Featured Image Credit: @chethanx/Instagram
Topics: US News, Celebrity, Tom Hanks, Film and TV
Tom Wood
Topics: US News, Celebrity, Tom Hanks, Film and TV
Chet Hanks says that his parents packed him off to a wilderness camp for ‘troubled teens’ when they discovered his addiction problems during his childhood.
The 32-year-old says that two big ‘military guys’ woke him up and got him out of his bed as a teenager to take him off to a place he’s described as a ‘get straight’ camp.
For the avoidance of doubt, he means ‘get back on the straight and narrow’ here.
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Speaking on the Ivan Paychecks podcast, Hanks explained how the two musclebound fellas grabbed him in the middle of the night to take him away to the US-based camp in 2008.
Hanks said that the guys had ‘bald heads, like military guys looking like bouncers, you know?’
He continued: “And I'm like, 'What the f***? What the f*** is going on?'
“They're like, 'You're coming with us'.
"'We could do this the easy way or the hard way',” he added.
Basically, it seems as if Chet’s celebrity parents Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson had noticed he was starting to become too involved with drugs and becoming addicted, so thought that an enforced trip to the Utah wilderness might do him the world of good.
Of the experience, Chet said: "They just hiked us in circles with an 80-pound pack.
"There's a lot going through your mind.
“You're under observation.
“They're psychoanalyzing you and picking you apart."
Hanks went on to say that he believes his parents were being taken for a ride by the camp, claiming they were ‘manipulated the whole time’ he was there.
He argued that the camp knew that Wilson and Hanks had the resources to keep him there for a ‘long f***ing time’ so used his parents as ‘whales’.
"I was there longer than anybody else that I had seen come or go in the whole program, except for one kid who was there for six months," he said.
Hanks compared his experience there to the movie Holes, in which juvenile offenders are sent to the desert to dig holes all day every day.
He did credit the experience with allowing him to find inner peace and religion, though.
Hanks continued: "When you have absolutely nothing to occupy your mind … but dead silence, a week feels like a month."
It didn’t manage to break his addiction issues, though he has now managed to complete a year of sobriety.
Sharing a picture of his 12-step program tracker on Instagram, he wrote: “All in.
“The decision was final. Never going back to that s***. Ever.
“This is just the beginning. Today can be the day that changes your life forever."