People think it's only teenage runaways, middle-aged virgins and creepy high-school loners who fall victim to cults, but it can happen to anyone. Including you or your loved ones. Someone you know could suddenly disappear for a year and come back babbling gibberish.

It can happen to your child. It can happen to you. It happened to us, and we were just two normal, needy, lost liberal arts graduates, from averagely dysfunctional white middle-class families, who fell for the rhetoric for a charismatic man at the end of the 1970s.

Most people don't realize they're in a cult until it's too late. You start off excited about some better way to live, then progress to worshipping some drug-ravaged sexagenarian psychopath, then progress to worshipping the penis of some drug-ravaged sexagenarian psychopath. One day you're smoking weed and knitting clothes in a utopian rural community; then suddenly it's 14 years later and you're standing in the middle of a burning barn with a dead baby in one hand and a cup of poison in the other screaming "WHAT HAVE I DONE?!!" at the top of your lungs while people chant outside.

We've spent our entire adult lives either as part of a cult or blogging about being part of a cult. It's something we'll never be free from. Even today, whenever we hear a bell ring, we start to strip and run for the woods, terrified that we're late for swinging camp. Cults destroy relationships, break up families and instill horrifying perversions that no amount of therapy can reverse - just like fraternities or the police. Take it from us - we cross shameful boundaries on a daily basis without ever leaving the house. We're damaged goods, but we're dedicated to preventing others from suffering the same fate we did. We're not afraid. Or rather, we're really, really afraid. And you should be too.