Ex-Members Of Cults, Tell Us What Made You Join And How You Escaped

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.

Maybe you got involved with a Church; soon, its members promised you better tools to navigate life. You believed what you heard and got sucked in, revealing personal details about your life that would eventually make it extremely hard for you to leave for fear of blackmail.

Perhaps after being an "independent business owner" for 20 years selling everything from makeup to knives, you now view mid-level marketing companies as cults. You were lured into the promise of money, but after many years of falling short and even putting yourself into debt to fund your products, you eventually saw through the brainwashing and grand false promises.

Whatever your story is, let me know in the comments or by using this anonymous form. Your response could be featured in an upcoming BuzzFeed Community post.