Wild Boys

First and foremost I want to applaud Tammy for her compassion, energy and willingness to act. We need more Tammys in the world and it makes me sad that she felt embarrassed to tell her story or be revealed as naive. Yes, the truth was not what she first believed but it was very clear she may well have saved a young man’s life and I refuse to believe the lesson would be not to intervene or help. The truth is always more complicated and those in need don’t need to be unflawed to be deserving of compassion and a helping hand. While there’s still many unanswered questions for me around some of the family dynamics and Kyle more specifically I also appreciated Sam’s empathetic approach. I don’t think he would have gotten as far with the Horn family interviews had he taken a hawkish journalistic approach. It was interesting learning about the family and their willingness to discuss their fringe beliefs and dynamics. It’s easy to “other” someone when they espouse conspiracy theories but we have to see them as whole people with families they love and big fears they are wrestling with.

There seems to be a lot of dislike for the boys and their family in these reviews but I really appreciated the amount of empathy Sam Mullins showed for everyone involved. Yes, the family is a bit woo-woo and believes in a lot of far out conspiracy theories. But they were also a family very worried about their son/brother not getting the help he needed. I battled an eating disorder while in high school in the mid-1990s in the U.S. and my (wonderful) therapist worked very hard to keep me out of the hospital for the very same reasons Roan ran away in the first place. I really empathized with him as he described the treatment he received in the U.S. hospital as opposed to the one in Canada. I’m glad he finally received the help he needed and was able to recover.

My thoughts ran the gamut throughout the series, being informed by my own beliefs, discriminations, the perilous world we’re now in. I almost skipped the “post-script” episodes, not because I was no longer interested, but because I figured I “got the gist”. I’m so glad to have followed this tale to the end. I get it now! Conspiracy theorists are existentially afraid! And then I realized I, too, have had an existential fear from a very young age. I, however, have responded in the opposite manner, flaunting safety, leaping into the abyss. Anyway! Thank you, Sam Mullins. This was extraordinary storytelling.

This story was heart wrenching. Thank you for getting Kyle and Roen on tape. When you hear their side of the story, you can see the why of what they did. Two boys doing what they thought they needed to do. Incredible reporting, and beautifully put together.

What really turned me off - almost as much as the boys and their parents - was Mullin’s attempt at making this sound like two rogue boys, through their odd behavior and worldviews, became heroic icons of freedom, resistance of “the establishment” and kicking societal norms to the curb. No. This is not a dreamy fairy tale. It’s instead a sad story about family dysfunction and mental illness. In fact, it’s a classic case-in-point depiction of it. I am a licensed clinical psychologist who has worked with similar adolescents and adults in both inpatient and outpatient settings for nearly 20 years. There are personality disorders, clinical syndromes, probably thought disorders, and likely substance abuse happening here. So PLEASE DO NOT romanticize the Wild Boys saga. I stopped listening to this series several times because of how disgusted I was by it, but I kept going back to it until the end because I wanted to know how this train wreck ended. I would not have wasted my time on it if I had I known in advance.