Tim Lustig

Review of San Marcos Treatment Center

(grain of salt opinion/advice) Was there for 6 mon...

(grain of salt opinion/advice) Was there for 6 months in the new heights unit in late 2017 (older teen boys who have tricare insurance)

If you are going here and all other choices fail, best advice I can give you is to just to learn to be insanely flexible.

Pack a pillow or blanket and it will improve your experience 10 fold.

They (the team that looks over your progress) look for what they like to call a honeymoon phase. You think it's going to be easy and you'll bs them to leave.

Instead show them you and remember this isn't normal life. Keep a photo or any momento you are allowed to remind yourself what you are going back to. Be vulnerable and assume you'll be there for a year and actually live life like that while you are there. Talk to other patients to keep social and ok, but don't let them bully you into doing stupid things. This is what caused 90% of the drama and fights while I was there.

The staff there are not really to blame. If you need to get angry at something, wait for basketball time or journal anything that comes to blame. I am not a violent person and I didn't get into any fights there ultimately, but trust me there will be times when you really want to explode.

Remember that you can ask some staff for individual time to process.
The schedule is not at all flexible.

The night staff are generally more laidback, which I noticed due to my heavy insomnia (ended up getting some meds for it later)

Keep in mind that this is over a period of 6 months, so these occured very rarely - While most of the time it smells like feet and the food is mostly re hydrated eggs/ pasta, honestly it looks gorgeous at certain times. There's the "cantina", with powder pudding and pb and j sandwiches / piano, pool table, movies. The ropes course was pretty neat albeit superficial and oddly religious.oo