This bit strikes home for me. I wasn't part of a cult and neither was any of my family (as far as I know, dad's side was...special). My uncle that had drug induced schizophrenia and other mental problems was convinced by my dad to not accept treatment for his skin cancer. The cancer was caught early enough to be treated with ease. Instead of pursuing treatment, my dad gave my uncle "blessed" reese's peanut butter cups, only the ones wrapped in the gold foil. They prayed over them and said God was giving them messages and signs that there would be a miracle healing.

My uncle had been getting taken care of by their mother but was also convinced to move closer to my dad for his "treatment". My dad left him sitting on a couch in his own waste, rarely visiting to take care of him or clean him up...and he wasted away on the couch. He barely ate because he couldn't get up to fix food and lived off the damned peanut butter cups. Of course he ended up passing away.

My dad then had a memorial ceremony at church. He got up and preached about everything then lectured myself and my three stepsiblings for lacking faith in God's healing. He blamed us for my uncle dying. It was sick.

After all of that, my dad hires a PI to investigate his mother and insisted that she had given my uncle a lethal dose of his medication. He was aiming to prove that she had actually murdered my uncle.

I also have lifelong breathing problems as a result of the believing in healing nonsense. Developed an upper respiratory infection, severe cold, fever, two ear infections, and bronchitis while visiting my dad (bronchitis was around prior...hit its peak during my visit with him). They only prayed over me, wouldn't even give me tylenol for the fever. By the time I got home, I had to take a breather after walking a few steps and had the visit lasted a few days longer I would have been hospitalized. I'm now on inhalers and other things with persistent breathing problems. It's my fault though, I didn't have enough faith, according to him.