Part One: Synanon: The Drug Rehab Program That Built Its Own Army

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
In media res opening to a podcast like we were
having a fun conversation that we just let you win
on halfway through. Good times. I'm Robert Evans. This is
Behind the Bastards easily our best opening yet. Uh. My
guest again, as is always my guest when I actually
nail an introduction, Mr Paul F. Tompkins, Paul, Hello, everyone,

(00:31):
Oh did you enjoy that absolutely real conversation that we
left let the audience on halfway through. I haven't had
a conversation like that in such a long time, and
it's it's refreshing. It reminds me of my humanity again,
So thank you. Yeah you really bared your soul there,
um and and yeah you made it easy. I feel honored.
I feel honored. Paul. You are we had when we

(00:56):
had you on last time for our Rush Limbaugh episodes.
Somebody in the sub credit is like I didn't initially
recognize his name, and then I looked him up and
realized that he had entirely shaped my generation's ideas on comedy. Um,
just I feel accurate to you because you've you've you've
been in so many like uh, so many like Mr Show. Um,

(01:19):
you did a bit for the Daily Show. Back in
the day, you did some comedy bang bang stuff. You
were on did the Dead Author's podcast, Bow Jack Horsemen. Obviously, UM,
you just just just a just an an incredibly accomplished comedian. Um.
So thank you for dining to be on our show again.

(01:39):
It's Paul to start us off. I got a question
for you. How do you feel about drugs and alcohol?
M hmm. I think that in uh, when used responsibly, Uh,
that ain't nothing but a good time. Sure. And you know,
obviously sometimes people have problems strus are alcohol and And

(02:03):
what would you say about the idea like, obviously very
reasonable for a group of people, you know, especially if
they feel like the medical system may have let them down,
to come together and work together as like a community
to try to deal with their struggles with drugs and alcohol.
Perfectly reasonable, right, absolutely. I know many people who are
in such programs and it works very well for them.
It usually does. Now, Paul, I have a question for

(02:25):
you that relates directly to the subject of the article.
If a group of people were to do that, how
large of marine corps do you think they would need
to punish their enemies who I haven't thought about this before.
I my my instinct is to say, uh, they wouldn't
need one at all. They wouldn't need one at all.

(02:45):
You think most addiction recovery programs get by without a
Marine Corps. That's my I mean, look, I don't know
about all of them, but to my knowledge, they seem
to be doing just fine without them as far as
I know, as yeah, I would, that's accurate. Uh. And
obviously we're very pro people getting recovery here. We're talking, however,
today about an addiction rehab program that went as off

(03:09):
the rails as it is possible for one of those
things to be. This is like the twenty year journey
of a guy who wanted to help people get off
of heroin, uh, and eventually built his own army and
attempted to take over large junks of California. So, um,
have you ever heard of Sinnan on s Y N

(03:30):
A n O. Is That name sounds familiar to me,
but I don't know why. It is not the first
addiction recovery program, but the first probably the first large
organized narcotics recovery program. Right, Um, And for everything kind
of that happens in this episode to make sense, we're
gonna have to travel back in time a little bit
to talk about kind of the history of human understanding

(03:52):
of addiction and addiction recovery. Obviously, people have been doing
drugs longer than we've been doing anything else, including like
even being friends with dogs. Like we've been getting high forever.
It's just something we've we were doing it, you know,
back before we were people people like getting wasted. Um, Yeah,
and primitive science meant that it was pretty hard back

(04:14):
in the day to have the kind of addictions that
we have now. Right, If all you have is like
beer and watered down wine, alcoholism is going to be
less extreme than when you have ever clear and you
know that kind of ship right one fifty one rum
means it's a lot easier to have like a serious problem. Likewise,
you know, the way indigenous tribes in North America, Central
America it used tobacco, It wasn't really unhealthy if you're

(04:38):
doing it occasionally as part of a religious ritual. That's
not nearly the same as as burning two packs and
Marborough's a day. Right, We're talking about a wildly different
kind of thing. Um. People obviously had drug problems five thousand,
ten thousand years ago, right, But it was a lot
less noticeable, and it was less noticed because especially in civilization,
everyone was buzzed a lot of the time because like

(05:00):
better was deadly, and especially if you're in a city, right,
like you're living in ancient Rome, you don't want to
drink that fucking water coming through the aqueducts. You're gonna
you're gonna pour it into wine, so the wine will
kill most of what's bad and you're not gonna be
wasted all the time because it's actually there were people that,
like you talk about like ancient Roman marias around intoxication.
It was considered kind of like ghosh to be too drunk.

(05:22):
Like obviously there were times celebrations, festivals, but most of
the time everyone's just kind of a bit buzzed, right,
And the same thing with beer and other cultures and
other parts of Europe. Um. The first documented use of
distilled liquor in Europe didn't come around until the twelfth century,
and that was not something you would have drunk for fun.
It was part of an Italian medical school textbook. Obviously,

(05:43):
liquor has a lot of medicinal benefits, like just for
like you can sterilize ship with it, you know, um
there were there's debate over who the first kind of
successful distillation where it was. Some people say that it
was in first or second century China. There's evidence of
that the earliest like recognizable still and I think it
was kind of similar to a modern reflux. Still Um

(06:04):
was probably developed in the eighth century a d by
an Arabic alchemist named Abu musa Ya Beer even highen um. Now,
whoever you give credit for the first distilled liquor, it
didn't become a common recreational product until the six hundred,
so pretty recent, right, people have not been drinking liquor
all that. Beer and wine or beer and wine were first.

(06:25):
Oh beer, we've had beer and wine forever. Be beer
dates back to the the very first human civilization. There's
anthropologists will argue that we started building cities to brew beer.
People would make beer as part of these like when
people were nomadic tribes to have these like big festivals.
But beer is a complicated product. You would need to
make bread because the first bread, the first beer was

(06:46):
made with a kind of bread called bapier as like
the basis of the beer, and it it requires a lot,
there's a lot of there's a logistical tail to making beer,
and so one of the anthropologists will make, yeah, that's no, No,
you're a straight wine guy. Just some rotten grapes. I
don't want. I don't want to make my own stuff. Yeah,

(07:06):
well that's why people started making cities, so that it
was easier to have someone else make the beer and
you just have plenty of it. That's an argument some
anthropologist will make. But yeah, it goes back a while.
Liquor much more recent because you have to like have
no head to do some science to make liquor. You
gotta have like a still. They're not it's not. I
mean it is pretty I used to make liquor, and
I was always wasted when I was making liquor. Caught

(07:29):
my kitchen on fire five or six times, which is
why stills are illegal. Um, it would just be spurting
ever clear basically out of these like gaps in the
welds because we welded it well drunk and um so yeah,
six hundreds we get liquor, and um it takes off.

(07:50):
People are real big fans of liquor. I'm sure that's
a surprise to anyone who I don't know lives in
California where you can buy liquor, anywhere you can buy
a scratch off to This is not like a Barcelona
story where one guy did this one thing and then
everybody else did it to be cool. This was immediately
it was popular with everyone. Yeah, at one it was

(08:12):
popular with everyone. And it also immediately becomes a problem.
As soon as there's liquor, you have for a long time,
people don't. There's not really a mass cultural conception of
alcoholism is an issue. Then liquor comes around, and by
the seventeen hundreds, people are talking about alcohol addiction as
a serious social problem, like it's that quick. UM. The

(08:33):
first alcoholic recovery program where sobriety circles, that's what they
were called, UM, which were kind of alcoholic mutual aid society,
so communities of sufferers working together to deal with and
try to get over their addiction. And they seem to
have been created first by members of various Native American tribes. Right,
alcoholism becomes a serious problems introduced by Europeans, becomes a

(08:55):
big problem with indigenous tribes, and so the first organized
attempts addiction recovery. We're indigenous in nature, and they would
often use traditional indigenous healing practices, both like natural metal,
both like indigenous medicine, but also um like rituals to
kind of treat alcoholism UM. Now in in seventeen eighty four,
the first kind of European white I don't know, whatever

(09:16):
you call it physician, Western physician to acknowledge alcoholism was
Benjamin rush Or. He'd not the first to acknowledge it,
but the first to call it a disease, right, which
is basically our modern understanding UM as opposed to like
a moral failing, this is an illness that a person
has UM. His work helped to create the modern temperance movement,
which why the early nineteen hundreds had evolved into the

(09:37):
prohibition movement. Now throughout the eighteen hundreds. In the early
nineteen hundreds, society gradually gained an understanding that drug abuse
of all kinds could be problematic, right, that it wasn't
just alcohol. You could be addicted to a bunch of
shit um And virtually every like Western attempt to treat
drug and alcohol addiction was horrible. Uh. Up until the
modern day. Those indigenous sobriety circles were probably like the

(10:00):
still the most reasonable program ever created. UM. One common
treatment for addicts was to throw them into facilities patterned
off of insane asylums. Basically, they were like, Okay, drug
addiction is the same as being insane. Uh so we'll
just we'll lock you in a prison. Um, that'll solve it.
What for like forever? Or was it like until you

(10:21):
dried out, you went through the all the horrible detoxing
on your own, and then you were fine to leave.
I think it would depend. Some people certainly didn't get out.
And also we're talking the eighteen hundreds, so a lot
of people just died there of diseases due to the
horrific conditions you know, Um, because a prison is basically
a ptreot dish I mean, still is um. The New

(10:44):
York State Inebriate Asylum opened in eighteen sixty four, and
that was like the first Yeah, I know, right, not great. UM.
Other doctors treated addiction with a variety of snake oil
medications like doctor Killey is double chloride of gold KIV
and drunkenness. Um, take some gold that'll stop you from drinking.
They did not know about gold schlager. Um. I'm sorry

(11:07):
that's that's just not work. So in the eighteen eighties,
Sigmund Freud turned his genius mind to the problem with
alcoholism and morphine addiction, and he eventually came up with
a genius solution for treating both of these addictions. You
want to guess what it was, oh, locking people away?
I don't know what would Floyd's approach be. He gave

(11:31):
them huge doses of cocaine that has no addictive potential.
Cocaine at least addictive drug evert a miracle drug. Absolutely, yeah,
cocaine the drug with no problems. So by the eighteen

(11:53):
nineties the worm had fully turned and like Benjamin rushing
on the sev being like, this isn't this is an illness?
By the eighteen nineties they're like, now, this isn't a
fucking illness. This is a criminal behavior and it needs
to be punished as such. Inebriate homes and asylums closed,
and alcoholics were sent to drunk tanks or foul wards

(12:14):
of hospitals. Ward what I know, right? Why everything was
so everything was titled so mean back then they were
real dicks back in the day. You don't have to
say you have to call it the foul ward. No,
now it is the eighteen hundreds. We're going to be

(12:35):
shitty about everything now. Of course, these kind of treatments,
the insane asylums, the prisons, the foul wards, these were
where we you sent poor addicts. If you had money
and an addiction, you would go to the first celebrity
rehab facilities. And the very first celebrity rehab facility was

(12:56):
the Charles B. Town's Hospital, which opened in nineteen o one.
It treated alcoholics with belladonna, which is a poison. Like
what was the what was the They must have known it,
like what yeah, yeah, I don't know. Maybe there were
maybe it just they were trying to make you sick

(13:17):
enough that you drank it with the alcohol and it.
I didn't do enough research into belladonna therapy, but I
don't recommend taking belladonna um. And it was again, this
was for really rich people. It cost three hundred and
fifty dollars a day in nineteen o one, which is
about fifty six hundred dollars a day in modern currencies,
like Betty Ford clinic type ship right, Like like I

(13:37):
don't know if it worked or not, but you're not
going there if you're not rich. Now, one of Charles's
most frequent patients was a fellow named Bill Wilson, who
would go on to found an organization called Alcoholics Anonymous,
which you can drive a direct line and you know,
Alcoholics Anonymous. There's a lot of really valid criticisms of
the organization. I know a lot of people who say
it saved their life too. I'm not going to make

(13:58):
a determination one way or the other on it, but
you can draw a real direct line between the basic
idea of a A and those indigenous sobriety circles, which
I do find interesting. This basic idea that a community,
a communal environment is the best way to deal with
addiction and probably is. And support, yes, empathy, just just
you knowing that someone else understands what you're going through

(14:20):
and that they've been there themselves. Um, not institutionalization, not criminalization,
but a community support. Yeah, and maybe not poison and
maybe not maybe maybe that's not got to help. Um. Now,
by the time a A was created, and it wasn't
just Bill Wilson, I think there were four or five
guys who started it. It was created nineteen thirty five,

(14:41):
and at that point the criminalization of addiction was at
a very advanced stage. In the nineteen tens, U s
States had started passing laws that legislates that legislated the
mandatory sterilization of alcoholics and addicts. Um. Yeah, one of
the fun things this is you're going to get a
it out of this, Paul, This is this is fun,

(15:01):
some fun history, real real good yucks in this this
bit of history. After World War Two, when they found
out about all of the horrific crimes of the Nazi
concentration camps and they were starting to try to punish people.
One group of people they didn't punish were the Nazi
doctors who would sterilize the mentally ill and drug addicts,
because that was being done in the US too, so

(15:23):
they were like, we can't punish these guys were doing
the same thing. A lot of Nazi doctors got off
scott free because yeah, it's it's it's history. It's always telling.
The lesson is, well, we're not gonna stop doing that.
We're we're looking at monsters and seeing what they do.

(15:45):
We also do one of those things. So we're just
gonna look the other way rather than stop. So we're
just gonna We're fine with that part. I mean, it
is it is kind of like the fact that, um uh,
when they were liberating the con centration camps, in a
lot of cases, they didn't free the homosexuals because that
was still a crime in the societies. That we're freeing

(16:07):
the concentration camps anyway, time, you should never be looking
at the Nazis and saying even a broken clock. Yeah
exactly if you're thinking, well, maybe they had a point
about that, maybe that I agree with. So um nineteen tens,
you know, states are sterilizing alcoholics and addicts, and doctors

(16:29):
and asylums in prisons were Actually the way this was
phrased is that doctors um had the authority to a
sexualized individuals with drug and alcohol abuse problems. That's what
they called it, a sexualization UM. Now, Alcoholics Anonymous was
in many ways, as I said, a throwback to these
sobriety circles. But while where those were kind of very
based in Native American religion and medicine, a A was

(16:51):
based around the Emmanuel Movement, which was a psychologically based
approach to religious healing that started in nineteen oh six.
The primary ust of a manual movement treatments and thus
a A we're individual in group therapy. A A in
particular came to reject the clinical and institutional treatment for
addicts in favor of a bottom up structure. But the founder,

(17:12):
Bill Wilson described as quote benign anarchy. UM. The thrust
of this was that the individual branches of a A
were all self governing. They didn't have to report back
to a home office, they didn't have to follow identical
treatment methods, and they didn't have to have leaders. Usually, when,
especially when you have guys in this point like refer
to something as anarchy, they're kind of getting it wrong.

(17:33):
In this case, he's not because he is saying, we're
trying to dissolve power relationships. We don't think that the
right way to treat an addict is a situation where
a bunch of people are in power over them and
they're incarcerated or they're kind of under the thumb of
the state. We also don't think that there should be
leaders of this. It should everyone should be working together.
You know, it's a community effort. So really he's not
wrong when he when he says that this is when

(17:54):
he uses that term UM and his stated reason for
this bottom up approach was to prevent the formation of
cults of personality, which were very common and alternative medicine
at the time and also now. Unfortunately, in practice this
did not work today. One of the main valid complaints
against a A is that it can act as an

(18:15):
incubator for strongman and gurus who often engage in profound mental, physical,
and sexual abuse of their group members. This is a
problem that has been noted on a number of different
occasions in different a A A groups, and today the focus
of our episode is going to be on one of
those gurus. A man named Charles Dedoric now Charles Edwin

(18:36):
de Orck, was born in Toledo, Ohio, on March twenty nine, thirteen.
He was named for his father and was called Chuck
by his family. His namesake dad was a horrible alcoholic
who died in a drunk driving accident when Chuck was
four years old. When he was eight, his younger brother
died of influenza. Charles felt guilty and responsible for his
brother's death. I think it was the survival guilt thing,

(18:58):
and it was noted that he was never able to
ball with children again, even his own kids, which rough
upbringing here not an easy set of cards to draw.
Uh So, when he was twelve, his mother, Agnes Kuntz,
married a man that he despised. Now, Agnes was Agnes
was a prominent singer, and I don't think the family

(19:18):
had huge financial issues as a kid like they seemed
to have gotten along. Okay um, But he's really unhappy
with this guy she marries. And he's also stifled by
his upbringing because she is a devout Roman Catholic and
she raises him that way. He later recalled quote, I
believed literally that I would go to Hell if I
didn't go to church on Sundays. Um. So, when he

(19:41):
was fourteen, Charles comes across a copy of H. G.
Wells is the Outline of History that had been owned
by his stepfather. Are you familiar to all with this book? No,
I've never heard of it. It's an interesting it's an
interesting book. It was an attempt by H. G. Wells
to chronicle the entire history of the world from the
Neolithic period up to World War One. Now, in the book,
Wells claimed, quote, the history of mankind is a history

(20:04):
of more or less blind endeavors to conceive a common
purpose in relation to which all men may live happily
and to create and develop a common stock of knowledge
which may serve and illuminate that purpose. Um. And it's
so it was kind of a it was an optimistic
but also atheistic look at human history, right, Like, he's
not looking at this through religious lens, and he's I

(20:25):
think it still was a Eurocentric lens, but I don't
think he was trying to look at it that way. Um.
And one major theme of the book was the development
of free intelligence, which he credited originally to bards common
to all the quote aryan speaking people's who extended the
power of the human mind by traveling and thus expanding
the development of language. This book has a huge influence

(20:46):
on debt Oric, who later later claimed that after reading it,
he quote became a militant atheist almost overnight. So he
reads this book and it just it pills him to
he used the violence of the time. Um. And the
downside of this is he starts drinking almost immediately after
he reads this book, Right, he kind of goes whole

(21:07):
hog against his upbringing. Right, Yeah, I'm an atheist time
to get That's that was sort of how I went
to I think I think I think about it now.
It was it was a little slow, it was a
little more gradual, but definitely that was the line. No.
I mean, within about six months of realizing I was
an atheist, I was taking hallucinogens every weekend, so I

(21:29):
can't relate. Um, yes, it's not this, yeah, exactly. At
this point, he's a thoroughly sympathetic character. Um. Now, yeah,
let's remember this, this is the show that it is.
Let's let's just stop a moment and really enjoyed this

(21:51):
time with this guy before we continue. Yeah, and you know, Paul,
let's stop a moment while we're enjoying this time before
the horrible ship happens, and also think about products and services, because, Paul,
you know what else is the result of human beings

(22:11):
engaging in more or less blind endeavors to conceive a
common purpose in relation to which all men may live happily. Robert,
I wish you would tell me the products and services
and support this podcast. That's what they all do. Mm hmmm,
here we go. Uh we are back, and Paul, before

(22:36):
we get back into this story, there's a matter of
serious importance that I have to discuss with you. Have
you looked at your Wikipedia page recently. Oh no, I
have not. I there's a photo of you from two
thousand twelve on it, and you look a lot like

(22:57):
Burt Reynolds. I mean, that is the high possible compliment
I can possibly give someone. Is it the picture? Yeah? Yeah,
turtleneck and uh yeah, it's god one of the best
pictures ever taken of me, and God bless whoever decided
that should be my picture. It's a really good picture.

(23:18):
We should all be so lucky to be immortalized looking
like Burt Reynolds. Uh. All right, So we're talking about
the upbringing of Charles Dederick, um dead rich whatever. I
never do quite as much research as I should do
on how to pronounce things. But what are you gonna do?

(23:38):
Listen to another podcast that exists it? Yeah, so Charles,
one of the men who was most thoroughly chronicled. Charles
Dederic credits the fact that he started drinking and the
fact that he became an atheist less to this H. G.
Wells book and more to his mother's second marriage. Right, So,
he says, I read this book and it led me

(24:00):
to both of you know, to be an atheist, and
I kind of started drinking not long after. Other people
who have chronicled desciples say, well, he was really angry
at his mom for marrying this guy. His mom was
super religious, so he rejected her religion. And you know,
drinking is a pretty normal part of teenage rebellions. He's
an unhappy teen either way. It's probably a mix of things.
You know, why why not do gift? Yeah? Why not both? Right? Yeah? Um,

(24:25):
whatever the case, he very quickly developed a serious drinking problem.
He's one again. You know, it's a disease. He's one
of those people who it's not just heavy drinking, it's
immediately like life destruction kind of drinking. Um. He was
extremely bright and in fact, in high school he earned
admittance to Notre Dame. But once he graduated and started college,
he flunked out very quickly because he just couldn't couldn't

(24:47):
keep a ship together. You know, he was he had
a he had a problem. Um. He next got a
job with the Melon family of Carnegie Mellon Fame, but
he lost it and several other good jobs. Again, dude
to his his his horrible, horrible alcohol is um. Um.
He got married, but his abusive drunken behavior destroyed that
relationship too. In the early nineteen forties, at age twenty nine,

(25:07):
he caught meningitis, which nearly killed him and left his
face partly paralyzed. He would spend the rest of his
life with a droopy I and a facial tick. So
by the time this guy's forty, he's had a rough life. Um,
you know, not not doing great. Um. And he kind
of decides that since his life in Ohio was a disaster,
he should probably funk off to California and become a
beach bum, which is a reasonable decision, absolutely perfect career

(25:32):
for an alcoholic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we've we've all made
versions of this decision. Kind of everyone who moves out
west is like, well, ship's not working here, maybe it'll
be better where there's an ocean. Um, and it is.
I love the West Coast. But um, so he moves
to Santa Monica because back in those days, you could

(25:53):
afford to move to Santa Monica if your life was
a complete ship show. Um, as opposed to needing to
be a rich person in whose life is a complete
show to afford the rent. Now, um, he got a
job at a hardware store, which again, you could afford
to live in Santa Monica working at a hardware store
in the fifties. Um yeah, uh. And he remarried, but
he kept drinking in a second marriage fell apart two.

(26:16):
At one point a friend found him passed out on
the kitchen floor and told him, Fats, So, if you
don't go to Alcoholics Anonymous, you will die. Um, I
don't know if that is necessary. Doesn't that really necessary?
I mean when you play it back in your head later, like, ye,
he said I was going to die. Oh he also
called me fat. So he also called me fat. That

(26:39):
did not need to be in there. Yeah, my friends,
what he didn't, buddy person, I care about human anything. Well,
it was the fifties, so they hadn't invented the concept
of male friendships. Yet it was still justice. Yeah fine, hey, buddy,
old pal. So that's what he did. He goes to

(27:06):
a a uh and I'm gonna quote from l A
magazine here. Um quote. He floundered for the three years
in the ocean breeze before walking into his first meeting
of Alcoholics Anonymous part way through debt oric march to
the podium and shared with the group. People listened they laughed,
they applauded. Debt Oric was hooked. I went from one
a a meeting to another every night, he told psychiatrist
Daniel Carciel, one of a number of social scientists to

(27:28):
write books on signing on sending on in the nineteen sixties.
That's all I did. I was the first one to speak,
and I'd speak all night unless they stopped me. So
what you're seeing here is a couple of things. Number One,
this guy's mom is a is a very successful performer.
He clearly is a good performer, right. He's an engaging
He's able to like talk for hours at these meetings,

(27:48):
and I assume some people are, but a lot of
people just like listening to him. He's got that thing,
you know, that that that performers and cult leaders have. Um,
there's not as not as there's a thin line between
being a good stand up comedian and having what it
takes to be a cult leader. I mean not every
entertainer is a cult leader, but every cult leader isn't
entertainer mhm. And every entertainer has to do at least

(28:12):
elements of cult things, which is not inherently bad. Right,
there's good aspects to it. Yeah, a good party is
a cult that ends at midnight or so you know,
or two or three in the morning. Um, so yeah,
he becomes inn And what Charles does. This is the
thing you also see with some people, including some people
who credit A with saving their lives. He gets addicted
to the program, right, um, which is sometimes necessary. Sometimes

(28:35):
you have to replace one addiction with another before you
can you know. Um. And even though like a A
is really what saves him, he's still open to other
treatments for his disease, and he's still experimenting with other things.
In the nineteen fifty eight u se l A offers
him another path to recovery. L s D C the
late fifties were this wonderful error. There's all this gleeful

(28:57):
experimentation with acid. They're trying it for every thing, and
it just so happens that LSD has been shown to
have a serious documented of efficacy at treating alcoholism. One
analysis of studies conducted in the UK and the nineteen
sixties suggested that fifty nine percent of patients who took
LSD showed reduced levels of alcohol misuse UM and it
was very durable, like the lasting six months or longer.

(29:20):
There's a lot of theories that multiple like just doing
LSD once or twice a year could be like an
effective long term solution. Um which again I'm a big
advocate of the medical use of psychedelics. There's some incredible stuff.
They're doing LSD once or twice a year sounds very
pleasant and reasonable. Yeah. Yeah, it's a very healthy way

(29:42):
to think. Um yeah, especially when you compare it to
crippling alcoholism. You know that tripping twice a year and
fucking I don't know, putting on some King Crimson much better.
Um So. In the nineteen sixty two Charles called taking

(30:04):
LSD quote the most important single experience of my life. Now.
Interestingly though, he didn't credit it with curing his alcoholism,
because I think a A had really is what he
credited with that, And he doesn't I mentioned how effective
it is because I don't want to be making like
LSD is a very promising treatment for alcoholism. That's not
what it does for Charles. Um. He doesn't. It doesn't

(30:26):
cure him. He credits it with unlocking a new person,
basically fundamentally changing him. He says that it creates it
helps him like unlock new confidence in himself. Quote, I
became a different person, really and truly. Everything that has
happened to me since sinning on everything dates from that
point um. And interestingly, Charles did not suggest or allow

(30:47):
his later followers to take LSD. UM. He considered his
reaction to the drug to be unique um as a
result of the fact that he was better than people
like ordinary people. Right, he had a special LSD experience
that other people couldn't half because he was special. Um.
In nineteen sixty one, one of his followers, somebody who
talked him about his experiences on acid, wrote this quote,

(31:08):
Chuck was an atypical patient, and that he experienced no regression,
no sensory enhancement, or hallucinations during the active period of
LSD intoxication. His normal traits merely appeared in a sort
of caricature. One phrase that came into his mind impressed him.
It doesn't matter, but at the same time, it matters exquisitely.
He would go to his room and give way to
tears for an hour or more every day. Even with

(31:29):
the seeming grief, there was euphoria, which is I hate
to tell you, Chuck a very normal acid experience. Like
I said, I used to do that a couple of
times a week. But you're not special. Um. But he's
convinced that his reaction to LSD is unique. UM. And
he's it also, you know, it can change your personality.

(31:51):
I have had trips that I walked away from a
fundamentally different person. Not every not most trips, Like I've
had one or two in the hundreds of times that
I can credit to fundamentally altering some aspect of myself. Um.
But this happens with Chuck, and in this case it's
not a good thing. Um. So the combination of alcoholics, anonymous,
and Chuck's newfound acid given confidence had a profound impact.

(32:13):
As l A Magazine writes, quote after the acid experiment
in nineteen fifty seven, he was one year sober at
the time. I also hear fifty eight. I don't know
one of those years. Den Eric became a voracious a
voracious reader of philosophy and psychology. Looming especially large were
the nonconformity espoused by Emerson and self reliance, and the
utopian notions put forth by Thorau and Skinner. Detoric was

(32:35):
living on thirty three dollars a week unemployment checks, and
he began to taper off from a a When other
recovering alcoholics chip checked up on him, Detoric would engage
them in impromptu meetings equal parts grad school symposiums and
combative group therapy sessions. Those get togethers became thrice weekly affairs.
Then one day a young heroin addict named Whitey Walker,
fresh out of prison, joined the group. As he began

(32:57):
inviting other dope fiends to the mix the lane, which
grew coarser, the cross talk, more aggressive. Debtoric loved it.
The sessions became known as synonons, a portmanteau of symposium
or perhaps seminar and anonymous Debtoric, who provided couches for
people to crash on as they kicked heroin, would come
to believe that addicts weren't full fledged adults and shouldn't

(33:18):
be treated as adults. The younger adults took to calling
him Dad. So what happens here is very interesting to me.
You have a a starts as okay, this institutional approach
where you just have a couple of doctors or wardens
just completely controlling the lives of addicts and treating them
like criminals. That's a horrible way to get people clean.
What you need is this bottom up leaderless approach, and

(33:40):
debtoric comes out of that takes the language and some
of the methods and then turns it to a situation
where he is in charge and the addicts are children.
Like it's you know what, this leaderless approach needs a leader.
M hm, a leader. Yeah, it's almost perfect. The almost
perfect was perfect. It's just missing a single guy in

(34:02):
charge of everybody that they called dad. Yeah, it's amazing
how often this happens in history. Yeah, I mean it's
this is basically nineteen seventeen, but on a smaller scale. Um. So,
Now when it comes to like where the name sinn

(34:23):
Anon came from, and obviously el A magazine says it's
a mix of symposeum and seminar, I've heard different theories.
I don't know which is true. Um. Paul Marantz, who's
probably the number one expert on the cult, claims the
cauld changed The name was chosen because an addict slurred
the words symposeum and seminar together. So not a conscious portmanteau.

(34:44):
A guy who was fucked up and like screwed up
while talking. Um, I've also heard that it was supposed
to mean sin Anon like sins anonymous, and that that's
how it was more often referred to. UM. I don't
know which is the case. I've heard all of these
stories and ship that I've read about this. UM. Even
if this is true, it's worth noting that sinnan On
was not initially affiliated with Chuck's addiction recovery program. Its

(35:06):
original name was the Tender Loving Care Club. UM, Loving
Care Club. Yeah club, that's like the Saturday morning cartoon
round up. It's it's it's nine am. It's time for
the Tender Loving Care Club. There's a block of programming

(35:28):
that's all very positive mm hm. And you will be
treated like a child by the Tender Loving Cares Club
TV block too. Yeah. A lot of Transformers getting sold
during that, So Charles Derek rented a rundown storefront in Venice,
which at that point was like a shady, crime riddled neighborhood,

(35:48):
and you could like buy ship. They're very cheap because
people didn't want to live in Venice. Again. Los Angeles
was a really different city at this point in time. UM,
when you're talking about Venice is like like the the
ship part of town that's ridiculous to me. Um. So
they get this like crappy little storefront in Venice um,

(36:09):
and they're all broke as hell. Like when he starts this,
he basically buys this storefront and they start living there
kind of illegally, like he in a bunch of addicts
that he's trying to like help get clean. They were
all broke, and they survived by begging for stale food
from catering trucks and taking donations from local prostitutes. Like
a lot of how they stay alive is local sex
workers give them money. Um, which is awesome. Right, there's

(36:31):
like a really cool story in here of like a
community of people on the outskirts of society taking care
of each other. At this point, it's still a pretty
good story, but we are starting to see some troubling
aspects of Charles too. Um. Their shower was a hose
that ran through the window. I'm pretty sure there were
stealing water. You know, it's very punk rock. Actually, Um

(36:53):
on the on the wall of the building was a
life saver, like you know, the the things on a
boat that you throw out. Um that they called the
USS hang tough. While life was difficult, and they endured
many privations. Charles urged everyone to pull together and stay,
promising that a great future would emerge for the group,
and the system he developed seems to have helped a

(37:14):
lot of addicts. The the accountability, the constant surveillance of
a community, the fact they were all always together is
kind of for people with really serious addictions, one of
the only ways to stop him from relapsing. Right, you
need that twenty seven accountability because if you go away
for a minute, you're gonna you're gonna start using again. Um.
But what dead Rick saw as the most powerful tool
of the group, and his most brilliant innovation, was what

(37:36):
he called the game. And I'm gonna describe what the
game is to you from a write up in Cabinet Magazine.
I'm sure it's not sinister in any way. No, no, no, no, no,
of course not, of course not. It's just ominously called
the game. The game is not what you know. It's

(37:56):
not what you would title a Jordan's Peel movie about
a goal. The culpit murders people, absolutely not. The game
consisted of a dozen or so addicts sitting in a circle.
One player would start talking about the appearance or behavior
of another, picking out their defects and criticizing their character.
But as soon as the subject of the attack tried

(38:17):
to defend him or herself, other players would join the barrage,
unleashing a no holds barred verbal onslaught. Vulgarity was encouraged,
talk dirty and live clean, said Debtoric, and so the
other members would accuse the defendant of real and imagined crimes,
of being selfish, unthinking, of being a no good, ugly
diseased cocksucker who was too weak to go straight and

(38:37):
was too much of an asshole junkie, cry baby motherfucker
to admit it. Faced with this unrelenting group assault, the
recipient would eventually have little choice but to admit their
wrongdoing and promised him in their ways. Then the group
would turn to the next person and begin all over again.
The first time it hits you, it absolutely destroys you,
remembered a former game player. No matter how loud you scream,

(38:59):
they can scream outer recalled another, and no matter how
long you talk, when you run out of breath, they're
there to start raving at you and laughing. Emotional catharsis
was the aim there were only two rules, no drugs
and no physical violence. It was vicious, but it actually
seemed to work. One cannot get up, remarked Dedrick until
he's knocked down. You know, I know that a lot

(39:23):
of people, uh subscribe to the theory that you must
you must break come one down in order to build
them up. But I feel like there has to be
a better way. Also in terms of games, don't really
get the game aspect. Yeah, not really a game. It's
just a Parker Brothers board that cocksuckers scream at each

(39:46):
other for our better games out there. Um, there are
better games out there. At least making a charade where
you have to guess what the person is saying that
this horrible thing that they're saying about you mm hmm, yeah,
I mean is like there's a and again you can
see like the elements of Like I have dealt with
addiction at various points in my past, and I've had

(40:06):
moments where friends were like, you're doing what you're doing
is stupid and you're hurting yourself and you need to
fucking stop, and like, yeah, sometimes you do need that
kind of straight talk. There's interest between straight talk and
saying you're no good cock sucking piece of shit right, Like,
that's not straight talk, that's just abuse. But also blame
it on the fats. So guy, that's the facts of guy.

(40:26):
He started this path Um. I think there's a line
to be drawn by why this works and what this
works it doing. I think what's actually happening here, why
this contributes to keeping people sober is not that the
game encourages sobriety. The game encourages cult like group behavior,

(40:47):
and that discourages drug abuse. It keeps the group because
trauma bonds people, even trauma that you're inflicting on each
other can bond groups of people together. It's like it's
a codependent relationship kind of. And they've all been instructed
to do this by dad. Yes, yeah, by dad. Would
Chuck participate in the game, Oh yes, you would lead

(41:08):
and you did not insult That's what I wanted to know. Yeah, no, no, no, no,
Chuck is not getting insulted alongside everyone else. Chuck was
just now you go and to yell at people. He
was very good at screaming at people. Um, and it's um.

(41:28):
I also think there's a line to be drawn here
between what they're doing and kind of how the military
basic training at least used to work. Um. I don't
know now, but like I know friends who have described,
particularly Marine corpsas training as a game. It's a game,
and when you understand the rules, you understand how to
do it, and like what you need to do in
order to like get through. What kind of and it bonds?

(41:49):
What are the things that bonds the unit together? Is
how shitty the experiences? Um? And that's I think what's
keeping people off of drugs. I don't think it's any
magic about the game. It's just you put a bunch
of people together, you traumatize them, and they kind of
can't exist outside of the group. But if the group
has committed to sobriety, they'll stay sober, you know. Um,

(42:12):
that's what I'm reading from this. Yeah. I mean, speaking
as a person who has been insulted in my life,
it has not helped me. Yeah, it does not know,
it has not helped me. No. Um. De Derek had
invented the game by mixing a a's teachings with ship
he vaguely remembered about psychiatry from articles he had read
and a boy. So you know it's good and also

(42:36):
a bunch of parts of Ralph Waldo Emerson's one essay
self Reliance Now. The core of his philosophy was to
fix people with tough love, to make them comfortable by
first making them very uncomfortable. Over time, he developed a
catch phrase which he used to greet addicts on their
first morning in the house. Today is the first day
of the rest of your life. He's the one who

(42:58):
invented that. Wow, yeah, weird, right, and it's you can
you can see. There's both a very optimistic recovery angle
to that, like your life starts again now you don't
you're not bound to your past, you're not bound to
make the same mistakes. But also that can be very culty.

(43:21):
It can go either way as and now you have
a new life with us as part of this group,
and you'll never yeah yeah, So it can mean both things.
In nineteen fifty eight, Detoric incorporated his facility as a nonprofit.
Over the next two years, a standard routine evolved. New
members were asked to quit drugs cold turkey, and as

(43:44):
they got over being dope sick, they were gradually welcomed
into the communal life of the club. There was hard labor,
but There was also constant mutual support in group therapy.
The game was played three times per week. Members were
forbidden from any drugs save coffee and cigarettes, which were
in veil double in unlimited quantities at all times, which
is I think has been from most of the history
of addition recovery pretty common. People smoke and drink coffee

(44:06):
fucking constantly, you know, whatever you gotta do. Um. Oddly enough,
peanut butter sandwiches were also always available, and I think
it's just because Charles Dedoric liked them. Um, so obviously
they must be good for addicts. Um. This will be
the beginning of a pattern. Um. Fairly quickly, Chuck proved

(44:28):
to have a peculiar genius from marketing. The term sent
and on had been used internally for a while, and
he decided to adopt it as the name of the group.
To its early members, sent and On was a very
real life saver. In the late nineteen fifties, drug addiction
had become a source a matter of national concern, similar
to how the prohibition movement had taken over the country
at the turn of the century. Newspapers and radio broadcasters

(44:50):
warned constantly about the dope monster ravaging the United States.
The governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller, claimed that fifty
percent of crimes in his state could be linked to
drug Whether this was true or not mattered less than
the fact that people believed it. State lawmakers followed the
public outcry with a raft of narcotics bills aimed at
criminalizing drug users. Most recommended mandatory minimum sentences to try

(45:14):
and discourage drug addiction. This did not work, but it
kept being done. In the mid nineteen fifties, California's Department
of Corrections started building facilities for narcotics violators for people
who wanted to get cleaned. There were basically no community resources.
Your only option was one of two kinds of incarceration.
You could get convicted and sent to prison, or you
could get sent to an asylum. So obviously alcoholism has

(45:36):
started to get an understand there's a nothing like that
existed for narcotics, and that's becoming a problem. So sent
it On kind of blows up because it's really the
first organized attempts someone has to dealing with the problem
of narcotics addiction. One early member of Senting On was
Lena Lindsay. She was a dope addict, and before she
found senting on she spent time in jail and also

(45:58):
spent time in Camailo State Hospital, one of the first
facilities to open an asylum for addicts. You couldn't just
check yourself into Camarilla, though. You had to go to court,
admit you were an addict and be sentenced or admitted
to the hospital UM, which is not ideal making drug
addicts go to court before they can get treatment UM,

(46:18):
but Lena did. She had enough of her problem that
she was like, fuck it, I'll go before a judge.
And she got sent there for ninety days. And it
was not a great program. Quote. I didn't think it
was a rehab place. I just thought it was a
place for me to get clean. That's where my mind was.
I just wanted to get clean. Camarilla was fine. I
think I stayed loaded more than anything else. So she
continued to get high. They kept me in the admitting ward.

(46:40):
I helped with new people who would come in to me.
That was a nuthouse. I had no expectations. I'll put
it that way. There was no program. I helped them
with other patients. Remember I was on the admitting ward
and I helped them with other patients. I helped them
give shock treatment and I stayed loaded. While I was there,
my boyfriend would come to visit. After thirty days, you
could have visits and my boyfriend would come. Me and
another girl we were were on the ward together. Our

(47:01):
boyfriends would sneak us drugs. I don't think the staff
knew what they we were doing. It was different than
being in jail, that's for sure. There was no place
in my time. There was just no place for drug addicts,
none at all. So not a great drug addiction program.
If you can, you know, get heroin there. Um and
I mean I guess because at this at this time,

(47:21):
narcotics are definitely seen as a moral failing across the board.
Yes's nobody that's saying. People are somewhat more understanding understanding
of alcoholism than they are started to be. Yes, yeah,
um so. Lena first heard about sinning On through the
television via a local news broadcast. She described her first
impression of it as quote, this place on the beach

(47:43):
that was supposed to be helping dope fiends. And by
the way, that's what they called each other and sent
and on they called each other dope fiends Um. Over
the months as she struggled with her addiction and went
into and out of treatment, other addicts she knew started
talking about Sinning On, saying stuff like they give you cigarettes,
they feed you. When Lena first showed up, Chuck took
her around and then told her to leave. His attitude

(48:04):
was addicts should get a tour, see what the place
had to offer, and then be sent back to their
disastrous lives so they would hit rock bottom again and
realize how important it was to get straightened out right.
That was the standard procedure UM, but she convinced Chuck
to let her join straight away, and Lena became the
first black member of sinnan on Um. The organization quickly
grew to be significantly more integrated than mainstream American society

(48:26):
at the time. This is one thing I haven't heard
any allegations he was racist. They were actually really ahead
of their time in terms. It was a fully integrated
program and eventually kind of a fully integrated version of
society UM. And as fucked up as the game sounds,
Lena found it useful, uh, and she explained to an
interviewer quote it was in the game that I started

(48:47):
learning how to tell the truth. Because us drug addicts,
we believed our own bullshit in order to do what
we did and live the lifestyle. I guess we had
to believe the mess that we told ourselves. It was
after one of the games, big heavy games. I went
to my room, I went to bed, and I started
thinking about what they talked to me about in the
game and how I defended it and I was lying.
And that's when I started learning how to tell the

(49:07):
truth to myself, To thy own self, be truthful. That
was one of my favorite concepts. The old man Debtoric
gave me to thy own self be truthful. When I
was in my bed by myself, I copped to myself
what a liar I was. And in my next game,
I copped out on myself. That started me to telling
the truth. I didn't tell the truth all the time.
It had to get to be a habit. You know

(49:27):
this type of thing. I mean, people can I guess
the relationships that you form within a a Let's say,
people can they're allowed to call you out, maybe not
in a meeting in front of everybody, but you know,
if you have a sponsor can call you out, if
you're spinning some bullshit and without it being like a
complete breaking down of you, just somebody keeping you in check. Yeah,

(49:50):
I mean, and that's that's hugely important. And I don't
think Lena, you know, I think there's very abusive aspects
to the game obviously, but for people who had never
had anyone to call all them out because maybe all
of their friends are also addicted, everyone's an enabler. I
I can see why that would be a value, even
though there's also clearly toxic aspects. I mean, because part
of being an addict, A big part of being an

(50:11):
addict is lying. You have to constantly be lying to
other people, to yourself. You have to be justifying what
you're doing at all times. Yeah, and you have to
be able to lie to yourself before you can convincingly
lie to other people. Um, that's like the most important
aspect of doing that. You have to make it so
that the lying to other people is that well, they
don't under they'll never understand. So I have to just

(50:33):
gloss over this because they I just can't make them
see why this is necessary for me exactly. And I
am you know, It's one of those things again, we've
talked about like how kind of abusive aspects of the
game is. It's also probably fair to say this is
the best narcotics addiction treatment available to people for southern
California or anywhere in the country really at this period

(50:56):
of time. But there's not really a lot of options. Uh. Um,
So folks, you know, do what they can, and um, yeah,
you know who else does what they can? Paul, I
bet it's goods and services exactly, the goods and services
that support this podcast are you know, obviously now we
have a solution to all kinds of addiction, and it's capitalism. Look, you,

(51:22):
we all need the dopamine fix that a needle of
heroin gives us, But why not buy a mattress instead?
That's all I'm saying. You know, all right, here's here's
some products. Uh, we're back. We're just thinking about products, services,

(51:44):
the intersection of those twos. Thank you, Thank you, products
and services. Thank you. In nineteen six, Chuck Dederic moved
sent and On from the CD storefront in Venice to
an empty National Guard armory in Santa Monica. He had
about sixty five members at this time. They were immediately
unpopular among the nimbi types who lived near the facility.

(52:06):
Yeah right, you know it is southern California. It hasn't
all changed. Ten days after moving in, he was arrested
for operating a hospital without a license, which I agree
that should be a crime, but also they were I
think it was kind of bullshit, like he he wasn't
operating a hospital. He was doing something no one else

(52:27):
was really doing. Anyway, he was convicted. The court offered
him probation if he would agree to move out of
the armory, and as an active protest, he declined, and
he went to jail for twenty five days instead. Now
the news picks up on this and sent it. On
had started to generate a significant amount of buzz over
the last couple of years, and his decision to go
to jail for his beliefs rather than moved was the

(52:49):
best buzz marketing he could have done. He becomes a
hero all across California, a brave trailblazer fighting the scourge
of dope addiction and and out of touch court system.
Governor Edmund Brown signed a bill into law that gave
sinnon On specifically a special exemption from health licensing laws.
Um So this becomes a big enough thing that the
governor signs a bill into law to allow this specific

(53:11):
program to exist. Now, under the bill, the Medical Board
of the State of California was supposed to establish special
rules for Sinnonon to follow. They never got around to
doing that. Um they were supposed to though, Um sure yeah. Now,
Chuck's time in prison had made him a martyr, and
the fawning media attention had made him into a national

(53:33):
hero of the dope epidemic. Donation started to flow in.
Wealthy celebrities began dropping by, some for treatment and others
just to explore the new sober society that Chuck de
Eric was building in his facility. Leonard Nimoy made a
habit of stopping by to play the game with X addicts. Um,
so you can imagine Leonard Nimoy just like screaming cocksucker

(53:53):
and a a bunch of dope feeds and Santa Monica. Well,
it makes me sad to think that some he would
be yelling mean things at Leonard Nimoy. I don't think
anyone yelled at Leonard Nimo. I have trouble believing that
he took the sort of more of a Chuck role
in the when pay Yeah, I'm guessing he was more
of a chuck in this. I just can't imagine anyone

(54:14):
yelling at Leonard Nimoy aside from Bill Shatner. This so
so at this point, at this point, no one leaves
chuck once they get into right, they are they are.
It's kind of up. He claims an eight success Right.
There are people who will say that never more than
seventy or eighty people graduated. But some people are graduating,

(54:36):
but a lot of them don't want to graduate. A
lot of them want to stay in this community. And
we'll talk about that in a little bit here. Um So,
a number of very prominent jazz musicians also became members
because obviously jazz musicians do a lot of drugs. Um
When they wanted to become clean, they would go to
sin and On and they would start playing music there.
And they actually formed a sin and On jazz band

(54:59):
and cut an album called The Sounds of Synanon. Uh.
Their band played on the Steve Allen Show. Um So,
like yeah, they're like this is like a big cultural
thing at the time. Now, one reason for Cinnon's popularity
was that, you know, the civil rights movement is starting
to become popular with the Hollywood set in the early sixties,
and sent it on as fully integrated UM, and I

(55:21):
haven't found evidence that he was. He was certainly for
his time very progressive on race UM. In nineteen fifty nine,
a black sex worker and dope addict named Betty Coleman
came to send It on for help. Betty later told
an interviewer, I think I stayed those first two or
three days just out of total fascination. She said up
her first encounter with Synanon in nineteen fifty nine, I

(55:43):
was sick as a dog. I was going through the
usual withdrawal symptoms and everything, but I was just fascinated.
I had never been around addicts and such a motley
lot of you know people. It was a weird scene.
I got caught up in it. So Betty leaves and
relapses a couple of times, but she keeps coming back,
and eventually, in the early sixties she stays for good
and she and Chuck get married UM, and she becomes

(56:03):
like the co leader of Sinning On with him. UM.
So there's a very progressive like. And again another one
of these things is that like sitting on I don't
care if you were a sex worker. I don't care
like what you did. There's no judgment here other than
the judgment that you were a dope addict and not
an adult. You know, like it. It is like will
we will continually judge you on them, Yeah, for the

(56:23):
rest of your life, but also less than society outside will,
which you do have to keep in mind at this point,
you know. Um and the fact that everyone except for
Chuck is getting judged equally harshly. I think there's a
kind of radical egalitarianism to that that was, again to
people in the margins of society, very compelling. Um So,

(56:44):
Sinnon starts holding massive weekly parties with a jazz band
and lots of cigarettes but no drugs or alcohol, and again,
celebrities would drop by all the time. James Mason, Jane Fonda,
Milton Burrow, and Natalie Wood were all guests of sinning
On and multiple points Ray Adbury and Rod Serling gave
lectures on site. Um So, this is like a big deal. Like,

(57:05):
those are some fucking names. The only one that's weird
to me, honestly is Milton Burl. Milton Burl, right, the Milton.
I gotta explore other belief systems. This this is my
one time. It's uh, let's let's see what's going on.
It's weird that he that he was there. Yeah, Yeah,

(57:28):
that Milton Burrel and Leonard Nimoy might have wound up
screaming cocksucker and a bunch of junkies is a weird
thing that could have happened. Um. By nineteen sixty five,
cent and On was a bona fide phenomenon. It reached
its apex of relevance and tried it in true Hollywood

(57:49):
fashion with a major motion picture, Columbia Pictures debut, Yeah
baby Ah and the trailer for this is fucking great
Columbia Pictures to be feued sinning On in nineteen sixty five.
Edmund O'Brien played Chuck Dettoric and Eartha Kit played Betty. Wow. Yeah,
Eartha Kit, I kind of want to see the movie.

(58:13):
I've seen the trailer and I love Eartha Kit right
like she's fucking rad. Yeah. The movie tagline was dope
then screamed the truth about the house where they lived together,
love together while they fight their way back, And it
was from the trailer. I think it was a very
horny movie um like as Horny as You Could Be

(58:33):
In nineteen sixty five, um Sinnanon also earned praise in
the halls of power. U S. Senator Thomas J. Dodd
declared in Congress that the program could quote lead the
way in the future to an effective treatment for not
only drug adicts, but also criminals and juvenile delinquents. He
called sinning On the miracle on the beach. The psychologist

(58:54):
Abraham Maslow also praised Cinnanon's no crap therapy. Courts started
sinn addicts to Sinnnon as a condition of their parole. So, yeah,
this is all gonna so. By the mid sixties, at
the height of its popularity, Sinnaon had turned the art
of keeping junkies clean into what it considered to be

(59:15):
a science. Their first rule was that new addicts had
to detox without any kind of medication. We're talking pure
cold turkey here. Um. They generally be left on a
couch or a bed to suffer through the shakes until
they were well enough to partake in communal life. Because
the real trick of sentaon it wasn't the treatment, it
wasn't even the game. It was the fact that Chuck

(59:35):
detoric was offering his members an entirely new vision of life.
He had created a miniature society with its own social morays,
in its own ways of policing behavior. From Cabinet Magazine quote,
As long as people worked washing dishes, waxing floors, ironing laundry,
painting walls, picking up food donations, they never had to leave.
Cinndon was also self policed. You were expected to report

(59:57):
those breaking the rules. Those who slacked off, who failed
to tell someone else were taken to task in the game.
Those who smuggled in contraband were given a haircut, A
private dressing down from a senior member, repeated in fractions
led to banishment. Put a pin in that haircut. Thing.
So far not bad, right, you do bad ship, you
get a private, perfectly held it. But they're running on

(01:00:18):
the honor system. Well, there's some other things that are
wrong there. But perhaps Cyndon's greatest innovation was realizing that
addics knew more about addiction than medical specialists. The dope fiend,
as Debtor consisted they be known, was painfully familiar with
the tactics of denial and evasion that their colleagues used.
What's more, they shared the same language. There was no wei,

(01:00:39):
they and sent and on. If you spoke about caps
and Binny's turp and horse, everyone knew what you were
talking about. As for ded Oric, he was never coy
about his role. I am considered a megalomaniacal nut, he declared,
Of course this is true, but I'm not so crazy.
He freely admitted to populating Syndon's board of directors with
recovering addicts whom he could control. But no one doubted

(01:01:01):
that this was wise and canny thinking. After all, those
were dope fiends, and Debtoric was entering uncharted territory. Debtoric
predicted that within three to five years at Cinnanon, a
dope fiend would be ready to graduate back to the
outside world. No one doubted debtoric sincerity. No worried about
the ambiguous undertones to his most famous maxim, the one
he told to those to each new arrival at Synanon,

(01:01:22):
today is the first day of the rest of your life.
Now what's interesting to me is that he's very open.
He calls himself megalomaniacal. He basically says, I am the
dictator of dope fiends, But Hey, American society in the sixties.
You know, these people are mental children. They have to
have a dictator and that's me, and this is good
for society, and everyone says, yeah, that's scans. Um. I

(01:01:46):
wonder how much of this is because he was like
the in like the hierarchy of addicts that maybe an
alcoholic outranks a dope that these I mean, because he's
not he's because this is is it exclusively narcotics that
people are coming to see he's drunk? It's mostly narcotics,

(01:02:10):
because most drunks, you know, there's other things for them.
It's mostly narcotics. Addicts people primarily I think heroin more
than anything else. Um. And yeah, I suspect that is
maybe an aspect of it is that he uh, he
thinks these people are easier to control, you know, a
dope addict is easier, is easy for someone like him
to manipulate. Um. I think that's probably his attitude. And

(01:02:33):
it's certainly the attitude like out again, nobody thinks this
is weird or abusive what he's doing right, Well, yeah,
of course, of course, the only thing for addicts is fascism.
So from the beginning, graduation was very rare. While sending
on claimed like a success rate, Chuck was increasingly reluctant

(01:02:55):
to declare anyone cured. And again, a a to day,
it's really hard to get good information on who actually
how long people stay sober. It's the same thing for
all rehab. Right rehab programs in general super sketchy about
giving you solid numbers about relapses and whatnot. Um And
it makes sense that Chuck wouldn't want to declare anyone
cured because a cured person can relapse and that might

(01:03:17):
throw the wisdom of your methods into question. Right. For
another thing, if people get better, really better, then they'll
leave Synanon. And in Chuck's head, Cynanon was already an
improvement on and a replacement from mainstream society. So he
doesn't want people to get out. And so when it
seemed like his members were on the path to recovery,
Chuck would warn them that they were still addicts. Now

(01:03:40):
this isn't necessarily unreasonable, right, there's certainly an attitude you'll see.
I don't think it's universal. Typ You're like, well, you're
always an alcoholic, you're always an addict, And that's not
necessarily that's not to like talk down to somebody. It's
to keep in mind that, like, you always have to
have an eye on this this part of yourself. Right.
I don't think that's an unreasonable thing necessarily. Um. But
Chuck was prone to more unsettling outbursts. He would tell

(01:04:00):
members that as long as they still loved their mothers,
they would never get over their drug problems. He would
urge them to avoid family and was adamant that members must, well,
here's your yea, this is innovative. Yeah. Um. He would

(01:04:21):
urge them to avoid family, and he was adamant that
members must follow his instructions to a t and stay
in the group to have the best odds of staying sober.
He frequently said that quote giving freedom to think to
a dope addict is like giving a gun to a baby.
Oh it's great. So we've hit the point where it
becomes problematic, right, it's a it's a mixed bag, maybe

(01:04:43):
even more bad than good. And by the late sixties,
the worm has started to turn a bit um. By
nineteen sixty eight, ten years after its founding, sinning On
had at least eleven hundred members and and again even
people who lived there thousands more have done some aspect
of the programs right right UM, and it was receiving

(01:05:04):
about two and a half million dollars a year in donations.
This is the modern equivalent of about nineteen million dollars.
The program expanded massively, buying up an additional seven million
in real estate in Santa Monico, West l A, San Diego,
San Francisco, Tomales, Bay Reno, New York, New York City, Detroit,
and Puerto Rico. So this becomes like an empire, like

(01:05:26):
he owns a lot of southern California. Now, since addicts
come from every strata of society, sent it on members
included gifted entrepreneur, There's a lot of people who were
like homeless, who were you know, sex workers. There's a
lot of people who were wealthy businessmen, lawyers, and he
sets these folks to work buying up and using their
money to buy up for the for sent and on

(01:05:49):
a string of gas stations. UM. This eventually leads to
him in the late sixties opening the door up to professionals,
even those without drug addictions, who were interested in this
new version of society that he was crafting. All they
had to do to join and if you weren't an addict,
was transfer your assets to the organization, And a number
of people do this. This might be where it's become

(01:06:12):
a cult. Yeah wow, I mean Jesus just like that's
that's I mean, that's one of those situations where I'm out,
Like if I mean you say that, Paul, I'm starting
my cult. And if you are a wealthy businessman, you
can live on the property that I buy with your

(01:06:34):
money if you give your money to me. That's that's
the behind the bastards guarantee. Now, will that property get
rated by the f D A, Will our compound be
burned down by an FBI f D A assault? Of course,
of course, But that doesn't mean you can't help me
own a string of gas stations. This is what I

(01:06:56):
love about cult people is that it's always the point
where it goes a little they get a little too greedy,
where it's like, guess what if you just had the
string of gas stations. That's not bad people need, that's
not bad people. Yeah, where do you want to go
buy gas? Well, let's buy gas from the the addiction
Recovery program that for some reason owns a bunch of

(01:07:16):
gas stations. Yeah, why not, um, But no, things go
wildly off the rails very quickly at this point. So
by early nineteen sixty four, sent it On had started
advertising itself not as an addiction recovery program, but as
an alternative society. Debtoric would draw in people by emphasizing
that Sinnoon could help them live a quote self examined life.

(01:07:38):
He started using some of the millions they had accumulated
to build their first city in Marin County the end
of the nineteen sixty And by the way, if you're
building a city for your cold, you could do I mean,
Marin Counties wonderful location for absolutely way better than Waco. Um,
I mean, pricier than Wago, but less lamable. So the

(01:08:01):
end of the nineteen sixties and the Summer of Love
brought about a mass fascination with the idea of communes
and of communal living. And this is all tied into win.
You know, sent it On makes this turn. So this
Eric gave us, I don't know, the city of Eugene, Oregon.
But it also was a huge boost for Sinnon. People
who weren't addicted to anything started being allowed to join. Now,

(01:08:22):
not just professionals, anybody who like wanted to join sent
and On basically as long as you were willing to
like hand them a bunch of money. Uh. Non. Addicts
who joined were called squares. Now. Briefly, Chuck toyed with
the idea of so you've got squares and dope fiends,
that's what they called themselves and sides. Chuck briefly toyed
with the idea of letting his addict members leave sent

(01:08:44):
it On facilities and live independently as long as they
worked jobs and sent their money back to the organization.
But he wound up dropping this idea because it's hard
to control people who don't live inside the cult, you know.
Um So, by the end of the nineteen sixties, Cinnaon
had full lead cross the bridge from New Age addiction
treatment program to cult. From Cabinet magazine quote when members

(01:09:08):
stepped out of line. Now, the haircuts they received were
literal ones, with men shaved, having their heads shaved for
bad behavior, and women being forced to wear stocking caps.
Whereas sex was rampant and Sentnon's early days, now members
had to ask a Sinnon elder for permission to date,
and we're forced to follow a strict and celibate courting ritual.
Glut Raids were routinely run on residents rooms to confiscate

(01:09:29):
excessive personal possessions and Debtoric and his elders would instigate
arbitrary new rules, such as the twenty four hour day,
in which half of Centnon would go to work at
night while the other half worked during the day. A
cent Anon police force patrolled the nearby streets looking for
members who might be breaking the rules. You know your
cults doing well when you got your own cops. That's
the wild, wild country ship. Right. It's exciting to know

(01:09:51):
that glut raids prefigured Um Marie Condo, Yeah it is.
It is nice, right, Yeah, he's it's amaze saying, like
what a mix of Marie Condo scientology and like maoist China,
this cult becomes so Charles Alverson was a journalist and

(01:10:12):
novelist and a Square who spent six months living at
a Sinnon center. In an interview with The Fix, he
said that during his time there in the late sixties,
he saw synonym as mostly positive, a way to help
addicts get control over their lives again, but he also
saw evidence that it was starting to head in a
very dark direction. Quote. I recall being rooted out of
bed about midnight to witness a long term members sitting

(01:10:34):
in a garbage can with his head shaved because he
had been caught using. This was quite common and an
indication of that some of the cured weren't quite so cured.
Despite the egalitarian veneer of Synanon, det Eric was always
the father figure, Big Cahuna, boss of bosses. At mass meetings,
new Synton triumphs were announced and new enemies were announced.
Such techniques kept the wagons circled. The game evolved from

(01:10:57):
being primarily a therapeutic tool to being an instrument of
social will control. Members were increasingly forced to confess to
misdeeds during sessions. Secrets were not allowed, and the information
members gave up about themselves provided the organization with blackmail
material they could use if they later tried to leave.
Scientology does the same thing. It's really like very similar
to like the auditing sessions and stuff in Night exceparates.

(01:11:18):
You're in a huge group too, which is an interesting wrinkle.
In nineteen sixty seven, Charles Dederic decided to end the
concept of graduation entirely. His justification was that most X
addicts would revert to using once they left. Now, this
is still a problem today. Relapse rates for addiction within
the first year of people who go to modern rehab
facilities are between forty and six. Chuck considered this unacceptable,

(01:11:41):
and the best way to ensure no one relapsed was
to ensure that no one ever left rehab. He told
one follower, We're getting out of the dope fiend business now. Now,
the goal of cent and On was not to perform
attics to get them clean, to help them take control
of their lives. If you entered the program, you were
expected to never leave. The goal was no longer sobriety.

(01:12:03):
The goal was to build, with the guidance of Chuck Detoric,
a new utopian world order destined to take the world
by storm. Now fully occult leader, Chuck began to insist
to his followers, this is the kind of revolution that
moved the world from Judaism to Catholicism, to Protestantism to Sinninism.
This is a total revolution game. Remember, he's starting his

(01:12:27):
addicts trying to get off doubt. He's really going for it.
He's really going for it. If you're gonna do something,
do it right. He's really going all the way. Yeah,
he's This is the first cult leader since l Ron
Hubbard who at least is like, yeah, you know what
you committed. Motherfucker can take that away from you. You

(01:12:51):
with all in on this ship. Yeah. Uh, Paul, you
got any plug doubles to plug? Well? Sure, I always
like to plug. Um. One of life simple joys I have.
I have a handful of podcasts happening right now. I
have the Stay of Homekins with that I do with

(01:13:14):
my wife Jenny had Had Tompkins. I have a Freedom,
which I do with Scott Ackerman and Lauren Lapkus. Um,
I have uh Star Trek the Pod Directive, which is
a the official Star Trek podcast that I host with
Tony Newsome. Those are all free wherever you get your podcasts,
and then uh, if you have a little extra money
at the end of the month, Um, the Neighborhood Listen
will be coming back. That will be on Stitcher Premium

(01:13:36):
before it becomes free at some point in the indeterminate future. Well,
I am glad since you do a Star Trek podcast
that I was able to give you this fun fact
about Leonard Nemo which I cannot wait to tell Tonny
this is really well, this has been behind the bastards.

(01:13:56):
You can find us various places online, but what you
should really do is check out my new podcast, the
audio book of my novel After the Revolution, wherever podcasts
are sold. You can also find the e book, which
is being announced, you know, coming out three chapters a
week on a t r book dot com. That's a
t r book dot com. It's free. Check it out,

(01:14:17):
check out Paul's podcasts, and I don't know, start an
addiction recovery center that buys up most of southern California
and creates its own police force. Maybe maybe you'll do
it nice this time. Maybe maybe you'll be the one
who figures it out. Part one,

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Part One: Synanon: The Drug Rehab Program That Built Its Own Army