If You Escaped A Cult, Share What Happened
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Between HBO’s Love Has Won: The Cult of Mother God to Netflix’s Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult, and then many, many cult documentaries and TV series that have come out over the past couple years, recently, there seems to be an innate cultural interest in the ways in which we can get conned, manipulated, and scammed.
Yet, with promises of hope, money, or relief, getting sucked into cults doesn’t always look as insidious in the beginning. Just this year, a woman went viral on TikTok for detailing how, looking for some stress relief, she found herself unwittingly part of a yoga cult.
I see stories of cults all the time and even know some people who are part of cults myself, but I don’t always hear directly from people who’ve been part of them and left — like how they get sucked in, what the first “cult” warning signs were, and what the aftermath looked like.
So, I figured I’d turn it over to the BuzzFeed Community — if you’ve ever been part of a cult, what happened? How did you first get roped in, how did you leave, and what does your life look like now?
Perhaps your parents always had strong faith, but as a young family, a cult promised community, faith, and togetherness, living in a commune in the middle of nowhere. You took classes and participated in their programs, but your family was quickly isolated and told to cut off contact with anyone outside the commune. You got out as a teenager after calling out things you perceived as “off,” but your family is still part of it.
