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APPENDIX D Certain interesting phenomena occur in the "snapped" person. For one thing, investigators find that a person’s intellectual maturity seems to freeze at the point he entered the cult. Former cult members leave the cult at about the same psychological age they entered (Information Disease: Have Cults Created a New Mental Illness?", Flo Conway and Jim Siegelman, Science Digest, January 1982, pp. 86-92). I had always been an excited intellectual, feeling I was growing in maturity, experience and emotional stature. During my ten years as a Mormon, however, I had the nagging feeling I was going nowhere. Now, after nearly ten years of post-Mormon experience, I am once again experiencing the exciting feeling of personal growth. People leaving cults also tend to experience a period of "withdrawal" in which they fight confusion. For several years after I left Mormonism, I experienced a frustrating sensation that there were places in my mind I could not go. In trying to talk to people about it, I described what seemed to be a steel band wrapped tightly around my mind. Only after considerable ministry and prayer did I experience complete deliverance from the hold of the Mormon cult. As a final act of rejecting Mormonism, I took all Mormon literature out of my home and burned several dozen books in the desert. Only then did I feel completely free. Studies indicate that the average rehabilitation time for former cult members is sixteen months. Long-term effects include recurring nightmares and becoming "unable to think." |