STAD Ep.5-That One Time I Accidentally Joined a Cult (0/10, Do Not Recommend)!

A cozy women’s circle in the Oregon woods sounds like the cure for loneliness until the “healing” starts to feel like control. Sarah writes in with a story that begins with tea, candles, journaling, and a leader who takes her hand and says, “I see you.” It feels warm, safe, and validating in exactly the way you crave when you’ve spent your life taking care of everyone else.

Then the details get sharper. There are no clocks in the buildings. Cell service drops the moment you turn onto the property. Phones go into a lockbox. The group introduces long silence sessions where you sit perfectly still and start over if you break focus. “Alignment” becomes the explanation for every bad feeling, and distancing yourself from friends gets framed as protecting your energy. Even money gets renamed as an “energy exchange,” and attention becomes the reward for giving more.

We talk through why high-control groups can hook smart, level-headed people, especially when they offer belonging and certainty first. When a member vanishes and a hidden journal raises one terrifying question, “What Is In The Tea,” Sarah realizes she isn’t becoming more herself, she’s becoming easier to control. If you’re into cult psychology, coercive control, spiritual abuse red flags, or the dark side of wellness communities, this one stays with you. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves creepy true stories, and leave a review with the biggest red flag you heard in Sarah’s story.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Welcome, everybody, to this evening's edition of Sweet Tea After Dark. I'm Holly.

SPEAKER_00 0:47

I'm Pearl. That was allowed.

SPEAKER_01 0:52

We were trying to, you know, be subtle with the evening. Dark tea. Mysterious. Right. But exciting news. Got a story in. Love it. And I'm so, so happy to be able to read this. Woot woot. And we can use her name. What? Are you kidding me? I know.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Somebody's not anonymous.

Sarah’s Story Begins In Oregon

SPEAKER_01 1:19

No, no, nous people today. I always like to get tongue-tied with anonymous anonymity. A conundrum. All right. I'm excited. So we're gonna just jump right into this story today because today's story comes from my favorite state, Oregon. What? Love Oregon. It's one of my astrocartography places to live in my life. And I have lived there. And I don't know why I ever come back here. But you do know why you came back here. I do know why I came back here. But one day, one day I will get back there. But the story comes to us from Sarah. Um, she is allowing us to use her name. And I am going to read this just how she wrote it. Because I love it. And it's titled Thank you, Sarah. Yes, thank you, Sarah. One of our peoples. Come on. And it is titled, I didn't realize it was a cult until I tried to leave. Oh no. I'm like, I'm scared now. Poor Sarah. I know. So she writes, Hi Holly and Pearl. I almost didn't send this, not because I didn't want to talk about it, but because sometimes I still feel like if I say too much about it, someone will notice or something will notice. I know how that sounds. I do. But I'm gonna tell you anyway. My name is Sarah, I'm 29, and I live in the beautiful state of Oregon, kind of outside of Portland, in more of a wooded area, lots of trees, lots of quiet, the kind of place where things can exist without being seen unless you're looking for them. I was like, okay. So this all started about two years ago. I was lonely. I had a shit childhood. Girl, me too. She said, if you could call it that, I practically raised my mother and my two siblings. Like, I wanted to be alone, but I yearned for a support system. And I guess that was all those years of having to raise your mother and your siblings.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Exactly. At what point does someone help take care of you? Right. Yeah.

The Women’s Circle Feels Safe

SPEAKER_01 4:16

So when I found a flyer for a women's circle at a coffee shop, I'm like, I'm in. I went, it felt safe, soft, warm. The first night I remember thinking how everything felt peaceful. And like honestly, if I seen a flyer for a women's circle, I would have been like, okay.

unknown 4:45

Right.

SPEAKER_01 4:45

Because you know, it it you think here for it. Yeah. That's safe. That's my community. Yeah. And like when I got to the property, it was it was deep in the woods, which I'm like, okay, we're we're cool, so am I. Yeah, going way out here and everything. The narrow gravel road going in was enough for one car. So like you couldn't pass somebody on the way out. Lord help me if somebody has gone. Right. You're like, where do I go? Um, there was no real signage, just like a wooden post with a small carved symbol that I really didn't recognize. I didn't think anything of it at the time. Now I wish I would have taken a picture. When I arrived, there were about a dozen women. Some were new, some had been there before. Everything felt kind of blissfully calm and inviting. And then there was Elise. Everyone noticed Elise. But it wasn't that she was just like charismatic. It was the way conversations seemed to pause when she looked at you. She had an intense yet calm gaze. Like your brain needed an extra extra second to catch up because she was so fierce. She spoke quietly, but no one ever asked her to repeat herself. Even if you didn't hear her clearly, you kind of somehow just understood what she was saying. That's interesting. I know. That's me when I'm like asked somebody to repeat themselves and they'll just kind of nod and smile.

SPEAKER_00 6:32

Or those moments where you go, What? And then your brain finally processes what you're like, Oh, never mind. Never mind.

SPEAKER_01 6:38

I hope you're so that first evening, we shared things about ourselves, and I told them things I had never said out loud before. Things I hadn't even fully admitted to myself. It felt so good to get some of them off my chest with this feeling that I wasn't being like ridiculed or judged. And afterwards, Elise came up to me. She took my hand and smiled at me and said, I see you. I thought it was comforting. So naturally, the next circle they had, I went back. Of course I did. Of course. It was a healing good time. Because for the first time in a long time, I did feel seen. At first, everything was normal. There was tea, candles, journaling, talking about healing. We were like a sisterhood, a coven, if you will. And we all just got along. See, I would be in this cult. I just like I'm I'm in for it.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Holly's in.

Red Flags On The Property

Alignment Talk And Slow Isolation

SPEAKER_01 7:52

Yep. But there were little things, small things that didn't make sense, like how in the buildings there were no clocks. So you really didn't know what time it was. Also, your phone would lose service when you kind of got on the property. So in the town before the property, phones worked fine. Once you got onto the land going up to the property, no signals, no bars whatsoever. So you really and the setup. Right. And then when you got there, you had to put your phones in a lockbox. So you couldn't use them anyway. So you had no concept of time, which is kind of mind-boggling when you think about it, because you're literally like, what time is it? What time is it? What time? All the time. Like our lives live on a schedule, and I absolutely hate that. Yeah. So there were members who lived on the property. And sometimes I felt like they were kind of keeping tabs on you where you were at. And I and I just told myself it was the atmosphere. I was being paranoid because of how I was raised and my, you know, the way I grew up. And then Elise, after a few times of being there, started talking about alignment. She would say, Once you begin to wake up, your old life would start to feel heavy. She said that resistance meant that you were shedding, and discomfort meant you were getting closer to truth. So when things started feeling off, I stayed because I thought that meant it was working. And then I stayed overnight for the first time. I remember waking up in the middle of the night and not knowing where I was. For like a few seconds, I didn't recognize the room or myself, and I could hear something outside. Not really footsteps, not like a animal scurrying or anything, just like movement, like something passing slowly by the cabin. But I didn't look because we were in the middle of the woods and no. I just felt like I was in a good place, but I was cautious about it. So the next morning, Elise asked me, Did you rest well? And the way she said it felt like a question with an answer she already knew. After that, things just started escalating. But not like all at once. It was a slow escalation. That's what makes it hard to explain. We started doing what was called silence sessions. An hour, then two, sometimes more. No talking, no movement, just sitting and staring into a candle or at Elise. I'm like, I don't think I could stare at a person for two or three. No.

SPEAKER_00 11:28

There's no way. I can see staring at the candle because I stare at some things sometimes and just like drift off into la la. But if you That is me having a slight stroke.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

But if you broke focus, she would make you start over. What? Time stopped making sense. I would leave and realize hours had passed, but it felt like minutes. Or the opposite. She told us we were becoming clear, but I started to feel kind of hollow. We were quote unquote encouraged to distance ourselves from people outside of the group, not directly, just gently, repeatedly. Elise would say things like notice how your energy shifts after talking to them. Pay attention to who drains you. Not everyone is meant to like come with you. So just little subtle things like that. But she was wanting everybody to like distance themselves from everybody except for the circle. Isolation. Yeah. But eventually it didn't feel like a suggestion. It felt like a test. But I was so wrapped into this circle. All I wanted to do was please Elise. Then there was the money. It wasn't framed as money, it was a commitment, energy exchange. The more you gave, the more Elise seemed to notice you. And everybody wanted to be noticed. The first time I felt actual fear wasn't because of Elise. It was because of the other women. They started to change. Subtly at first, kind of speaking in the same tone. Um, and this was more with the women who had been there for a long time, using the same phrases, laughing at the same time. There were moments where I would say something and they would all just look at me. Not confused, not curious, just still. Yeah, that would have been like, nope, I'm out. Fabs are off. Now Holly has left the circle. I have left the circle. Let me tweet that. Like, it's like they were waiting for me to kind of correct myself. And eventually I would. So, you know, she would say something just kind of off, and then they were like, and then she she would just like correct herself so she wouldn't make herself seem, you know, strange or anything. Like, uh-uh. Yeah. So about a year in, like, this girl has gone a year in this in this circle. I ended up moving on to the property. I had gotten so wrapped into this circle, given them so much money, I ended up getting evicted from my apartment.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

Oh gosh. Yeah. So she didn't have a choice but to move on to the property or be homeless.

Overnight Stay And Rising Unease

Silence Sessions And Time Distortion

SPEAKER_01 15:09

Yeah, but I think it was just a matter of like them draining her to get this to happen because she was I don't think she was going to work as much. The manipulation. I told myself this is temporary. But like that I was just going deeper. But once I was there, it felt harder to leave. Not physically, just mentally. Like every time I thought about going to leave, something in my chest would tighten. And I would hear Elise's voice in my head saying, You're not done yet. Get out of my head. Right. She said, I don't remember her even saying that to me directly, but that's what scares me. Then one of the women, and we'll call her Lena. Left. Or rather, just disappeared. No one ever said the word left, but she was there one day and then gone the next, and nobody wanted to talk about her. And the only thing that Elise would say was she chose to close herself again. So that night I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about Lena, the way she had started acting like the week before, quiet, distracted, like she was somewhere else. The next morning I was doing my cleaning chores. So I guess they all had things to do around there. And that's when I found a journal. It was hidden behind a dresser, like whomever put it there didn't want it found. But I'm glad I did. The writing started normal, day after day, month after month of positivity. But then it got frantic, messy. She wrote about forgetting things, about losing time, about waking up outside without remembering how she even got there. And then there was this one part that didn't look like her handwriting at all. It was neater than the rest of it. Almost careful. It said, You were so open when you arrived. I'm like, what does that mean? And then it said, What is in the T. But the last line she wrote was, I don't think she teaches us anything. I think she empties us. After that, I couldn't unsee it. The way Elise watches us. Not like a leader, not like a friend, like she was waiting. I started noticing how tired I always felt, especially after the evening tea. How hard it was to think clearly. How I stopped questioning things, how easy it had become just to agree. I didn't say anything that evening. I didn't drink the tea. I didn't confront anyone because I didn't know who I could trust. So before sunrise, I got my stuff together and I left. No noise, no goodbye. As I was walking down that gravel road, I had this overwhelming feeling that I shouldn't look back. Then I started to run. I got to a gas station. I called a friend that I had completely shut off because of Elise. I don't know if it was a cult. I don't know what it was, honestly. But I know this. I was changing. And I don't think I was becoming more myself. I think I was just becoming easier to control. Ulise was a succubus. Yes. Signed Sarah. Like, not at all. I don't like that at all. Nope. Yeah. Y'all beware of these women's circles. Right. I'm like, now this scares me because I like I want to join a women's circle, but I don't want to be in a cult.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Well, and the crazy thing is, is like you see all this stuff about like these men who use the Bible to trick people into place cult-like things. But you never think there may be a lady out there doing the same exact thing. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

Because I just watched the other I watched, you know, the Warren Jeff's and the whole church thing and all of his polygamy and all that stuff. And then there was a new documentary on it and stuff. It gave a little more perspective on some of like even his daughter. Yeah. That he sexually abused and everything. I like I watched that and I'm like, how do these people get so mind controlled by one person?

SPEAKER_00 20:45

The washing of the brain is real.

SPEAKER_01 20:48

Like really real. But I don't even think that this was like poor Sarah, like, was brainwashing. She was just like wanting a place to belong, and they made her feel welcome.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Well, that's part of it.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

Yeah, I mean they were preying on her, but she seems like a pretty, you know, level-headed person, but it just goes to show you that doesn't matter. You you you see the things that you want to see, but you're not seeing the things that you should see over here.

Money As “Energy Exchange”

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Or that you need to see it's not necessarily like when you get people who just tell you everything you want to hear. Like they figure out what it is you need, what it is you want, and they give it to you, and you're like, oh, and then and that first night there, she opened up and she told a whole lot of stuff.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

And they were like, hook right there. We got you. Let's play on those emotions. And then they slowly like sucked her in. Like it took a year, and she was in there.

SPEAKER_00 21:47

Yep. Crazy stuff.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Thank you, Sarah. And I'm so sorry that that happened to you, and it was a cult.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

Yeah, and we definitely appreciate that you wrote in and you even let us use your names just. Despite the scariness that is contained in your story.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

And I do believe that there probably are cults like that up in Oregon because it's very hippy-dippy up there, but there are some some evil people. Hippy-dippy cults. Yep. The shroom tea. It's it was something because yeah. Like I'm I'm gonna admit I've had some shroom time before. But you know, um, it didn't cause that type of stuff like happening, you know. Like you have hallucinations, but like she was literally waking up at night not knowing where she was at, and like just weird things happening, or this other woman waking up outside like she was sleepwalking, yeah, crazy not knowing how she got there.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

Crazy stuff.

SPEAKER_01 22:47

Crazy, crazy stuff. But again, thank you so much, Sarah. And you know what? All of you could have a crazy story. I'm sure there's more cults.

SPEAKER_00 22:58

Everyone does have crazy stories.

The Group Starts To Change

SPEAKER_01 23:00

It's just who's brave enough to share it. Are you in a cult? Because I know several people that are in a in a cult, but they just don't want to admit it. True. We all know what that means. Um but anyway, you can send in your stories to hold my sweet tea podcast at gmail.com. That is right. You can go on our website at holdmysweettea.com with the www at the beginning. Of course, always. You can click on send us a message on Spotify. You can send us something on Facebook. We have one on there, like the book of faces. You can slide into our DMs on Instagram. Instagram. There you go. We'll take you can you can send us a message on there. We see them. We don't have to accept messages on there, but if we see one that's we'll accept it. Absolutely. We will we will accept it and we will, you know, look at it and run with it. Run with it. Yeah. And right now we'll probably go ahead and read it on air.

unknown 24:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

Because it's fun. Yep. We love it. It's been really cool. And it's given us a little reprieve of having to like think of things to put out. So, you know, you're helping us along.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

But I mean, how many places go listen or submit? Yeah. And we're gonna share it with the world. Like I've never listened to anything like that. So just trying to be a little different, too. Absolutely. And we're supportive of all the weird stuff. Like, we're not gonna weird. We will not shame you. We will not make fun of you. Nope. And nor will anyone who listens to us. Right. We will not judge you.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

So we will don't be afraid. We will listen and we will not judge.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

Don't be afraid. Send it.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

Send it in.

SPEAKER_00 25:00

And you don't have to use your name. Nope.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

So but we do have to use Patty Cells at his name.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

We always have to use Patty Cells at his name because she did our theme music. And it's only right for us to give her credit where credit is due. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 25:15

Because it's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

It is. And as newly always Sweet Tea After Dark is a drunken psycho bee production. I keep seeing the curtain scene in Psycho Bee. I know.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

Here's Johnny. Yeah. That's our bee's name.

SPEAKER_00 25:48

Y'all creep it real out there, like Holly said last time. Yes. And just because we're good nighting doesn't mean you can't keep writing it. Bye.