here, I’ll share great news of an incremental win in terms of my ‘naturopathy educational exploitation’ while acknowledging that the fight is perpetual and larger than just my case, my experience, and merely loans:
[Note: I am not whole, I’ll emphasize – as in my quarter-century-plus career hole created by the AANP-AANMC-CNME-CAND-NABNE-CNPA etc. induced diversion / falsehood].
001. my student loan aggregate has been largely annulled!!!:
after decades of carrying a very large amount of student loans due to graduate school — a poor boy trying to get forward since the mid-1990s; like being at the bottom of an empty, 1-mile deep well eventually — I owe a lot less money in light of the Department of Education’s acceptance of my borrow defense to repayment argument this 2026.
presently, I do not know the details of their thinking as such hasn’t been communicated -- what is still outstanding is part of a program I attended that had loans discharged.
at its largest, the education debt looked like this or so in 2025 while in good standing [about $190,000]:
and I’d always say it was like having a mortgage but without the house to show for it.
as in debt slavery.
yes, quite remarkable!
indeed miraculous -- to now be a partial school misconduct survivor.
as the .gov site states [I'll paraphrase]:
institutional misconduct is a definitive, foundational trait of an approved borrower defense to repayment discharge.
yet, I’m thinking of the hundreds, perhaps thousands, who aren’t so lucky and are casualties of these naturopathy school “education robbers.”
so, a word of encouragement:
stick with it if you feel you are in debt slavery!!!
to quote one of my favorite Jackson Browne lyrics, from 1974’s “For a Dancer”:
“Keep a fire burning in your eyes. Pay attention to the open skies. You never know what will be coming down.”
but, passivity will bring you nothing, as a further-down-this-post Jackson Browne lyric will emphasize.
keep a fire.
002. speaking personally and quoting words from [more] influences that I feel synchronize or align [or rhyme!] with my experience in this matter:
002.a. personally:
I had for-decades simply presumed that these education debts would be lining my coffin as irrefutably nondischargeable.
I have decades of: ruined credit rating, the blocking of any future meaningful education in the ‘big-swing’-sized healthcare degree area because I’d loaned myself out in terms of the caps that exist in the voucher system, and -- therein -- job prospects / life earnings.
yet, I took some solace in the sense that it would only effect my own life and nobody else’s.
but, I got a whiff of odd exceptions to that set-in-stone condition.
my first complaint to USDE was in 2003 and my first BDR attempt was in 2017 — as far as I can tell through this whole mess within my records.
the response to both of those, plus for regional and local state complaints over the years: f'off.
but, I’m Irish and Scottish.
therein, I’m a stubborn and long-remembering Gael / Celt of a certain kind of fire and activity.
I am patient and persistent regarding a quite long, incremental struggle.
I’m reminded of Michael Collins’s incrementalism within the context of a long struggle:
“In my opinion it gives us freedom, not the ultimate freedom that all nations desire but the freedom to achieve it [...] in the end, we'll have to make Ireland, and there's no easy way to do it.”
the words incremental and active are important: a blazing fire from the tiniest of sparks, a demand for justice.
so, in terms of making, activity, feeding that spark, therein, I offer lyrics from Jackson Browne’s “The Barricades of Heaven”:
“Better bring your own redemption when you come to the barricades of heaven where I’m from.”
ah, wholeness, degrees of freedom, broader goals, an active struggle, a demand for one's place of dignity.
because, from the Michael Collins movie, to paraphrase a fictionalization:
‘our strongest weapon is our refusal.’
as noted above, the successful BDR has not made me whole, in terms of naturopathy education harms because beyond loans there are their acts of inducement leading to career diversion and eternal harm by these institutions, but it counts a great deal towards the naturopathy fraud struggle.
as one of the means to achieve the goal, to further the struggle, I refused to accept my debt slavery and that my processes of exposing naturopathy and my engagement with the naturopathillogical were worthless.
while, though, don’t forget that a struggle is also a form of martyrdom quite often, in terms of a cost to one’s life, by way of diversion, refusal, honesty, and taking it all upon oneself.
importantly, I am not a paragon.
I am quite aware of the several hundred BDR arguments against CNME-AANMC schools.
[I deliberately choose that word for its weight as ‘a spoken or written attempt to convince another and prevail over a simultaneous counterargument / refusal’] that presently are said to exist against the AANP-CAND-CNME-AANMC naturopathy schools [according to NACIQI documentation {p.7 last paragraph}; archived here].
it is quite likely that most of those individuals are fine with naturopathy itself [or with other similarly woo-ful programs from those schools they might be doing a BDR for] and the issue is how to make a living doing naturopathy in light of their education debt.
so, what I’ll acknowledge is that there is a spectrum of argumentor-type, so to say, and likely all but a handful share my broad values in terms of science, education, medicine, epistemology, professionalism, belief and the like.
but, along that spectrum or ‘large tent’, I believe if argued correctly, many more people might succeed with a BDR within their own context.
I say ‘might’ because it is all so opaque, and individual.
and SLOW.
002.a2. [more] synchronization via lyrics [of the Irish-American New England Celtic punk rock variety; let’s call below a féile, of a kind]:
I had to surrender to what naturopathy is, in the factual sense, to get towards a persuasive argument against naturopathy by way of refusal [how ironic] to then unhang myself from their hooks and get them instead hanged on the hook / held liable.
and nobody else was going to do it.
I dedicate my BDR and future Naturocrit endeavors / efforts:
to my heroes of many stripes / contexts, but particularly of the Irish and –American who have inspired me, and to the current perpetual strugglers for freedom in the Snyderian sense.
I’ve been thinking of Dropkick Murphys [name history here] songs which I resonate with greatly, in-part.
There’s “Surrender” from 2007’s “The Meanest of Times”:
“I was at my weakest state and you kept me pushing on.
You gave me something to believe in and it keeps me standing strong.
These lessons that I've learned these things I'll carry on.
And when you're gone I'll honor you each day, however long.
This glimmer of hope was never enough to guide me through the darkness like a diamond in the rough.
I held out for and I received a pain that never left with no reprieve.
Like a toast at a table where resentments run free there can't be any truth where there's no honesty [...]
I had it all but lost my faith and then you lead me to it today I'll carry on.
I had it all but lost my faith and now I've renewed it these things I'll carry on.”
And there’s also their song “Memorial Day” from 2011’s “Going Out In Style”:
“You've gotta pick yourself up by the bootstraps no one's gonna help you out when you fall.
You've gotta find a way out of your problems when you're broke and you're backed up against the wall.
If you sleep on your only chances they'll never come around again.
So dig deep and swing for the fences you never know it might work out in the end.
Come join the fight so we can change the way we're living.
What's left inside? If you believe believe you'll never give in.
Come join the fight turn away and you'll be sure to lose it.
Hold onto those dreams they're the one thing they can't take away now.”
of course, somebody at DE in the .gov realm, whomever you are [contact letters are unsigned], through the BDR, renewed my faith, too, in institutional goodness and virtue, of a kind and in part, to a certain tune [$$$; forgive my puns / ironies, its a condition!; I envision my death in two years, due to, in effect, a kind of heartbreak from ‘the meanness of these times’ in terms of the mile-deep well I was in and this debt monster / ruin I cannot escape].
and what I mean by “carry on” and “fight” is to get wholeness from the supposed “holistic” or “wholeistic” sCAMsters who created this perpetual pain of diversion from other careers and what I have, admittedly over the years, termed mindf'n.
so I’ll repeat the perpetual mission, as I posted in 2011, 15 years ago:
“It's about science, reason, critical thinking, ethical behavior in terms of the professions, and consumer rights in terms of commerce. It's about laying bare nonsense disguised as reason- and science-backed, and unfair trade. It's about the public's right not be be used as cannon-fodder by educational institutions which sell pseudoscience as science and fill their coffers with students' Federal loan money based on those false labels. It's about recording it all for future engagements, providing an arsenal for whomever ends up needing such.”
and we’re only 1% there.
so, one more song comes to mind, in terms of justice and getting those that deserve it held liable / hanged on the hook [figuratively!!!].
There’s the Dropkick Murphys song “Hang Em’ High” [and I’ll emphasize this is figurative / poetic violence not actual violence!]:
“We waited together for the cowards to come outgunned and outnumbered but we wouldn't run.
No mercy, no quarter they'll pay for their sins now lower the cannons the battle begins [...]
We weighed anchor in anger, set sail for revenge hoisted the canvas turned her into the wind.
We'll hang 'em high for justice and the whole world will see now off with their heads boys and bring 'em to me.”
again, the context is figurative:
dìleas don chùis.
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