Have you ever taken a speed reading course?

When I was in 8th grade, it was something one of the teachers I had forced my class to do. Personally, I think it messed me up for the rest of my life. What they do, is teach you to read part of a sentence, and guess how it will end, and how to read the first couple of letters in a word and move on, guessing what word would make sense to be there. The problem is… the word I think of, isn’t always the word that is the one that is there. Most of the time it doesn’t make any sense at all, but sometimes, it has the opposite meaning, and I don’t catch it. The other part of my life it has ruined is that I can no longer read out loud. My brain reads the words a hell of a lot faster than I can speak, and it throws me for a loop, and I start to stutter as though I can’t read. It is quite embarrassing. I can read one or two sentences out loud, but not much more. Anyway, do you have any interest in speed reading? Does anyone else suffer the same fate as me?