify" no matter what our personal feelings are about the issue. Horror stories abound of people forced to even lie in court to avoid arrest or even the loss of their children. Politicians and professors arguing over "what" we even are - saying that by using the 12 step process we must be saying we "have a disease" or are "addicted" to what we were doing. Imagine if addicts trying to simply get clean had to make distinctions in drug court as to whether or not they were street drug versus prescription addicts, or even arguing that only those with the "disease of addiction" could get help to stop abusing drugs. What we do feel EVERYONE can agree upon, as well as the search engines and social media site's "policies" don't seem to object to is if we call ourselves "Exit the Game". At the same time, we HAVE to stay a 12 step program because it's the ONLY way to ensure that what is said on our hotline, in our meetings, and even among each other, remains something law enforcement can't subject to surveillance, subpoena, or force anyone to testify against anyone else in the program. The 12 step program is also the ONLY thing that the courts MUST recognize as a form of an alternative to incarceration, early release, etc. - as they do with addicts in drug court. So on this website, and for most public purposes, we are going to call ourselves "Exit the Game" while our program will remain a 12 step process. Besides, our original 12 step program was the subject of a 10 year study who wrote a glowing report about our effectiveness in the book she published on her findings.
SEX TRAFFICKING
This is a complicated subject obviously. While many victims of sex trafficking have been literally kidnapped off the street by a stranger, beaten, tortured, brainwashed, and then forced into the game, for them to identify as a "victim" is quite simple. However, take a case of a young man who was sold as a boy to a trafficker when he was only eight years of age by his drug addicted mother. He was found by child protective services and put into a juvenile detention facility. From there, the guards sold him at night to the highest bidders. While recovering in the hospital from injuries, his social worker sold him again to another trafficker. This trafficker used him to "train" the younger kids in the game. He was then forced to take hormones to create a female persona so he could travel with the "clients" easier and be in more "demand". At the age of 13, he found the only way to escape this man was to shoot him dead. He was put on trial and released with nothing when he was 18. What does a young man with no education, no money, no services, and in gender transition, etc., do in this situation? He decided to play the game for himself, put himself through an Ivy League university to get a degree to help kids like himself, and developed a practice providing therapy to young kids who are going through what he experienced. Only once he gained some reputation at this, and of course word spread on the streets as it does, the original traffickers who had him decided to go to this university and have his degree voided by showing them photos he'd been forced to take as a child. Because there are laws on the books now that weren't there when he was 13 years old, he prosecuted these traffickers. Now I ask you, can he say he's ONLY a "victim" when he played the game to put himself through school for many years and until he could support himself as a therapist? This story is one of many where this term isn't so black and white - but various shades of grey. So, while addicts have varying stories and degrees of what they experienced during their using days, they focus on their recovery when in a 12 step program. They also don't shun dealers who also are seeking recovery. In this program, we aren't going to focus on your past, your title, or what you did - but instead on your recovery and how we can help.
