Anyone who's been around the organization for a bit knows the refrain: Someone leaves the organization, and shortly thereafter gets a drunk driving conviction / tattoo / unplanned pregnancy. The next thing you hear is other Witnesses tut-tutting:
"That's what happens when people leave! They go crazy! People really need the organization, don't they!"
Is that what really happens? What actually causes people (especially kids who leave) to go so crazy?
First, watch this video. In case you don't want to watch it, I'll tell you what it's about. The message is, basically, don't steal because Jehovah says that's bad. It's a very simple message that kids understand clearly: If you want to be someone's friend, do things they like.
This works great for little kids, but the vast majority of Witness parents never move beyond this. For example, with the idea of sex before marriage: They basically teach, "Don't because Jehovah hates it."
Now, there are a whole host of perfectly viable reasons not to throw your genitals around like ticker tape at a parade: STDs, unplanned pregnancies, hurt feelings, etc. There are also reasons to have sex before marriage: Testing for compatibility, it's fun, it's usually not hurting anyone, etc.
So what happens when the person loses faith in Jehovah or, worse, realizes that he doesn't exist? If your whole moral compass is predicated on the idea that "Jehovah doesn't like it when you do that," yet you've realized that he doesn't exist, then that means everything is on the table, right?
There's another factor, and one of the worst: If you leave the Witnesses, your entire support system vanishes.
All of your friends? Gone. Are your parents Witnesses? They're gone too. Everyone you've ever known, ever cared about, ever did something nice for is gone to you, and you'll never get them back unless you come crawling back to the organization.
See, you're isolated as a Witness. As a Witness, your friends are other Witnesses. You ignore your family because your true family is other Witnesses. You're encouraged to think of people who aren't Witnesses as "acquaintances," but not "friends."
So what happens when you have no friends and no idea how to find friends? You get depressed and alienated. And when you get depressed you make Bad Decisions. You take drugs, you become an alcoholic, you do stupid things, and the entire time your Witness guilt keeps ringing in your ears, saying, "You're going to die at Armageddon!" That makes everything worse, and you'll do whatever you can to silence that voice.
Am I being incorrect on this? It can't possibly be that way, right? Here's a story: I know of a family that had a child disfellowshipped. She died several years later, and they still don't know why she died. It wasn't mysterious or anything, she was in the hospital for days. None of them visited. She just... died, and they still don't know what happened or why she died.
That's sick, right? Imagine that person, laying in the hospital bed, dying, and their family never even comes to find out what's wrong? Never comes to even hold her hand for one second? Is that loving?
Another story: I knew a young man who was never formally disfellowshipped. He was in the hospital after a suicide attempt. I went to visit, and his mother met me at the door, telling me they treat him like he's disfellowshipped, so I should leave. Me, stupid person, did. The next meeting, one of their elders pulled me aside and gave me a lecture about it.
He committed suicide this past year. He stepped in front of a truck on the highway.
See, the ultimate test of an organization's success should be whether or not people touched by it see a permanent improvement. If an organization claims to help people then ruins their life when they leave, that's not really a successful organization, isn't it? It's more like a bully.
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