Adam Eget Survived Three Years in an Abusive Cult

Oh, we didn't even talk about your cult, dude. Oh, all right, yeah. Yeah, we forgot. We have time? Fuck yeah. All right, good. We have plenty of time right here. All right, good. I don't even know where to fucking begin. So when did you first become part of the cult? So I got sent away to this cult. It was like a cult boarding school. How old were you? I was 14. I just turned 14 in 1994. Did your parents know what was going on, or did they think? No, they had no idea. What did they think it was? They heard it was for a place for troubled kids to get some help. And then, yeah, they had no idea it was a cult. Wow. No idea. So what was it? It was a. Does it have a name? Yeah, it's called CEDU. It's C-E-D-U. And they called it that because you could see yourself how you want to be, and then you do something about it. Pfft. Damn, that sounds like something that like Tony Robbins would say. Yeah. It used to be, I think it was created originally from something called synanon, which I think is more well known. That sounds like some cheesy, not Tony Robbins, but like a low level online motivational guy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. And what you do is see and then do. Sounds so simple. And it is for you. You're going to see what you don't like, and you're going to do something about it. Everybody's like, oh my god. Thanks for being here at the Hilton in Alejandra. So this is pre-internet. You're 14 years old. Yeah. 1993. I was a big cutter. I was living in Tarzana. I grew up in Tarzana. Yeah. Big cutter. What was that about? I don't know. Were your friends doing it? No, no. I was doing it. I don't know. My dad left, and then I started cutting. And then I was getting into fights at school. I was punching holes in my wall. I was an angry kid, and so it was sort of an outlet, I guess. And then they kept sending me up to the Northridge psych ward. So I got sent away up to Northridge in the youth psych ward. And then. What did they say about you? I don't remember specifically what they said. I think they just told my parents. They didn't tell me anything. I think they told my parents probably. And your parents didn't let you have a sit down with you and say, hey, psycho. After the third time, I got sent up to the psych ward. They said, if you do this one more time, anything else, we're going to have to send you away somewhere more serious, probably. And so I did it again. And then we took a tour up to, they said we were just going to go up to take a tour of the school that I could be sent away to. That was it. They said, if you do it one more time, we're going up and we're going to tour the school. And if you do this one more time, then we're going to bring you back here and drop you off. You're going to stay there. And so we went up to the San Bernardino Mountains. And we got out of the car. I toured the campus. It was a beautiful campus. It was like this giant cabin up near Lake Arrowhead. And it used to be owned by the Houstons, Walter and Angelica and John Houston. And they were telling me just about the school and stuff and all the rules. There were a lot of rules. They called them agreements. And then my parents, I came back and went and talked to my parents. And they told me that I was staying there. And I just said, well, fuck you. And then I left. And they strip searched me. And that was it. And then I went into what they call a wrap. And wraps are intense. So the wrap was this three-hour long, kind of like a group therapy session. But everyone is just sort of, oh my god, it was so bizarre. So I had only been at the school two hours. I'd just been strip searched. And I'd been put into one of these three-hour wraps. And the girl next to me was rocking back and forth on the chair, sort of like sobbing quietly. And then the kid next to me got up, walked across the room, and switched seats with someone. Because you weren't allowed to talk to someone next to you. You had to be across the room. And that kid started screaming at the kid right next to me over here. And then this one just started screaming at the floor. And started screaming at the floor like, I hate you, mom. I hate you, dad. And then someone started putting all this Kleenex, all these tissues. And I'm like, why are they putting all these fucking tissues here? And then you just see all this snot and spit and mucus empty out of this girl's body. Because she's just screaming. And blood vessels are popping in her fucking. And she's crying and screaming. And it was the most disgusting thing you've ever seen. And I was like, oh my god, I'm going to be here for two and a half years. And this is going to happen three times a week. There was a lot of sleep deprivation. They had a piece. What did your parents think it was? They were told by the counselors at the psych ward that it was like a place for troubled kids when you didn't know what else to do with them. So the psych ward was in on it? Yeah. Yeah, it was weird. And so I think. Do you think they were fooled? Or do you think that they knew what was going on? I think that maybe they were fooled. I think they were probably fooled. I don't think anybody really knew. This is pre-internet, right? Yeah, this is all pre-internet. Because you can't do a wiki on them. Yeah. I mean, the school, the government finally shut them down. So they were accredited, though, or something. Yeah, I think so. I mean, they were approved by. Yeah. It had been around. CEDU was there for, I think, since the 70s, I want to say. Maybe even earlier. Maybe the late 60s. That's the scary ones. Ones with legs. But it was a really weird mix of students. It was like, I think Paris Hilton went there at one point. And then there was just a lot of kids there on court orders. Oh, god. It was just a real weird mix of people. But they had these 24-hour, what they called, profits. And they were all named after a different chapter of the book called The Prophet by Khalil Gibran. You go through the program with a peer group. So everybody that was enrolled at the same time as you in the same two months, you go through these, almost like these rites of passages called profits. And there were these 24-hour long workshops. And they're all based around each chapter of this book called The Prophet. And the first one was called The Truth. And it was like, The Truth will set you free. So you basically tell everything you've ever done that you felt bad about. And it's like confession almost. And what was odd is that all the staff members were, there were a lot of, there were like two or three staff members who were the counselors at the school, they had no real credentials. They weren't like therapists, but they acted as therapists. But they all had fucked up lives, too. And so and some of them, yeah. And so some of them, like there were people that really got off on the power, like any cult leaders do. And then there were some that were former students there that were sent away for being bad kids. So there were staff members like confessing to, I heard one guy said claimed that he said a homeless guy on fire. Another one would strangle cats. And they're like, these are the fucking people that are teaching this. You had to fall asleep around a dude who used to strangle cats. No, you couldn't fall asleep in the in the profits. Oh, right. Eventually. I mean, I think they lived off campus. Oh, fuck, man. That sounds insane. Yeah, it was pretty wild. They all have that element in them. That's a Scientology element, too. Right. And then also Catholicism. You have to confess. Right. That's there's a thing that Scientology does where they they go over all sorts of aspects of your life and they they like save that. Yeah, I save all those recordings. And then when you want to talk shit, they're like, oh, well, you think about leaving? Oh, fascinating. Yeah. We're going to tell everybody about that thing that you do with clowns. I wonder why they would do it here, then, because we had no power to look. We're all underage. We they, you know, well, that's different. Different organization. Yeah. You know, what they're doing is probably getting power over you. I mean, it seems like that's what those things are always about. They're always about power. And then usually the main dude's banging everybody's wife. Right. And they get a lot of money. The teachers, there were teachers that were for sure banging the students. There's nothing you didn't know going in that it was a cult. When do you think you figured it out? Until I was like until like a fucking two years after I had graduated. Oh, my God. So two years after it's all over, you sit around going, hey, I think I think I started talking to something like, didn't you think that was a little weird when they did this or this or that or? And I was like, don't you mention it? Wait a minute. Yeah, we had to do 14 days through Joshua Tree, which was beautiful, which was great. But then a four day solo where they give you like a bag of trail mix and some water and a whistle and they say, all right, we'll come back in four days. But as a 14 year old, it's like, what the fuck? What the fuck? Yeah, it was intense. But where was this? Where were the woods? In Joshua Tree. That's a fucking sketchy area. Yeah. 14 years in the desert. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah. Where are we supposed to get your water? They had a big bag of water. That was a bag of water for four days. How big is this bag? Uh, I don't know. You have your own bag? Yeah. Yeah, you were alone. They give you an area about half the size of this room, the studio, and they say, all right, we'll come get you in four days. Here's four granola bars, a bag of trail mix and a bag of water and a whistle in case you get bit by a rattlesnake or some shit. Oh my God. And then. So where are they with this? And then nowhere near you. They said they were they were around and they monitor. They I think they monitor you. So they probably saw a lot of beating off. 14 years old. I think I spent most of my days. If I was a 14 year old and I came up with a cult, that would be one of the rules. What was the rule? No beating off? No, no, no. I'd be like, you're going to all be by yourself for four days. You get four granola bars and a bag of water. Like it sounds like something a 14 year old would come up with. As far as the rules. Sounds like an episode of fucking Fear Factor. And here's a whistle if you get bit by a rattler. I'll be over the top of the hill. You won't see me, but I'll be able to hear you. That sounds like a 14 year old. I'll never forget, too, when we came out, they told us Kurt Cobain had just killed himself. It was so 94. But I remember if you get in trouble, they put you on something called a full time. And that was never fun because it was like you had no it was the amount of time of the full time was in the turn. So it was based on the staff member. It was either you ran away or you had sex with another student. Or I know happened. Yeah, kids are banging. Not me in between snotty screens. Yeah, a lot of primal screen therapy. But it would. So but on a full time like you wake up and you have to like try and dig out a stump that's been there since the 70s. No one was ever going to fucking take it out. The biggest stump you've ever fucking seen. I remember when I got enrolled, the first thing I saw was a kid and a pickaxe. And I'm like, what the fuck? That's why they have dynamite. Yeah. And dynamite. All right. Well, they used it for full times, but you're not allowed to laugh or sing or no human contact. You can't talk to anybody for three weeks. Oh, my God. They're mine. That's how long I was. Yeah, they mind fucked you. There was something called smushing where everybody. It was like you walk into this giant house at every night and everyone is telling each other their life stories. But it looked like you remember Jonestown when like the nine hundred nine people had just drank the Kool-Aid. Yes. And it was just body on top of body. That's what it looked like. Everyone's just cuddling with each other. Oh, my God. And it's like all the staff members are fucking rubbing hair. Jesus Christ. You're like, this seems highly inappropriate with like girls. Thirteen year old girls head in their lap. Oh, yeah. It was fucking it was trippy. But yeah, I but my buddy, our buddy Jeff Garland put me in touch with this fantastic writer who writes a lot of episodes of Better Call Saul, and we're almost done with our pilot. We're going to pitch it in about a month. I feel like that's one that's going to be fascinating to see how they play that narrative out, like whether they will show that kind of shit, like a 13 year old girl in a guy's lap. Like that seems like you can't even do that. We'll see. You can't even do that in fiction. You know what I mean? You'd have to imply it. That's a good point. Well, you know, I mean, if everybody's fully clothed. The problem is it really happened. Right. So it's not like it's fiction. So if you were creating this kind of fiction, you're putting it out. People would be like, what you sick fuck. Why did you even think of that? But you're not doing that. That's true. Yeah, you're relaying some crazy shit that you actually experienced. And how many years are there for almost three? Wow. Yeah. Some of the exercises were crazy. They did this one called Lifeboat where they choose two students. I was one of the students that chose. And you're on a chair and you can only save two people. And all your best friends and shit are sobbing and they're like, oh, please pick me. And you have to look each person in the eye and tell them why they they die. What the fuck? And then they and then everyone had to write their own eulogy. Fucking weird. A girl slit her own throat. Oh, Jesus. Yeah. And another kid jumped off a cliff. When when they get into it in the first place, are they doing it because it's been done to them? Like some of them clearly, right? Some of them seems like they were a victim of staff members for sure. That's why I know the one who likes set the homeless guy on fire. I know that for sure. That's why he did it. He got put through this bullshit. He was going to inflict it on somebody else. Oh, yeah. Garbage, garbage people. And then the craziest thing was maybe about seven or eight years after I graduated. A lot of kids would split. I split. You run away. But then you get caught or you walk or you come back to the school once you find out your parents aren't going to take you out. But a lot of kids never came back. And we just that's it. That was just the fact to the kids. We don't know what the fuck happened to them. They would always tell us that the parents pulled them out of the school. Some of the kids that ran away and never came back. But it was on the side of this giant, like almost like a cliff, this backside of a mountain. And some kids would walk down into town through the road. And some kids, they said, would run away and go down the backside of the mountain. And they said some kids died going down the backside. Some kids got kidnapped. Who fucking knows? But I found out about seven or eight years after the club was closed, they found out that there was actually a serial killer that was working at the school. He was like like the night janitor kind of guy and confessed to murdering like a handful of kids that we thought ran away. And he got caught for something else and then confessed to all these murders he had committed over the last decade. And and four of them were kids while he was working up at the campus. Holy crazy. That was while I was there. Yeah. Bonkers. Fuck. Pretty wild. So it took you a few years. Was it a relationship that you were in where a girl was explaining to you? It was while I was talking to former students. Oh, and then it started opening my eyes and I was like, oh, yeah. So it wasn't talking to someone who wasn't in it. Right. It was talking to someone who wasn't. Yeah. Together you were like going, hey, I've talked to some other people. And exactly. That's not what 14 year olds do. Right. Fuck, man. And then when Facebook, it was even longer than that, because I think then when Facebook came out, then it was like there were all these groups and everyone's like, yeah, we were in a cold. Once you got out and you realized you were out and you talked to all the other people that were out, too, and you all realize that you were out. How did it affect the way did you have to like remap those years in your head? Did you have to kind of think about what life is really like? It was it was interesting because I got out when I was 16. So I had to go out as soon as I got out. I had two more years of high school. So I got thrown down the street at Taft. I went to Taft High School. Wow. And Woodland Hills and then, yeah, did a couple more years there. But it was it was tough to get reacclimated. And then, yeah, I didn't know I had to retrain my brain. Like I felt like I I knew it was almost like I knew what they were trying to do. I almost felt like I was being brainwashed and we were taught to self police each other. And and I was like North Korea style. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Otherwise, you know, they would put you on a full time and you'd have to fucking dig out a stump for. So when you say we were forced to self police each other, we used to force the self police yourself or other guys, ourselves and others. Oh, OK. So you got to write. Yeah, you'd have to write a dirt list every week. Which you had to recover. How do you like go, hey, this is all bullshit? I think it took some time. It took it took years. But I was one of the lucky ones. I was like, you know what? I did it. I took I took the positives. I was like, you know what? It wasn't all bad. I learned some tools. And if I didn't go through that, I wouldn't be the person I am today. And I'm not the you know, I'm not the worst fucking guy in the world. So I made it out. I survived. Fuck it, right? I'm not going to. There were a lot of people that wouldn't let go. They would just hold on until this very day. They hold on so tight to this bitterness and this anger. And they can't sleep at night. And all they think about is what they went through. They lost three years of their life. I do hate that. I do bummed out that I missed out those three years of not if this script gets sold. Yeah, that's true. Come on, man. That's true. That's earned character. Exactly. That's like, you know, we're talking about with Joey Diaz. Like you earned this. I totally I not only do I not regret it, there's many, many, many days, more days than not, that I wish I could go back and do it all over again. I swear to God. Why? I don't know. Because I don't know. It was there was there was a camaraderie. There was it was like there was something about it. I didn't have to. I had all that other bullshit to worry about, but I didn't have to worry about a roof over my head job. You know, all the other bullshit that you have to worry about. It's a present. Yeah. You get institutionalized. Exactly. Yeah.