Discussion did anyone else attend an alternative therapeutic day school?

[cvury]

because of my constant mental episodes and suicidal ideation, from 8th grade up until graduation i attended an alternative therapeutic day school for kids with social emotional and some behavioral issues. the concept itself is pathetic. take a bunch of mentally ill kids and put them together in a classroom of about 8 kids total. looking back at it, it was a great, yet also terrible experience. i made some great friends there i still talk to to this day. we were expected to do bare minimum work, i remember only one subject had any sort of standardized testing (and it was open notes). we literally did 5th grade evel work. we got to shoot the shit all day and make the teacher's lives miserable with our bullshit. all the teachers had walkie talkies and if u misbehaved they'd call a staff to come escort you out the classroom, and as a reward for your bad behavior, you got to use sensory fidgets and toys and misbehave again but this time in the milieu rather than the classroom. the bad thing about it was i DID NOT get a traditional high school experience. there were no proms or clubs, and my whole friend group went as large as a 75 mile radius. it stunted social growth. i was always autistic af and have trouble picking up on social cues. I'd often (and still to this day) say random shit that'll confuse everyone or weird them out. (you've likely seen me exhibit these behaviors if ur in a gc with me in it). during my time there, these behaviors were enabled and tbh, almost encouraged. also since it was a school for mentally ill people, half the school was trans or queer, and they'd shove that down your throat. pride flags all over the classrooms. that was always funny to me.

did anyone else have an experience similar to this? being in such a restrictive environment contributed to more thoughts of wanting to harm myself.