Paddy, you wild and crazy guy.  Just let me differentiate between two types of ex-premies (or even those who are still premies). 

One group (let's call  them G1) gave 1-10 years of their lives up to M and DLM and EV living in his monastic ashrams; and the other group (G2), who are/were still devotees, lived their regular lives -- having families, kids, careers, wordly responsibilities, etc.  Those G1 exes who served and served and served while living penniless in the ashram have/had a larger and more difficult road to get back to a regular life once the ashrams were closed down in 1983.  Those G2 "community" premies or "householders" as they were known have/had a more easy time, since it didn't require a real change of lifestyle.  So this is the problem, Paddy.  This is where the pain comes in.

Those G1 premies, like myself, suffered more in the long run because we gave up all chance of having children, a career, a retirement account, savings account (even trouble owning a car or a house).  To me this is a large difference in general between posters.  Many in G1 group have been unable to forget and forgive the Guru for taking away the prime of their lives (when they could have had children and a family and a career) and substituting a bullshit lifestyle of postering, leafletting and jumbling and divine sales (the thrift store business, which the Guru thrieved on in the 70s).  This is a serious subject to me.  I will never have children.  Instead, I did bhakti yoga -- devotion -- service and more service until I was nearly 50 years old.  I wasted my life and it's too late to get it back.  Please understand the hurt of having a dead-end career without proper education and no (that's zero) chances of retiring or having a family that cares about me in my old age or even now, because I didn't give a shit about them for 30 years, and because of zero savings (I gave it all at Amaroo.)