Speaker 1: In media res opening to a podcast like we were
Speaker 1: having a fun conversation that we just let you win
Speaker 1: on halfway through. Good times. I'm Robert Evans. This is
Speaker 1: Behind the Bastards easily our best opening yet. Uh. My
Speaker 1: guest again, as is always my guest when I actually
Speaker 1: nail an introduction, Mr Paul F. Tompkins, Paul, Hello, everyone,
Speaker 1: Oh did you enjoy that absolutely real conversation that we
Speaker 1: left let the audience on halfway through. I haven't had
Speaker 1: a conversation like that in such a long time, and
Speaker 1: it's it's refreshing. It reminds me of my humanity again,
Speaker 1: So thank you. Yeah you really bared your soul there,
Speaker 1: um and and yeah you made it easy. I feel honored.
Speaker 1: I feel honored. Paul. You are we had when we
Speaker 1: had you on last time for our Rush Limbaugh episodes.
Speaker 1: Somebody in the sub credit is like I didn't initially
Speaker 1: recognize his name, and then I looked him up and
Speaker 1: realized that he had entirely shaped my generation's ideas on comedy. Um,
Speaker 1: just I feel accurate to you because you've you've you've
Speaker 1: been in so many like uh, so many like Mr Show. Um,
Speaker 1: you did a bit for the Daily Show. Back in
Speaker 1: the day, you did some comedy bang bang stuff. You
Speaker 1: were on did the Dead Author's podcast, Bow Jack Horsemen. Obviously, UM,
Speaker 1: you just just just a just an an incredibly accomplished comedian. Um.
Speaker 1: So thank you for dining to be on our show again.
Speaker 1: It's Paul to start us off. I got a question
Speaker 1: for you. How do you feel about drugs and alcohol?
Speaker 1: M hmm. I think that in uh, when used responsibly, Uh,
Speaker 1: that ain't nothing but a good time. Sure. And you know,
Speaker 1: obviously sometimes people have problems strus are alcohol and And
Speaker 1: what would you say about the idea like, obviously very
Speaker 1: reasonable for a group of people, you know, especially if
Speaker 1: they feel like the medical system may have let them down,
Speaker 1: to come together and work together as like a community
Speaker 1: to try to deal with their struggles with drugs and alcohol.
Speaker 1: Perfectly reasonable, right, absolutely. I know many people who are
Speaker 1: in such programs and it works very well for them.
Speaker 1: It usually does. Now, Paul, I have a question for
Speaker 1: you that relates directly to the subject of the article.
Speaker 1: If a group of people were to do that, how
Speaker 1: large of marine corps do you think they would need
Speaker 1: to punish their enemies who I haven't thought about this before.
Speaker 1: I my my instinct is to say, uh, they wouldn't
Speaker 1: need one at all. They wouldn't need one at all.
Speaker 1: You think most addiction recovery programs get by without a
Speaker 1: Marine Corps. That's my I mean, look, I don't know
Speaker 1: about all of them, but to my knowledge, they seem
Speaker 1: to be doing just fine without them as far as
Speaker 1: I know, as yeah, I would, that's accurate. Uh. And
Speaker 1: obviously we're very pro people getting recovery here. We're talking, however,
Speaker 1: today about an addiction rehab program that went as off
Speaker 1: the rails as it is possible for one of those
Speaker 1: things to be. This is like the twenty year journey
Speaker 1: of a guy who wanted to help people get off
Speaker 1: of heroin, uh, and eventually built his own army and
Speaker 1: attempted to take over large junks of California. So, um,
Speaker 1: have you ever heard of Sinnan on s Y N
Speaker 1: A n O. Is That name sounds familiar to me,
Speaker 1: but I don't know why. It is not the first
Speaker 1: addiction recovery program, but the first probably the first large
Speaker 1: organized narcotics recovery program. Right, Um, And for everything kind
Speaker 1: of that happens in this episode to make sense, we're
Speaker 1: gonna have to travel back in time a little bit
Speaker 1: to talk about kind of the history of human understanding
Speaker 1: of addiction and addiction recovery. Obviously, people have been doing
Speaker 1: drugs longer than we've been doing anything else, including like
Speaker 1: even being friends with dogs. Like we've been getting high forever.
Speaker 1: It's just something we've we were doing it, you know,
Speaker 1: back before we were people people like getting wasted. Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and primitive science meant that it was pretty hard back
Speaker 1: in the day to have the kind of addictions that
Speaker 1: we have now. Right, If all you have is like
Speaker 1: beer and watered down wine, alcoholism is going to be
Speaker 1: less extreme than when you have ever clear and you
Speaker 1: know that kind of ship right one fifty one rum
Speaker 1: means it's a lot easier to have like a serious problem. Likewise,
Speaker 1: you know, the way indigenous tribes in North America, Central
Speaker 1: America it used tobacco, It wasn't really unhealthy if you're
Speaker 1: doing it occasionally as part of a religious ritual. That's
Speaker 1: not nearly the same as as burning two packs and
Speaker 1: Marborough's a day. Right, We're talking about a wildly different
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Um. People obviously had drug problems five thousand,
Speaker 1: ten thousand years ago, right, But it was a lot
Speaker 1: less noticeable, and it was less noticed because especially in civilization,
Speaker 1: everyone was buzzed a lot of the time because like
Speaker 1: better was deadly, and especially if you're in a city, right,
Speaker 1: like you're living in ancient Rome, you don't want to
Speaker 1: drink that fucking water coming through the aqueducts. You're gonna
Speaker 1: you're gonna pour it into wine, so the wine will
Speaker 1: kill most of what's bad and you're not gonna be
Speaker 1: wasted all the time because it's actually there were people that,
Speaker 1: like you talk about like ancient Roman marias around intoxication.
Speaker 1: It was considered kind of like ghosh to be too drunk.
Speaker 1: Like obviously there were times celebrations, festivals, but most of
Speaker 1: the time everyone's just kind of a bit buzzed, right,
Speaker 1: And the same thing with beer and other cultures and
Speaker 1: other parts of Europe. Um. The first documented use of
Speaker 1: distilled liquor in Europe didn't come around until the twelfth century,
Speaker 1: and that was not something you would have drunk for fun.
Speaker 1: It was part of an Italian medical school textbook. Obviously,
Speaker 1: liquor has a lot of medicinal benefits, like just for
Speaker 1: like you can sterilize ship with it, you know, um
Speaker 1: there were there's debate over who the first kind of
Speaker 1: successful distillation where it was. Some people say that it
Speaker 1: was in first or second century China. There's evidence of
Speaker 1: that the earliest like recognizable still and I think it
Speaker 1: was kind of similar to a modern reflux. Still Um
Speaker 1: was probably developed in the eighth century a d by
Speaker 1: an Arabic alchemist named Abu musa Ya Beer even highen um. Now,
Speaker 1: whoever you give credit for the first distilled liquor, it
Speaker 1: didn't become a common recreational product until the six hundred,
Speaker 1: so pretty recent, right, people have not been drinking liquor
Speaker 1: all that. Beer and wine or beer and wine were first.
Speaker 1: Oh beer, we've had beer and wine forever. Be beer
Speaker 1: dates back to the the very first human civilization. There's
Speaker 1: anthropologists will argue that we started building cities to brew beer.
Speaker 1: People would make beer as part of these like when
Speaker 1: people were nomadic tribes to have these like big festivals.
Speaker 1: But beer is a complicated product. You would need to
Speaker 1: make bread because the first bread, the first beer was
Speaker 1: made with a kind of bread called bapier as like
Speaker 1: the basis of the beer, and it it requires a lot,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of there's a logistical tail to making beer,
Speaker 1: and so one of the anthropologists will make, yeah, that's no, No,
Speaker 1: you're a straight wine guy. Just some rotten grapes. I
Speaker 1: don't want. I don't want to make my own stuff. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well that's why people started making cities, so that it
Speaker 1: was easier to have someone else make the beer and
Speaker 1: you just have plenty of it. That's an argument some
Speaker 1: anthropologist will make. But yeah, it goes back a while.
Speaker 1: Liquor much more recent because you have to like have
Speaker 1: no head to do some science to make liquor. You
Speaker 1: gotta have like a still. They're not it's not. I
Speaker 1: mean it is pretty I used to make liquor, and
Speaker 1: I was always wasted when I was making liquor. Caught
Speaker 1: my kitchen on fire five or six times, which is
Speaker 1: why stills are illegal. Um, it would just be spurting
Speaker 1: ever clear basically out of these like gaps in the
Speaker 1: welds because we welded it well drunk and um so yeah,
Speaker 1: six hundreds we get liquor, and um it takes off.
Speaker 1: People are real big fans of liquor. I'm sure that's
Speaker 1: a surprise to anyone who I don't know lives in
Speaker 1: California where you can buy liquor, anywhere you can buy
Speaker 1: a scratch off to This is not like a Barcelona
Speaker 1: story where one guy did this one thing and then
Speaker 1: everybody else did it to be cool. This was immediately
Speaker 1: it was popular with everyone. Yeah, at one it was
Speaker 1: popular with everyone. And it also immediately becomes a problem.
Speaker 1: As soon as there's liquor, you have for a long time,
Speaker 1: people don't. There's not really a mass cultural conception of
Speaker 1: alcoholism is an issue. Then liquor comes around, and by
Speaker 1: the seventeen hundreds, people are talking about alcohol addiction as
Speaker 1: a serious social problem, like it's that quick. UM. The
Speaker 1: first alcoholic recovery program where sobriety circles, that's what they
Speaker 1: were called, UM, which were kind of alcoholic mutual aid society,
Speaker 1: so communities of sufferers working together to deal with and
Speaker 1: try to get over their addiction. And they seem to
Speaker 1: have been created first by members of various Native American tribes. Right,
Speaker 1: alcoholism becomes a serious problems introduced by Europeans, becomes a
Speaker 1: big problem with indigenous tribes, and so the first organized
Speaker 1: attempts addiction recovery. We're indigenous in nature, and they would
Speaker 1: often use traditional indigenous healing practices, both like natural metal,
Speaker 1: both like indigenous medicine, but also um like rituals to
Speaker 1: kind of treat alcoholism UM. Now in in seventeen eighty four,
Speaker 1: the first kind of European white I don't know, whatever
Speaker 1: you call it physician, Western physician to acknowledge alcoholism was
Speaker 1: Benjamin rush Or. He'd not the first to acknowledge it,
Speaker 1: but the first to call it a disease, right, which
Speaker 1: is basically our modern understanding UM as opposed to like
Speaker 1: a moral failing, this is an illness that a person
Speaker 1: has UM. His work helped to create the modern temperance movement,
Speaker 1: which why the early nineteen hundreds had evolved into the
Speaker 1: prohibition movement. Now throughout the eighteen hundreds. In the early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, society gradually gained an understanding that drug abuse
Speaker 1: of all kinds could be problematic, right, that it wasn't
Speaker 1: just alcohol. You could be addicted to a bunch of
Speaker 1: shit um And virtually every like Western attempt to treat
Speaker 1: drug and alcohol addiction was horrible. Uh. Up until the
Speaker 1: modern day. Those indigenous sobriety circles were probably like the
Speaker 1: still the most reasonable program ever created. UM. One common
Speaker 1: treatment for addicts was to throw them into facilities patterned
Speaker 1: off of insane asylums. Basically, they were like, Okay, drug
Speaker 1: addiction is the same as being insane. Uh so we'll
Speaker 1: just we'll lock you in a prison. Um, that'll solve it.
Speaker 1: What for like forever? Or was it like until you
Speaker 1: dried out, you went through the all the horrible detoxing
Speaker 1: on your own, and then you were fine to leave.
Speaker 1: I think it would depend. Some people certainly didn't get out.
Speaker 1: And also we're talking the eighteen hundreds, so a lot
Speaker 1: of people just died there of diseases due to the
Speaker 1: horrific conditions you know, Um, because a prison is basically
Speaker 1: a ptreot dish I mean, still is um. The New
Speaker 1: York State Inebriate Asylum opened in eighteen sixty four, and
Speaker 1: that was like the first Yeah, I know, right, not great. UM.
Speaker 1: Other doctors treated addiction with a variety of snake oil
Speaker 1: medications like doctor Killey is double chloride of gold KIV
Speaker 1: and drunkenness. Um, take some gold that'll stop you from drinking.
Speaker 1: They did not know about gold schlager. Um. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: that's that's just not work. So in the eighteen eighties,
Speaker 1: Sigmund Freud turned his genius mind to the problem with
Speaker 1: alcoholism and morphine addiction, and he eventually came up with
Speaker 1: a genius solution for treating both of these addictions. You
Speaker 1: want to guess what it was, oh, locking people away?
Speaker 1: I don't know what would Floyd's approach be. He gave
Speaker 1: them huge doses of cocaine that has no addictive potential.
Speaker 1: Cocaine at least addictive drug evert a miracle drug. Absolutely, yeah,
Speaker 1: cocaine the drug with no problems. So by the eighteen
Speaker 1: nineties the worm had fully turned and like Benjamin rushing
Speaker 1: on the sev being like, this isn't this is an illness?
Speaker 1: By the eighteen nineties they're like, now, this isn't a
Speaker 1: fucking illness. This is a criminal behavior and it needs
Speaker 1: to be punished as such. Inebriate homes and asylums closed,
Speaker 1: and alcoholics were sent to drunk tanks or foul wards
Speaker 1: of hospitals. Ward what I know, right? Why everything was
Speaker 1: so everything was titled so mean back then they were
Speaker 1: real dicks back in the day. You don't have to
Speaker 1: say you have to call it the foul ward. No,
Speaker 1: now it is the eighteen hundreds. We're going to be
Speaker 1: shitty about everything now. Of course, these kind of treatments,
Speaker 1: the insane asylums, the prisons, the foul wards, these were
Speaker 1: where we you sent poor addicts. If you had money
Speaker 1: and an addiction, you would go to the first celebrity
Speaker 1: rehab facilities. And the very first celebrity rehab facility was
Speaker 1: the Charles B. Town's Hospital, which opened in nineteen o one.
Speaker 1: It treated alcoholics with belladonna, which is a poison. Like
Speaker 1: what was the what was the They must have known it,
Speaker 1: like what yeah, yeah, I don't know. Maybe there were
Speaker 1: maybe it just they were trying to make you sick
Speaker 1: enough that you drank it with the alcohol and it.
Speaker 1: I didn't do enough research into belladonna therapy, but I
Speaker 1: don't recommend taking belladonna um. And it was again, this
Speaker 1: was for really rich people. It cost three hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty dollars a day in nineteen o one, which is
Speaker 1: about fifty six hundred dollars a day in modern currencies,
Speaker 1: like Betty Ford clinic type ship right, Like like I
Speaker 1: don't know if it worked or not, but you're not
Speaker 1: going there if you're not rich. Now, one of Charles's
Speaker 1: most frequent patients was a fellow named Bill Wilson, who
Speaker 1: would go on to found an organization called Alcoholics Anonymous,
Speaker 1: which you can drive a direct line and you know,
Speaker 1: Alcoholics Anonymous. There's a lot of really valid criticisms of
Speaker 1: the organization. I know a lot of people who say
Speaker 1: it saved their life too. I'm not going to make
Speaker 1: a determination one way or the other on it, but
Speaker 1: you can draw a real direct line between the basic
Speaker 1: idea of a A and those indigenous sobriety circles, which
Speaker 1: I do find interesting. This basic idea that a community,
Speaker 1: a communal environment is the best way to deal with
Speaker 1: addiction and probably is. And support, yes, empathy, just just
Speaker 1: you knowing that someone else understands what you're going through
Speaker 1: and that they've been there themselves. Um, not institutionalization, not criminalization,
Speaker 1: but a community support. Yeah, and maybe not poison and
Speaker 1: maybe not maybe maybe that's not got to help. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: by the time a A was created, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: just Bill Wilson, I think there were four or five
Speaker 1: guys who started it. It was created nineteen thirty five,
Speaker 1: and at that point the criminalization of addiction was at
Speaker 1: a very advanced stage. In the nineteen tens, U s
Speaker 1: States had started passing laws that legislates that legislated the
Speaker 1: mandatory sterilization of alcoholics and addicts. Um. Yeah, one of
Speaker 1: the fun things this is you're going to get a
Speaker 1: it out of this, Paul, This is this is fun,
Speaker 1: some fun history, real real good yucks in this this
Speaker 1: bit of history. After World War Two, when they found
Speaker 1: out about all of the horrific crimes of the Nazi
Speaker 1: concentration camps and they were starting to try to punish people.
Speaker 1: One group of people they didn't punish were the Nazi
Speaker 1: doctors who would sterilize the mentally ill and drug addicts,
Speaker 1: because that was being done in the US too, so
Speaker 1: they were like, we can't punish these guys were doing
Speaker 1: the same thing. A lot of Nazi doctors got off
Speaker 1: scott free because yeah, it's it's it's history. It's always telling.
Speaker 1: The lesson is, well, we're not gonna stop doing that.
Speaker 1: We're we're looking at monsters and seeing what they do.
Speaker 1: We also do one of those things. So we're just
Speaker 1: gonna look the other way rather than stop. So we're
Speaker 1: just gonna We're fine with that part. I mean, it
Speaker 1: is it is kind of like the fact that, um uh,
Speaker 1: when they were liberating the con centration camps, in a
Speaker 1: lot of cases, they didn't free the homosexuals because that
Speaker 1: was still a crime in the societies. That we're freeing
Speaker 1: the concentration camps anyway, time, you should never be looking
Speaker 1: at the Nazis and saying even a broken clock. Yeah
Speaker 1: exactly if you're thinking, well, maybe they had a point
Speaker 1: about that, maybe that I agree with. So um nineteen tens,
Speaker 1: you know, states are sterilizing alcoholics and addicts, and doctors
Speaker 1: and asylums in prisons were Actually the way this was
Speaker 1: phrased is that doctors um had the authority to a
Speaker 1: sexualized individuals with drug and alcohol abuse problems. That's what
Speaker 1: they called it, a sexualization UM. Now, Alcoholics Anonymous was
Speaker 1: in many ways, as I said, a throwback to these
Speaker 1: sobriety circles. But while where those were kind of very
Speaker 1: based in Native American religion and medicine, a A was
Speaker 1: based around the Emmanuel Movement, which was a psychologically based
Speaker 1: approach to religious healing that started in nineteen oh six.
Speaker 1: The primary ust of a manual movement treatments and thus
Speaker 1: a A we're individual in group therapy. A A in
Speaker 1: particular came to reject the clinical and institutional treatment for
Speaker 1: addicts in favor of a bottom up structure. But the founder,
Speaker 1: Bill Wilson described as quote benign anarchy. UM. The thrust
Speaker 1: of this was that the individual branches of a A
Speaker 1: were all self governing. They didn't have to report back
Speaker 1: to a home office, they didn't have to follow identical
Speaker 1: treatment methods, and they didn't have to have leaders. Usually, when,
Speaker 1: especially when you have guys in this point like refer
Speaker 1: to something as anarchy, they're kind of getting it wrong.
Speaker 1: In this case, he's not because he is saying, we're
Speaker 1: trying to dissolve power relationships. We don't think that the
Speaker 1: right way to treat an addict is a situation where
Speaker 1: a bunch of people are in power over them and
Speaker 1: they're incarcerated or they're kind of under the thumb of
Speaker 1: the state. We also don't think that there should be
Speaker 1: leaders of this. It should everyone should be working together.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a community effort. So really he's not
Speaker 1: wrong when he when he says that this is when
Speaker 1: he uses that term UM and his stated reason for
Speaker 1: this bottom up approach was to prevent the formation of
Speaker 1: cults of personality, which were very common and alternative medicine
Speaker 1: at the time and also now. Unfortunately, in practice this
Speaker 1: did not work today. One of the main valid complaints
Speaker 1: against a A is that it can act as an
Speaker 1: incubator for strongman and gurus who often engage in profound mental, physical,
Speaker 1: and sexual abuse of their group members. This is a
Speaker 1: problem that has been noted on a number of different
Speaker 1: occasions in different a A A groups, and today the focus
Speaker 1: of our episode is going to be on one of
Speaker 1: those gurus. A man named Charles Dedoric now Charles Edwin
Speaker 1: de Orck, was born in Toledo, Ohio, on March twenty nine, thirteen.
Speaker 1: He was named for his father and was called Chuck
Speaker 1: by his family. His namesake dad was a horrible alcoholic
Speaker 1: who died in a drunk driving accident when Chuck was
Speaker 1: four years old. When he was eight, his younger brother
Speaker 1: died of influenza. Charles felt guilty and responsible for his
Speaker 1: brother's death. I think it was the survival guilt thing,
Speaker 1: and it was noted that he was never able to
Speaker 1: ball with children again, even his own kids, which rough
Speaker 1: upbringing here not an easy set of cards to draw.
Speaker 1: Uh So, when he was twelve, his mother, Agnes Kuntz,
Speaker 1: married a man that he despised. Now, Agnes was Agnes
Speaker 1: was a prominent singer, and I don't think the family
Speaker 1: had huge financial issues as a kid like they seemed
Speaker 1: to have gotten along. Okay um, But he's really unhappy
Speaker 1: with this guy she marries. And he's also stifled by
Speaker 1: his upbringing because she is a devout Roman Catholic and
Speaker 1: she raises him that way. He later recalled quote, I
Speaker 1: believed literally that I would go to Hell if I
Speaker 1: didn't go to church on Sundays. Um. So, when he
Speaker 1: was fourteen, Charles comes across a copy of H. G.
Speaker 1: Wells is the Outline of History that had been owned
Speaker 1: by his stepfather. Are you familiar to all with this book? No,
Speaker 1: I've never heard of it. It's an interesting it's an
Speaker 1: interesting book. It was an attempt by H. G. Wells
Speaker 1: to chronicle the entire history of the world from the
Speaker 1: Neolithic period up to World War One. Now, in the book,
Speaker 1: Wells claimed, quote, the history of mankind is a history
Speaker 1: of more or less blind endeavors to conceive a common
Speaker 1: purpose in relation to which all men may live happily
Speaker 1: and to create and develop a common stock of knowledge
Speaker 1: which may serve and illuminate that purpose. Um. And it's
Speaker 1: so it was kind of a it was an optimistic
Speaker 1: but also atheistic look at human history, right, Like, he's
Speaker 1: not looking at this through religious lens, and he's I
Speaker 1: think it still was a Eurocentric lens, but I don't
Speaker 1: think he was trying to look at it that way. Um.
Speaker 1: And one major theme of the book was the development
Speaker 1: of free intelligence, which he credited originally to bards common
Speaker 1: to all the quote aryan speaking people's who extended the
Speaker 1: power of the human mind by traveling and thus expanding
Speaker 1: the development of language. This book has a huge influence
Speaker 1: on debt Oric, who later later claimed that after reading it,
Speaker 1: he quote became a militant atheist almost overnight. So he
Speaker 1: reads this book and it just it pills him to
Speaker 1: he used the violence of the time. Um. And the
Speaker 1: downside of this is he starts drinking almost immediately after
Speaker 1: he reads this book, Right, he kind of goes whole
Speaker 1: hog against his upbringing. Right, Yeah, I'm an atheist time
Speaker 1: to get That's that was sort of how I went
Speaker 1: to I think I think I think about it now.
Speaker 1: It was it was a little slow, it was a
Speaker 1: little more gradual, but definitely that was the line. No.
Speaker 1: I mean, within about six months of realizing I was
Speaker 1: an atheist, I was taking hallucinogens every weekend, so I
Speaker 1: can't relate. Um, yes, it's not this, yeah, exactly. At
Speaker 1: this point, he's a thoroughly sympathetic character. Um. Now, yeah,
Speaker 1: let's remember this, this is the show that it is.
Speaker 1: Let's let's just stop a moment and really enjoyed this
Speaker 1: time with this guy before we continue. Yeah, and you know, Paul,
Speaker 1: let's stop a moment while we're enjoying this time before
Speaker 1: the horrible ship happens, and also think about products and services, because, Paul,
Speaker 1: you know what else is the result of human beings
Speaker 1: engaging in more or less blind endeavors to conceive a
Speaker 1: common purpose in relation to which all men may live happily. Robert,
Speaker 1: I wish you would tell me the products and services
Speaker 1: and support this podcast. That's what they all do. Mm hmmm,
Speaker 1: here we go. Uh we are back, and Paul, before
Speaker 1: we get back into this story, there's a matter of
Speaker 1: serious importance that I have to discuss with you. Have
Speaker 1: you looked at your Wikipedia page recently. Oh no, I
Speaker 1: have not. I there's a photo of you from two
Speaker 1: thousand twelve on it, and you look a lot like
Speaker 1: Burt Reynolds. I mean, that is the high possible compliment
Speaker 1: I can possibly give someone. Is it the picture? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 1: turtleneck and uh yeah, it's god one of the best
Speaker 1: pictures ever taken of me, and God bless whoever decided
Speaker 1: that should be my picture. It's a really good picture.
Speaker 1: We should all be so lucky to be immortalized looking
Speaker 1: like Burt Reynolds. Uh. All right, So we're talking about
Speaker 1: the upbringing of Charles Dederick, um dead rich whatever. I
Speaker 1: never do quite as much research as I should do
Speaker 1: on how to pronounce things. But what are you gonna do?
Speaker 1: Listen to another podcast that exists it? Yeah, so Charles,
Speaker 1: one of the men who was most thoroughly chronicled. Charles
Speaker 1: Dederic credits the fact that he started drinking and the
Speaker 1: fact that he became an atheist less to this H. G.
Speaker 1: Wells book and more to his mother's second marriage. Right, So,
Speaker 1: he says, I read this book and it led me
Speaker 1: to both of you know, to be an atheist, and
Speaker 1: I kind of started drinking not long after. Other people
Speaker 1: who have chronicled desciples say, well, he was really angry
Speaker 1: at his mom for marrying this guy. His mom was
Speaker 1: super religious, so he rejected her religion. And you know,
Speaker 1: drinking is a pretty normal part of teenage rebellions. He's
Speaker 1: an unhappy teen either way. It's probably a mix of things.
Speaker 1: You know, why why not do gift? Yeah? Why not both? Right? Yeah? Um,
Speaker 1: whatever the case, he very quickly developed a serious drinking problem.
Speaker 1: He's one again. You know, it's a disease. He's one
Speaker 1: of those people who it's not just heavy drinking, it's
Speaker 1: immediately like life destruction kind of drinking. Um. He was
Speaker 1: extremely bright and in fact, in high school he earned
Speaker 1: admittance to Notre Dame. But once he graduated and started college,
Speaker 1: he flunked out very quickly because he just couldn't couldn't
Speaker 1: keep a ship together. You know, he was he had
Speaker 1: a he had a problem. Um. He next got a
Speaker 1: job with the Melon family of Carnegie Mellon Fame, but
Speaker 1: he lost it and several other good jobs. Again, dude
Speaker 1: to his his his horrible, horrible alcohol is um. Um.
Speaker 1: He got married, but his abusive drunken behavior destroyed that
Speaker 1: relationship too. In the early nineteen forties, at age twenty nine,
Speaker 1: he caught meningitis, which nearly killed him and left his
Speaker 1: face partly paralyzed. He would spend the rest of his
Speaker 1: life with a droopy I and a facial tick. So
Speaker 1: by the time this guy's forty, he's had a rough life. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, not not doing great. Um. And he kind
Speaker 1: of decides that since his life in Ohio was a disaster,
Speaker 1: he should probably funk off to California and become a
Speaker 1: beach bum, which is a reasonable decision, absolutely perfect career
Speaker 1: for an alcoholic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we've we've all made
Speaker 1: versions of this decision. Kind of everyone who moves out
Speaker 1: west is like, well, ship's not working here, maybe it'll
Speaker 1: be better where there's an ocean. Um, and it is.
Speaker 1: I love the West Coast. But um, so he moves
Speaker 1: to Santa Monica because back in those days, you could
Speaker 1: afford to move to Santa Monica if your life was
Speaker 1: a complete ship show. Um, as opposed to needing to
Speaker 1: be a rich person in whose life is a complete
Speaker 1: show to afford the rent. Now, um, he got a
Speaker 1: job at a hardware store, which again, you could afford
Speaker 1: to live in Santa Monica working at a hardware store
Speaker 1: in the fifties. Um yeah, uh. And he remarried, but
Speaker 1: he kept drinking in a second marriage fell apart two.
Speaker 1: At one point a friend found him passed out on
Speaker 1: the kitchen floor and told him, Fats, So, if you
Speaker 1: don't go to Alcoholics Anonymous, you will die. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't know if that is necessary. Doesn't that really necessary?
Speaker 1: I mean when you play it back in your head later, like, ye,
Speaker 1: he said I was going to die. Oh he also
Speaker 1: called me fat. So he also called me fat. That
Speaker 1: did not need to be in there. Yeah, my friends,
Speaker 1: what he didn't, buddy person, I care about human anything. Well,
Speaker 1: it was the fifties, so they hadn't invented the concept
Speaker 1: of male friendships. Yet it was still justice. Yeah fine, hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: old pal. So that's what he did. He goes to
Speaker 1: a a uh and I'm gonna quote from l A
Speaker 1: magazine here. Um quote. He floundered for the three years
Speaker 1: in the ocean breeze before walking into his first meeting
Speaker 1: of Alcoholics Anonymous part way through debt oric march to
Speaker 1: the podium and shared with the group. People listened they laughed,
Speaker 1: they applauded. Debt Oric was hooked. I went from one
Speaker 1: a a meeting to another every night, he told psychiatrist
Speaker 1: Daniel Carciel, one of a number of social scientists to
Speaker 1: write books on signing on sending on in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: That's all I did. I was the first one to speak,
Speaker 1: and I'd speak all night unless they stopped me. So
Speaker 1: what you're seeing here is a couple of things. Number One,
Speaker 1: this guy's mom is a is a very successful performer.
Speaker 1: He clearly is a good performer, right. He's an engaging
Speaker 1: He's able to like talk for hours at these meetings,
Speaker 1: and I assume some people are, but a lot of
Speaker 1: people just like listening to him. He's got that thing,
Speaker 1: you know, that that that performers and cult leaders have. Um,
Speaker 1: there's not as not as there's a thin line between
Speaker 1: being a good stand up comedian and having what it
Speaker 1: takes to be a cult leader. I mean not every
Speaker 1: entertainer is a cult leader, but every cult leader isn't
Speaker 1: entertainer mhm. And every entertainer has to do at least
Speaker 1: elements of cult things, which is not inherently bad. Right,
Speaker 1: there's good aspects to it. Yeah, a good party is
Speaker 1: a cult that ends at midnight or so you know,
Speaker 1: or two or three in the morning. Um, so yeah,
Speaker 1: he becomes inn And what Charles does. This is the
Speaker 1: thing you also see with some people, including some people
Speaker 1: who credit A with saving their lives. He gets addicted
Speaker 1: to the program, right, um, which is sometimes necessary. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you have to replace one addiction with another before you
Speaker 1: can you know. Um. And even though like a A
Speaker 1: is really what saves him, he's still open to other
Speaker 1: treatments for his disease, and he's still experimenting with other things.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen fifty eight u se l A offers
Speaker 1: him another path to recovery. L s D C the
Speaker 1: late fifties were this wonderful error. There's all this gleeful
Speaker 1: experimentation with acid. They're trying it for every thing, and
Speaker 1: it just so happens that LSD has been shown to
Speaker 1: have a serious documented of efficacy at treating alcoholism. One
Speaker 1: analysis of studies conducted in the UK and the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties suggested that fifty nine percent of patients who took
Speaker 1: LSD showed reduced levels of alcohol misuse UM and it
Speaker 1: was very durable, like the lasting six months or longer.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of theories that multiple like just doing
Speaker 1: LSD once or twice a year could be like an
Speaker 1: effective long term solution. Um which again I'm a big
Speaker 1: advocate of the medical use of psychedelics. There's some incredible stuff.
Speaker 1: They're doing LSD once or twice a year sounds very
Speaker 1: pleasant and reasonable. Yeah. Yeah, it's a very healthy way
Speaker 1: to think. Um yeah, especially when you compare it to
Speaker 1: crippling alcoholism. You know that tripping twice a year and
Speaker 1: fucking I don't know, putting on some King Crimson much better.
Speaker 1: Um So. In the nineteen sixty two Charles called taking
Speaker 1: LSD quote the most important single experience of my life. Now.
Speaker 1: Interestingly though, he didn't credit it with curing his alcoholism,
Speaker 1: because I think a A had really is what he
Speaker 1: credited with that, And he doesn't I mentioned how effective
Speaker 1: it is because I don't want to be making like
Speaker 1: LSD is a very promising treatment for alcoholism. That's not
Speaker 1: what it does for Charles. Um. He doesn't. It doesn't
Speaker 1: cure him. He credits it with unlocking a new person,
Speaker 1: basically fundamentally changing him. He says that it creates it
Speaker 1: helps him like unlock new confidence in himself. Quote, I
Speaker 1: became a different person, really and truly. Everything that has
Speaker 1: happened to me since sinning on everything dates from that
Speaker 1: point um. And interestingly, Charles did not suggest or allow
Speaker 1: his later followers to take LSD. UM. He considered his
Speaker 1: reaction to the drug to be unique um as a
Speaker 1: result of the fact that he was better than people
Speaker 1: like ordinary people. Right, he had a special LSD experience
Speaker 1: that other people couldn't half because he was special. Um.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty one, one of his followers, somebody who
Speaker 1: talked him about his experiences on acid, wrote this quote,
Speaker 1: Chuck was an atypical patient, and that he experienced no regression,
Speaker 1: no sensory enhancement, or hallucinations during the active period of
Speaker 1: LSD intoxication. His normal traits merely appeared in a sort
Speaker 1: of caricature. One phrase that came into his mind impressed him.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter, but at the same time, it matters exquisitely.
Speaker 1: He would go to his room and give way to
Speaker 1: tears for an hour or more every day. Even with
Speaker 1: the seeming grief, there was euphoria, which is I hate
Speaker 1: to tell you, Chuck a very normal acid experience. Like
Speaker 1: I said, I used to do that a couple of
Speaker 1: times a week. But you're not special. Um. But he's
Speaker 1: convinced that his reaction to LSD is unique. UM. And
Speaker 1: he's it also, you know, it can change your personality.
Speaker 1: I have had trips that I walked away from a
Speaker 1: fundamentally different person. Not every not most trips, Like I've
Speaker 1: had one or two in the hundreds of times that
Speaker 1: I can credit to fundamentally altering some aspect of myself. Um.
Speaker 1: But this happens with Chuck, and in this case it's
Speaker 1: not a good thing. Um. So the combination of alcoholics, anonymous,
Speaker 1: and Chuck's newfound acid given confidence had a profound impact.
Speaker 1: As l A Magazine writes, quote after the acid experiment
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty seven, he was one year sober at
Speaker 1: the time. I also hear fifty eight. I don't know
Speaker 1: one of those years. Den Eric became a voracious a
Speaker 1: voracious reader of philosophy and psychology. Looming especially large were
Speaker 1: the nonconformity espoused by Emerson and self reliance, and the
Speaker 1: utopian notions put forth by Thorau and Skinner. Detoric was
Speaker 1: living on thirty three dollars a week unemployment checks, and
Speaker 1: he began to taper off from a a When other
Speaker 1: recovering alcoholics chip checked up on him, Detoric would engage
Speaker 1: them in impromptu meetings equal parts grad school symposiums and
Speaker 1: combative group therapy sessions. Those get togethers became thrice weekly affairs.
Speaker 1: Then one day a young heroin addict named Whitey Walker,
Speaker 1: fresh out of prison, joined the group. As he began
Speaker 1: inviting other dope fiends to the mix the lane, which
Speaker 1: grew coarser, the cross talk, more aggressive. Debtoric loved it.
Speaker 1: The sessions became known as synonons, a portmanteau of symposium
Speaker 1: or perhaps seminar and anonymous Debtoric, who provided couches for
Speaker 1: people to crash on as they kicked heroin, would come
Speaker 1: to believe that addicts weren't full fledged adults and shouldn't
Speaker 1: be treated as adults. The younger adults took to calling
Speaker 1: him Dad. So what happens here is very interesting to me.
Speaker 1: You have a a starts as okay, this institutional approach
Speaker 1: where you just have a couple of doctors or wardens
Speaker 1: just completely controlling the lives of addicts and treating them
Speaker 1: like criminals. That's a horrible way to get people clean.
Speaker 1: What you need is this bottom up leaderless approach, and
Speaker 1: debtoric comes out of that takes the language and some
Speaker 1: of the methods and then turns it to a situation
Speaker 1: where he is in charge and the addicts are children.
Speaker 1: Like it's you know what, this leaderless approach needs a leader.
Speaker 1: M hm, a leader. Yeah, it's almost perfect. The almost
Speaker 1: perfect was perfect. It's just missing a single guy in
Speaker 1: charge of everybody that they called dad. Yeah, it's amazing
Speaker 1: how often this happens in history. Yeah, I mean it's
Speaker 1: this is basically nineteen seventeen, but on a smaller scale. Um. So,
Speaker 1: Now when it comes to like where the name sinn
Speaker 1: Anon came from, and obviously el A magazine says it's
Speaker 1: a mix of symposeum and seminar, I've heard different theories.
Speaker 1: I don't know which is true. Um. Paul Marantz, who's
Speaker 1: probably the number one expert on the cult, claims the
Speaker 1: cauld changed The name was chosen because an addict slurred
Speaker 1: the words symposeum and seminar together. So not a conscious portmanteau.
Speaker 1: A guy who was fucked up and like screwed up
Speaker 1: while talking. Um, I've also heard that it was supposed
Speaker 1: to mean sin Anon like sins anonymous, and that that's
Speaker 1: how it was more often referred to. UM. I don't
Speaker 1: know which is the case. I've heard all of these
Speaker 1: stories and ship that I've read about this. UM. Even
Speaker 1: if this is true, it's worth noting that sinnan On
Speaker 1: was not initially affiliated with Chuck's addiction recovery program. Its
Speaker 1: original name was the Tender Loving Care Club. UM, Loving
Speaker 1: Care Club. Yeah club, that's like the Saturday morning cartoon
Speaker 1: round up. It's it's it's nine am. It's time for
Speaker 1: the Tender Loving Care Club. There's a block of programming
Speaker 1: that's all very positive mm hm. And you will be
Speaker 1: treated like a child by the Tender Loving Cares Club
Speaker 1: TV block too. Yeah. A lot of Transformers getting sold
Speaker 1: during that, So Charles Derek rented a rundown storefront in Venice,
Speaker 1: which at that point was like a shady, crime riddled neighborhood,
Speaker 1: and you could like buy ship. They're very cheap because
Speaker 1: people didn't want to live in Venice. Again. Los Angeles
Speaker 1: was a really different city at this point in time. UM,
Speaker 1: when you're talking about Venice is like like the the
Speaker 1: ship part of town that's ridiculous to me. Um. So
Speaker 1: they get this like crappy little storefront in Venice um,
Speaker 1: and they're all broke as hell. Like when he starts this,
Speaker 1: he basically buys this storefront and they start living there
Speaker 1: kind of illegally, like he in a bunch of addicts
Speaker 1: that he's trying to like help get clean. They were
Speaker 1: all broke, and they survived by begging for stale food
Speaker 1: from catering trucks and taking donations from local prostitutes. Like
Speaker 1: a lot of how they stay alive is local sex
Speaker 1: workers give them money. Um, which is awesome. Right, there's
Speaker 1: like a really cool story in here of like a
Speaker 1: community of people on the outskirts of society taking care
Speaker 1: of each other. At this point, it's still a pretty
Speaker 1: good story, but we are starting to see some troubling
Speaker 1: aspects of Charles too. Um. Their shower was a hose
Speaker 1: that ran through the window. I'm pretty sure there were
Speaker 1: stealing water. You know, it's very punk rock. Actually, Um
Speaker 1: on the on the wall of the building was a
Speaker 1: life saver, like you know, the the things on a
Speaker 1: boat that you throw out. Um that they called the
Speaker 1: USS hang tough. While life was difficult, and they endured
Speaker 1: many privations. Charles urged everyone to pull together and stay,
Speaker 1: promising that a great future would emerge for the group,
Speaker 1: and the system he developed seems to have helped a
Speaker 1: lot of addicts. The the accountability, the constant surveillance of
Speaker 1: a community, the fact they were all always together is
Speaker 1: kind of for people with really serious addictions, one of
Speaker 1: the only ways to stop him from relapsing. Right, you
Speaker 1: need that twenty seven accountability because if you go away
Speaker 1: for a minute, you're gonna you're gonna start using again. Um.
Speaker 1: But what dead Rick saw as the most powerful tool
Speaker 1: of the group, and his most brilliant innovation, was what
Speaker 1: he called the game. And I'm gonna describe what the
Speaker 1: game is to you from a write up in Cabinet Magazine.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's not sinister in any way. No, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: of course not, of course not. It's just ominously called
Speaker 1: the game. The game is not what you know. It's
Speaker 1: not what you would title a Jordan's Peel movie about
Speaker 1: a goal. The culpit murders people, absolutely not. The game
Speaker 1: consisted of a dozen or so addicts sitting in a circle.
Speaker 1: One player would start talking about the appearance or behavior
Speaker 1: of another, picking out their defects and criticizing their character.
Speaker 1: But as soon as the subject of the attack tried
Speaker 1: to defend him or herself, other players would join the barrage,
Speaker 1: unleashing a no holds barred verbal onslaught. Vulgarity was encouraged,
Speaker 1: talk dirty and live clean, said Debtoric, and so the
Speaker 1: other members would accuse the defendant of real and imagined crimes,
Speaker 1: of being selfish, unthinking, of being a no good, ugly
Speaker 1: diseased cocksucker who was too weak to go straight and
Speaker 1: was too much of an asshole junkie, cry baby motherfucker
Speaker 1: to admit it. Faced with this unrelenting group assault, the
Speaker 1: recipient would eventually have little choice but to admit their
Speaker 1: wrongdoing and promised him in their ways. Then the group
Speaker 1: would turn to the next person and begin all over again.
Speaker 1: The first time it hits you, it absolutely destroys you,
Speaker 1: remembered a former game player. No matter how loud you scream,
Speaker 1: they can scream outer recalled another, and no matter how
Speaker 1: long you talk, when you run out of breath, they're
Speaker 1: there to start raving at you and laughing. Emotional catharsis
Speaker 1: was the aim there were only two rules, no drugs
Speaker 1: and no physical violence. It was vicious, but it actually
Speaker 1: seemed to work. One cannot get up, remarked Dedrick until
Speaker 1: he's knocked down. You know, I know that a lot
Speaker 1: of people, uh subscribe to the theory that you must
Speaker 1: you must break come one down in order to build
Speaker 1: them up. But I feel like there has to be
Speaker 1: a better way. Also in terms of games, don't really
Speaker 1: get the game aspect. Yeah, not really a game. It's
Speaker 1: just a Parker Brothers board that cocksuckers scream at each
Speaker 1: other for our better games out there. Um, there are
Speaker 1: better games out there. At least making a charade where
Speaker 1: you have to guess what the person is saying that
Speaker 1: this horrible thing that they're saying about you mm hmm, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean is like there's a and again you can
Speaker 1: see like the elements of Like I have dealt with
Speaker 1: addiction at various points in my past, and I've had
Speaker 1: moments where friends were like, you're doing what you're doing
Speaker 1: is stupid and you're hurting yourself and you need to
Speaker 1: fucking stop, and like, yeah, sometimes you do need that
Speaker 1: kind of straight talk. There's interest between straight talk and
Speaker 1: saying you're no good cock sucking piece of shit right, Like,
Speaker 1: that's not straight talk, that's just abuse. But also blame
Speaker 1: it on the fats. So guy, that's the facts of guy.
Speaker 1: He started this path Um. I think there's a line
Speaker 1: to be drawn by why this works and what this
Speaker 1: works it doing. I think what's actually happening here, why
Speaker 1: this contributes to keeping people sober is not that the
Speaker 1: game encourages sobriety. The game encourages cult like group behavior,
Speaker 1: and that discourages drug abuse. It keeps the group because
Speaker 1: trauma bonds people, even trauma that you're inflicting on each
Speaker 1: other can bond groups of people together. It's like it's
Speaker 1: a codependent relationship kind of. And they've all been instructed
Speaker 1: to do this by dad. Yes, yeah, by dad. Would
Speaker 1: Chuck participate in the game, Oh yes, you would lead
Speaker 1: and you did not insult That's what I wanted to know. Yeah, no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: Chuck is not getting insulted alongside everyone else. Chuck was
Speaker 1: just now you go and to yell at people. He
Speaker 1: was very good at screaming at people. Um, and it's um.
Speaker 1: I also think there's a line to be drawn here
Speaker 1: between what they're doing and kind of how the military
Speaker 1: basic training at least used to work. Um. I don't
Speaker 1: know now, but like I know friends who have described,
Speaker 1: particularly Marine corpsas training as a game. It's a game,
Speaker 1: and when you understand the rules, you understand how to
Speaker 1: do it, and like what you need to do in
Speaker 1: order to like get through. What kind of and it bonds?
Speaker 1: What are the things that bonds the unit together? Is
Speaker 1: how shitty the experiences? Um? And that's I think what's
Speaker 1: keeping people off of drugs. I don't think it's any
Speaker 1: magic about the game. It's just you put a bunch
Speaker 1: of people together, you traumatize them, and they kind of
Speaker 1: can't exist outside of the group. But if the group
Speaker 1: has committed to sobriety, they'll stay sober, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: that's what I'm reading from this. Yeah. I mean, speaking
Speaker 1: as a person who has been insulted in my life,
Speaker 1: it has not helped me. Yeah, it does not know,
Speaker 1: it has not helped me. No. Um. De Derek had
Speaker 1: invented the game by mixing a a's teachings with ship
Speaker 1: he vaguely remembered about psychiatry from articles he had read
Speaker 1: and a boy. So you know it's good and also
Speaker 1: a bunch of parts of Ralph Waldo Emerson's one essay
Speaker 1: self Reliance Now. The core of his philosophy was to
Speaker 1: fix people with tough love, to make them comfortable by
Speaker 1: first making them very uncomfortable. Over time, he developed a
Speaker 1: catch phrase which he used to greet addicts on their
Speaker 1: first morning in the house. Today is the first day
Speaker 1: of the rest of your life. He's the one who
Speaker 1: invented that. Wow, yeah, weird, right, and it's you can
Speaker 1: you can see. There's both a very optimistic recovery angle
Speaker 1: to that, like your life starts again now you don't
Speaker 1: you're not bound to your past, you're not bound to
Speaker 1: make the same mistakes. But also that can be very culty.
Speaker 1: It can go either way as and now you have
Speaker 1: a new life with us as part of this group,
Speaker 1: and you'll never yeah yeah, So it can mean both things.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty eight, Detoric incorporated his facility as a nonprofit.
Speaker 1: Over the next two years, a standard routine evolved. New
Speaker 1: members were asked to quit drugs cold turkey, and as
Speaker 1: they got over being dope sick, they were gradually welcomed
Speaker 1: into the communal life of the club. There was hard labor,
Speaker 1: but There was also constant mutual support in group therapy.
Speaker 1: The game was played three times per week. Members were
Speaker 1: forbidden from any drugs save coffee and cigarettes, which were
Speaker 1: in veil double in unlimited quantities at all times, which
Speaker 1: is I think has been from most of the history
Speaker 1: of addition recovery pretty common. People smoke and drink coffee
Speaker 1: fucking constantly, you know, whatever you gotta do. Um. Oddly enough,
Speaker 1: peanut butter sandwiches were also always available, and I think
Speaker 1: it's just because Charles Dedoric liked them. Um, so obviously
Speaker 1: they must be good for addicts. Um. This will be
Speaker 1: the beginning of a pattern. Um. Fairly quickly, Chuck proved
Speaker 1: to have a peculiar genius from marketing. The term sent
Speaker 1: and on had been used internally for a while, and
Speaker 1: he decided to adopt it as the name of the group.
Speaker 1: To its early members, sent and On was a very
Speaker 1: real life saver. In the late nineteen fifties, drug addiction
Speaker 1: had become a source a matter of national concern, similar
Speaker 1: to how the prohibition movement had taken over the country
Speaker 1: at the turn of the century. Newspapers and radio broadcasters
Speaker 1: warned constantly about the dope monster ravaging the United States.
Speaker 1: The governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller, claimed that fifty
Speaker 1: percent of crimes in his state could be linked to
Speaker 1: drug Whether this was true or not mattered less than
Speaker 1: the fact that people believed it. State lawmakers followed the
Speaker 1: public outcry with a raft of narcotics bills aimed at
Speaker 1: criminalizing drug users. Most recommended mandatory minimum sentences to try
Speaker 1: and discourage drug addiction. This did not work, but it
Speaker 1: kept being done. In the mid nineteen fifties, California's Department
Speaker 1: of Corrections started building facilities for narcotics violators for people
Speaker 1: who wanted to get cleaned. There were basically no community resources.
Speaker 1: Your only option was one of two kinds of incarceration.
Speaker 1: You could get convicted and sent to prison, or you
Speaker 1: could get sent to an asylum. So obviously alcoholism has
Speaker 1: started to get an understand there's a nothing like that
Speaker 1: existed for narcotics, and that's becoming a problem. So sent
Speaker 1: it On kind of blows up because it's really the
Speaker 1: first organized attempts someone has to dealing with the problem
Speaker 1: of narcotics addiction. One early member of Senting On was
Speaker 1: Lena Lindsay. She was a dope addict, and before she
Speaker 1: found senting on she spent time in jail and also
Speaker 1: spent time in Camailo State Hospital, one of the first
Speaker 1: facilities to open an asylum for addicts. You couldn't just
Speaker 1: check yourself into Camarilla, though. You had to go to court,
Speaker 1: admit you were an addict and be sentenced or admitted
Speaker 1: to the hospital UM, which is not ideal making drug
Speaker 1: addicts go to court before they can get treatment UM,
Speaker 1: but Lena did. She had enough of her problem that
Speaker 1: she was like, fuck it, I'll go before a judge.
Speaker 1: And she got sent there for ninety days. And it
Speaker 1: was not a great program. Quote. I didn't think it
Speaker 1: was a rehab place. I just thought it was a
Speaker 1: place for me to get clean. That's where my mind was.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to get clean. Camarilla was fine. I
Speaker 1: think I stayed loaded more than anything else. So she
Speaker 1: continued to get high. They kept me in the admitting ward.
Speaker 1: I helped with new people who would come in to me.
Speaker 1: That was a nuthouse. I had no expectations. I'll put
Speaker 1: it that way. There was no program. I helped them
Speaker 1: with other patients. Remember I was on the admitting ward
Speaker 1: and I helped them with other patients. I helped them
Speaker 1: give shock treatment and I stayed loaded. While I was there,
Speaker 1: my boyfriend would come to visit. After thirty days, you
Speaker 1: could have visits and my boyfriend would come. Me and
Speaker 1: another girl we were were on the ward together. Our
Speaker 1: boyfriends would sneak us drugs. I don't think the staff
Speaker 1: knew what they we were doing. It was different than
Speaker 1: being in jail, that's for sure. There was no place
Speaker 1: in my time. There was just no place for drug addicts,
Speaker 1: none at all. So not a great drug addiction program.
Speaker 1: If you can, you know, get heroin there. Um and
Speaker 1: I mean I guess because at this at this time,
Speaker 1: narcotics are definitely seen as a moral failing across the board.
Speaker 1: Yes's nobody that's saying. People are somewhat more understanding understanding
Speaker 1: of alcoholism than they are started to be. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: um so. Lena first heard about sinning On through the
Speaker 1: television via a local news broadcast. She described her first
Speaker 1: impression of it as quote, this place on the beach
Speaker 1: that was supposed to be helping dope fiends. And by
Speaker 1: the way, that's what they called each other and sent
Speaker 1: and on they called each other dope fiends Um. Over
Speaker 1: the months as she struggled with her addiction and went
Speaker 1: into and out of treatment, other addicts she knew started
Speaker 1: talking about Sinning On, saying stuff like they give you cigarettes,
Speaker 1: they feed you. When Lena first showed up, Chuck took
Speaker 1: her around and then told her to leave. His attitude
Speaker 1: was addicts should get a tour, see what the place
Speaker 1: had to offer, and then be sent back to their
Speaker 1: disastrous lives so they would hit rock bottom again and
Speaker 1: realize how important it was to get straightened out right.
Speaker 1: That was the standard procedure UM, but she convinced Chuck
Speaker 1: to let her join straight away, and Lena became the
Speaker 1: first black member of sinnan on Um. The organization quickly
Speaker 1: grew to be significantly more integrated than mainstream American society
Speaker 1: at the time. This is one thing I haven't heard
Speaker 1: any allegations he was racist. They were actually really ahead
Speaker 1: of their time in terms. It was a fully integrated
Speaker 1: program and eventually kind of a fully integrated version of
Speaker 1: society UM. And as fucked up as the game sounds,
Speaker 1: Lena found it useful, uh, and she explained to an
Speaker 1: interviewer quote it was in the game that I started
Speaker 1: learning how to tell the truth. Because us drug addicts,
Speaker 1: we believed our own bullshit in order to do what
Speaker 1: we did and live the lifestyle. I guess we had
Speaker 1: to believe the mess that we told ourselves. It was
Speaker 1: after one of the games, big heavy games. I went
Speaker 1: to my room, I went to bed, and I started
Speaker 1: thinking about what they talked to me about in the
Speaker 1: game and how I defended it and I was lying.
Speaker 1: And that's when I started learning how to tell the
Speaker 1: truth to myself, To thy own self, be truthful. That
Speaker 1: was one of my favorite concepts. The old man Debtoric
Speaker 1: gave me to thy own self be truthful. When I
Speaker 1: was in my bed by myself, I copped to myself
Speaker 1: what a liar I was. And in my next game,
Speaker 1: I copped out on myself. That started me to telling
Speaker 1: the truth. I didn't tell the truth all the time.
Speaker 1: It had to get to be a habit. You know
Speaker 1: this type of thing. I mean, people can I guess
Speaker 1: the relationships that you form within a a Let's say,
Speaker 1: people can they're allowed to call you out, maybe not
Speaker 1: in a meeting in front of everybody, but you know,
Speaker 1: if you have a sponsor can call you out, if
Speaker 1: you're spinning some bullshit and without it being like a
Speaker 1: complete breaking down of you, just somebody keeping you in check. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, and that's that's hugely important. And I don't
Speaker 1: think Lena, you know, I think there's very abusive aspects
Speaker 1: to the game obviously, but for people who had never
Speaker 1: had anyone to call all them out because maybe all
Speaker 1: of their friends are also addicted, everyone's an enabler. I
Speaker 1: I can see why that would be a value, even
Speaker 1: though there's also clearly toxic aspects. I mean, because part
Speaker 1: of being an addict, A big part of being an
Speaker 1: addict is lying. You have to constantly be lying to
Speaker 1: other people, to yourself. You have to be justifying what
Speaker 1: you're doing at all times. Yeah, and you have to
Speaker 1: be able to lie to yourself before you can convincingly
Speaker 1: lie to other people. Um, that's like the most important
Speaker 1: aspect of doing that. You have to make it so
Speaker 1: that the lying to other people is that well, they
Speaker 1: don't under they'll never understand. So I have to just
Speaker 1: gloss over this because they I just can't make them
Speaker 1: see why this is necessary for me exactly. And I
Speaker 1: am you know, It's one of those things again, we've
Speaker 1: talked about like how kind of abusive aspects of the
Speaker 1: game is. It's also probably fair to say this is
Speaker 1: the best narcotics addiction treatment available to people for southern
Speaker 1: California or anywhere in the country really at this period
Speaker 1: of time. But there's not really a lot of options. Uh. Um,
Speaker 1: So folks, you know, do what they can, and um, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know who else does what they can? Paul, I
Speaker 1: bet it's goods and services exactly, the goods and services
Speaker 1: that support this podcast are you know, obviously now we
Speaker 1: have a solution to all kinds of addiction, and it's capitalism. Look, you,
Speaker 1: we all need the dopamine fix that a needle of
Speaker 1: heroin gives us, But why not buy a mattress instead?
Speaker 1: That's all I'm saying. You know, all right, here's here's
Speaker 1: some products. Uh, we're back. We're just thinking about products, services,
Speaker 1: the intersection of those twos. Thank you, Thank you, products
Speaker 1: and services. Thank you. In nineteen six, Chuck Dederic moved
Speaker 1: sent and On from the CD storefront in Venice to
Speaker 1: an empty National Guard armory in Santa Monica. He had
Speaker 1: about sixty five members at this time. They were immediately
Speaker 1: unpopular among the nimbi types who lived near the facility.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, you know it is southern California. It hasn't
Speaker 1: all changed. Ten days after moving in, he was arrested
Speaker 1: for operating a hospital without a license, which I agree
Speaker 1: that should be a crime, but also they were I
Speaker 1: think it was kind of bullshit, like he he wasn't
Speaker 1: operating a hospital. He was doing something no one else
Speaker 1: was really doing. Anyway, he was convicted. The court offered
Speaker 1: him probation if he would agree to move out of
Speaker 1: the armory, and as an active protest, he declined, and
Speaker 1: he went to jail for twenty five days instead. Now
Speaker 1: the news picks up on this and sent it. On
Speaker 1: had started to generate a significant amount of buzz over
Speaker 1: the last couple of years, and his decision to go
Speaker 1: to jail for his beliefs rather than moved was the
Speaker 1: best buzz marketing he could have done. He becomes a
Speaker 1: hero all across California, a brave trailblazer fighting the scourge
Speaker 1: of dope addiction and and out of touch court system.
Speaker 1: Governor Edmund Brown signed a bill into law that gave
Speaker 1: sinnon On specifically a special exemption from health licensing laws.
Speaker 1: Um So this becomes a big enough thing that the
Speaker 1: governor signs a bill into law to allow this specific
Speaker 1: program to exist. Now, under the bill, the Medical Board
Speaker 1: of the State of California was supposed to establish special
Speaker 1: rules for Sinnonon to follow. They never got around to
Speaker 1: doing that. Um they were supposed to though, Um sure yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: Chuck's time in prison had made him a martyr, and
Speaker 1: the fawning media attention had made him into a national
Speaker 1: hero of the dope epidemic. Donation started to flow in.
Speaker 1: Wealthy celebrities began dropping by, some for treatment and others
Speaker 1: just to explore the new sober society that Chuck de
Speaker 1: Eric was building in his facility. Leonard Nimoy made a
Speaker 1: habit of stopping by to play the game with X addicts. Um,
Speaker 1: so you can imagine Leonard Nimoy just like screaming cocksucker
Speaker 1: and a a bunch of dope feeds and Santa Monica. Well,
Speaker 1: it makes me sad to think that some he would
Speaker 1: be yelling mean things at Leonard Nimoy. I don't think
Speaker 1: anyone yelled at Leonard Nimo. I have trouble believing that
Speaker 1: he took the sort of more of a Chuck role
Speaker 1: in the when pay Yeah, I'm guessing he was more
Speaker 1: of a chuck in this. I just can't imagine anyone
Speaker 1: yelling at Leonard Nimoy aside from Bill Shatner. This so
Speaker 1: so at this point, at this point, no one leaves
Speaker 1: chuck once they get into right, they are they are.
Speaker 1: It's kind of up. He claims an eight success Right.
Speaker 1: There are people who will say that never more than
Speaker 1: seventy or eighty people graduated. But some people are graduating,
Speaker 1: but a lot of them don't want to graduate. A
Speaker 1: lot of them want to stay in this community. And
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that in a little bit here. Um So,
Speaker 1: a number of very prominent jazz musicians also became members
Speaker 1: because obviously jazz musicians do a lot of drugs. Um
Speaker 1: When they wanted to become clean, they would go to
Speaker 1: sin and On and they would start playing music there.
Speaker 1: And they actually formed a sin and On jazz band
Speaker 1: and cut an album called The Sounds of Synanon. Uh.
Speaker 1: Their band played on the Steve Allen Show. Um So,
Speaker 1: like yeah, they're like this is like a big cultural
Speaker 1: thing at the time. Now, one reason for Cinnon's popularity
Speaker 1: was that, you know, the civil rights movement is starting
Speaker 1: to become popular with the Hollywood set in the early sixties,
Speaker 1: and sent it on as fully integrated UM, and I
Speaker 1: haven't found evidence that he was. He was certainly for
Speaker 1: his time very progressive on race UM. In nineteen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: a black sex worker and dope addict named Betty Coleman
Speaker 1: came to send It on for help. Betty later told
Speaker 1: an interviewer, I think I stayed those first two or
Speaker 1: three days just out of total fascination. She said up
Speaker 1: her first encounter with Synanon in nineteen fifty nine, I
Speaker 1: was sick as a dog. I was going through the
Speaker 1: usual withdrawal symptoms and everything, but I was just fascinated.
Speaker 1: I had never been around addicts and such a motley
Speaker 1: lot of you know people. It was a weird scene.
Speaker 1: I got caught up in it. So Betty leaves and
Speaker 1: relapses a couple of times, but she keeps coming back,
Speaker 1: and eventually, in the early sixties she stays for good
Speaker 1: and she and Chuck get married UM, and she becomes
Speaker 1: like the co leader of Sinning On with him. UM.
Speaker 1: So there's a very progressive like. And again another one
Speaker 1: of these things is that like sitting on I don't
Speaker 1: care if you were a sex worker. I don't care
Speaker 1: like what you did. There's no judgment here other than
Speaker 1: the judgment that you were a dope addict and not
Speaker 1: an adult. You know, like it. It is like will
Speaker 1: we will continually judge you on them, Yeah, for the
Speaker 1: rest of your life, but also less than society outside will,
Speaker 1: which you do have to keep in mind at this point,
Speaker 1: you know. Um and the fact that everyone except for
Speaker 1: Chuck is getting judged equally harshly. I think there's a
Speaker 1: kind of radical egalitarianism to that that was, again to
Speaker 1: people in the margins of society, very compelling. Um So,
Speaker 1: Sinnon starts holding massive weekly parties with a jazz band
Speaker 1: and lots of cigarettes but no drugs or alcohol, and again,
Speaker 1: celebrities would drop by all the time. James Mason, Jane Fonda,
Speaker 1: Milton Burrow, and Natalie Wood were all guests of sinning
Speaker 1: On and multiple points Ray Adbury and Rod Serling gave
Speaker 1: lectures on site. Um So, this is like a big deal. Like,
Speaker 1: those are some fucking names. The only one that's weird
Speaker 1: to me, honestly is Milton Burl. Milton Burl, right, the Milton.
Speaker 1: I gotta explore other belief systems. This this is my
Speaker 1: one time. It's uh, let's let's see what's going on.
Speaker 1: It's weird that he that he was there. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that Milton Burrel and Leonard Nimoy might have wound up
Speaker 1: screaming cocksucker and a bunch of junkies is a weird
Speaker 1: thing that could have happened. Um. By nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 1: cent and On was a bona fide phenomenon. It reached
Speaker 1: its apex of relevance and tried it in true Hollywood
Speaker 1: fashion with a major motion picture, Columbia Pictures debut, Yeah
Speaker 1: baby Ah and the trailer for this is fucking great
Speaker 1: Columbia Pictures to be feued sinning On in nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 1: Edmund O'Brien played Chuck Dettoric and Eartha Kit played Betty. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Eartha Kit, I kind of want to see the movie.
Speaker 1: I've seen the trailer and I love Eartha Kit right
Speaker 1: like she's fucking rad. Yeah. The movie tagline was dope
Speaker 1: then screamed the truth about the house where they lived together,
Speaker 1: love together while they fight their way back, And it
Speaker 1: was from the trailer. I think it was a very
Speaker 1: horny movie um like as Horny as You Could Be
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty five, um Sinnanon also earned praise in
Speaker 1: the halls of power. U S. Senator Thomas J. Dodd
Speaker 1: declared in Congress that the program could quote lead the
Speaker 1: way in the future to an effective treatment for not
Speaker 1: only drug adicts, but also criminals and juvenile delinquents. He
Speaker 1: called sinning On the miracle on the beach. The psychologist
Speaker 1: Abraham Maslow also praised Cinnanon's no crap therapy. Courts started
Speaker 1: sinn addicts to Sinnnon as a condition of their parole. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is all gonna so. By the mid sixties, at
Speaker 1: the height of its popularity, Sinnaon had turned the art
Speaker 1: of keeping junkies clean into what it considered to be
Speaker 1: a science. Their first rule was that new addicts had
Speaker 1: to detox without any kind of medication. We're talking pure
Speaker 1: cold turkey here. Um. They generally be left on a
Speaker 1: couch or a bed to suffer through the shakes until
Speaker 1: they were well enough to partake in communal life. Because
Speaker 1: the real trick of sentaon it wasn't the treatment, it
Speaker 1: wasn't even the game. It was the fact that Chuck
Speaker 1: detoric was offering his members an entirely new vision of life.
Speaker 1: He had created a miniature society with its own social morays,
Speaker 1: in its own ways of policing behavior. From Cabinet Magazine quote,
Speaker 1: As long as people worked washing dishes, waxing floors, ironing laundry,
Speaker 1: painting walls, picking up food donations, they never had to leave.
Speaker 1: Cinndon was also self policed. You were expected to report
Speaker 1: those breaking the rules. Those who slacked off, who failed
Speaker 1: to tell someone else were taken to task in the game.
Speaker 1: Those who smuggled in contraband were given a haircut, A
Speaker 1: private dressing down from a senior member, repeated in fractions
Speaker 1: led to banishment. Put a pin in that haircut. Thing.
Speaker 1: So far not bad, right, you do bad ship, you
Speaker 1: get a private, perfectly held it. But they're running on
Speaker 1: the honor system. Well, there's some other things that are
Speaker 1: wrong there. But perhaps Cyndon's greatest innovation was realizing that
Speaker 1: addics knew more about addiction than medical specialists. The dope fiend,
Speaker 1: as Debtor consisted they be known, was painfully familiar with
Speaker 1: the tactics of denial and evasion that their colleagues used.
Speaker 1: What's more, they shared the same language. There was no wei,
Speaker 1: they and sent and on. If you spoke about caps
Speaker 1: and Binny's turp and horse, everyone knew what you were
Speaker 1: talking about. As for ded Oric, he was never coy
Speaker 1: about his role. I am considered a megalomaniacal nut, he declared,
Speaker 1: Of course this is true, but I'm not so crazy.
Speaker 1: He freely admitted to populating Syndon's board of directors with
Speaker 1: recovering addicts whom he could control. But no one doubted
Speaker 1: that this was wise and canny thinking. After all, those
Speaker 1: were dope fiends, and Debtoric was entering uncharted territory. Debtoric
Speaker 1: predicted that within three to five years at Cinnanon, a
Speaker 1: dope fiend would be ready to graduate back to the
Speaker 1: outside world. No one doubted debtoric sincerity. No worried about
Speaker 1: the ambiguous undertones to his most famous maxim, the one
Speaker 1: he told to those to each new arrival at Synanon,
Speaker 1: today is the first day of the rest of your life.
Speaker 1: Now what's interesting to me is that he's very open.
Speaker 1: He calls himself megalomaniacal. He basically says, I am the
Speaker 1: dictator of dope fiends, But Hey, American society in the sixties.
Speaker 1: You know, these people are mental children. They have to
Speaker 1: have a dictator and that's me, and this is good
Speaker 1: for society, and everyone says, yeah, that's scans. Um. I
Speaker 1: wonder how much of this is because he was like
Speaker 1: the in like the hierarchy of addicts that maybe an
Speaker 1: alcoholic outranks a dope that these I mean, because he's
Speaker 1: not he's because this is is it exclusively narcotics that
Speaker 1: people are coming to see he's drunk? It's mostly narcotics,
Speaker 1: because most drunks, you know, there's other things for them.
Speaker 1: It's mostly narcotics. Addicts people primarily I think heroin more
Speaker 1: than anything else. Um. And yeah, I suspect that is
Speaker 1: maybe an aspect of it is that he uh, he
Speaker 1: thinks these people are easier to control, you know, a
Speaker 1: dope addict is easier, is easy for someone like him
Speaker 1: to manipulate. Um. I think that's probably his attitude. And
Speaker 1: it's certainly the attitude like out again, nobody thinks this
Speaker 1: is weird or abusive what he's doing right, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, of course, the only thing for addicts is fascism.
Speaker 1: So from the beginning, graduation was very rare. While sending
Speaker 1: on claimed like a success rate, Chuck was increasingly reluctant
Speaker 1: to declare anyone cured. And again, a a to day,
Speaker 1: it's really hard to get good information on who actually
Speaker 1: how long people stay sober. It's the same thing for
Speaker 1: all rehab. Right rehab programs in general super sketchy about
Speaker 1: giving you solid numbers about relapses and whatnot. Um And
Speaker 1: it makes sense that Chuck wouldn't want to declare anyone
Speaker 1: cured because a cured person can relapse and that might
Speaker 1: throw the wisdom of your methods into question. Right. For
Speaker 1: another thing, if people get better, really better, then they'll
Speaker 1: leave Synanon. And in Chuck's head, Cynanon was already an
Speaker 1: improvement on and a replacement from mainstream society. So he
Speaker 1: doesn't want people to get out. And so when it
Speaker 1: seemed like his members were on the path to recovery,
Speaker 1: Chuck would warn them that they were still addicts. Now
Speaker 1: this isn't necessarily unreasonable, right, there's certainly an attitude you'll see.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's universal. Typ You're like, well, you're
Speaker 1: always an alcoholic, you're always an addict, And that's not
Speaker 1: necessarily that's not to like talk down to somebody. It's
Speaker 1: to keep in mind that, like, you always have to
Speaker 1: have an eye on this this part of yourself. Right.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's an unreasonable thing necessarily. Um. But
Speaker 1: Chuck was prone to more unsettling outbursts. He would tell
Speaker 1: members that as long as they still loved their mothers,
Speaker 1: they would never get over their drug problems. He would
Speaker 1: urge them to avoid family and was adamant that members must, well,
Speaker 1: here's your yea, this is innovative. Yeah. Um. He would
Speaker 1: urge them to avoid family, and he was adamant that
Speaker 1: members must follow his instructions to a t and stay
Speaker 1: in the group to have the best odds of staying sober.
Speaker 1: He frequently said that quote giving freedom to think to
Speaker 1: a dope addict is like giving a gun to a baby.
Speaker 1: Oh it's great. So we've hit the point where it
Speaker 1: becomes problematic, right, it's a it's a mixed bag, maybe
Speaker 1: even more bad than good. And by the late sixties,
Speaker 1: the worm has started to turn a bit um. By
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, ten years after its founding, sinning On
Speaker 1: had at least eleven hundred members and and again even
Speaker 1: people who lived there thousands more have done some aspect
Speaker 1: of the programs right right UM, and it was receiving
Speaker 1: about two and a half million dollars a year in donations.
Speaker 1: This is the modern equivalent of about nineteen million dollars.
Speaker 1: The program expanded massively, buying up an additional seven million
Speaker 1: in real estate in Santa Monico, West l A, San Diego,
Speaker 1: San Francisco, Tomales, Bay Reno, New York, New York City, Detroit,
Speaker 1: and Puerto Rico. So this becomes like an empire, like
Speaker 1: he owns a lot of southern California. Now, since addicts
Speaker 1: come from every strata of society, sent it on members
Speaker 1: included gifted entrepreneur, There's a lot of people who were
Speaker 1: like homeless, who were you know, sex workers. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of people who were wealthy businessmen, lawyers, and he
Speaker 1: sets these folks to work buying up and using their
Speaker 1: money to buy up for the for sent and on
Speaker 1: a string of gas stations. UM. This eventually leads to
Speaker 1: him in the late sixties opening the door up to professionals,
Speaker 1: even those without drug addictions, who were interested in this
Speaker 1: new version of society that he was crafting. All they
Speaker 1: had to do to join and if you weren't an addict,
Speaker 1: was transfer your assets to the organization, And a number
Speaker 1: of people do this. This might be where it's become
Speaker 1: a cult. Yeah wow, I mean Jesus just like that's
Speaker 1: that's I mean, that's one of those situations where I'm out,
Speaker 1: Like if I mean you say that, Paul, I'm starting
Speaker 1: my cult. And if you are a wealthy businessman, you
Speaker 1: can live on the property that I buy with your
Speaker 1: money if you give your money to me. That's that's
Speaker 1: the behind the bastards guarantee. Now, will that property get
Speaker 1: rated by the f D A, Will our compound be
Speaker 1: burned down by an FBI f D A assault? Of course,
Speaker 1: of course, But that doesn't mean you can't help me
Speaker 1: own a string of gas stations. This is what I
Speaker 1: love about cult people is that it's always the point
Speaker 1: where it goes a little they get a little too greedy,
Speaker 1: where it's like, guess what if you just had the
Speaker 1: string of gas stations. That's not bad people need, that's
Speaker 1: not bad people. Yeah, where do you want to go
Speaker 1: buy gas? Well, let's buy gas from the the addiction
Speaker 1: Recovery program that for some reason owns a bunch of
Speaker 1: gas stations. Yeah, why not, um, But no, things go
Speaker 1: wildly off the rails very quickly at this point. So
Speaker 1: by early nineteen sixty four, sent it On had started
Speaker 1: advertising itself not as an addiction recovery program, but as
Speaker 1: an alternative society. Debtoric would draw in people by emphasizing
Speaker 1: that Sinnoon could help them live a quote self examined life.
Speaker 1: He started using some of the millions they had accumulated
Speaker 1: to build their first city in Marin County the end
Speaker 1: of the nineteen sixty And by the way, if you're
Speaker 1: building a city for your cold, you could do I mean,
Speaker 1: Marin Counties wonderful location for absolutely way better than Waco. Um,
Speaker 1: I mean, pricier than Wago, but less lamable. So the
Speaker 1: end of the nineteen sixties and the Summer of Love
Speaker 1: brought about a mass fascination with the idea of communes
Speaker 1: and of communal living. And this is all tied into win.
Speaker 1: You know, sent it On makes this turn. So this
Speaker 1: Eric gave us, I don't know, the city of Eugene, Oregon.
Speaker 1: But it also was a huge boost for Sinnon. People
Speaker 1: who weren't addicted to anything started being allowed to join. Now,
Speaker 1: not just professionals, anybody who like wanted to join sent
Speaker 1: and On basically as long as you were willing to
Speaker 1: like hand them a bunch of money. Uh. Non. Addicts
Speaker 1: who joined were called squares. Now. Briefly, Chuck toyed with
Speaker 1: the idea of so you've got squares and dope fiends,
Speaker 1: that's what they called themselves and sides. Chuck briefly toyed
Speaker 1: with the idea of letting his addict members leave sent
Speaker 1: it On facilities and live independently as long as they
Speaker 1: worked jobs and sent their money back to the organization.
Speaker 1: But he wound up dropping this idea because it's hard
Speaker 1: to control people who don't live inside the cult, you know.
Speaker 1: Um So, by the end of the nineteen sixties, Cinnaon
Speaker 1: had full lead cross the bridge from New Age addiction
Speaker 1: treatment program to cult. From Cabinet magazine quote when members
Speaker 1: stepped out of line. Now, the haircuts they received were
Speaker 1: literal ones, with men shaved, having their heads shaved for
Speaker 1: bad behavior, and women being forced to wear stocking caps.
Speaker 1: Whereas sex was rampant and Sentnon's early days, now members
Speaker 1: had to ask a Sinnon elder for permission to date,
Speaker 1: and we're forced to follow a strict and celibate courting ritual.
Speaker 1: Glut Raids were routinely run on residents rooms to confiscate
Speaker 1: excessive personal possessions and Debtoric and his elders would instigate
Speaker 1: arbitrary new rules, such as the twenty four hour day,
Speaker 1: in which half of Centnon would go to work at
Speaker 1: night while the other half worked during the day. A
Speaker 1: cent Anon police force patrolled the nearby streets looking for
Speaker 1: members who might be breaking the rules. You know your
Speaker 1: cults doing well when you got your own cops. That's
Speaker 1: the wild, wild country ship. Right. It's exciting to know
Speaker 1: that glut raids prefigured Um Marie Condo, Yeah it is.
Speaker 1: It is nice, right, Yeah, he's it's amaze saying, like
Speaker 1: what a mix of Marie Condo scientology and like maoist China,
Speaker 1: this cult becomes so Charles Alverson was a journalist and
Speaker 1: novelist and a Square who spent six months living at
Speaker 1: a Sinnon center. In an interview with The Fix, he
Speaker 1: said that during his time there in the late sixties,
Speaker 1: he saw synonym as mostly positive, a way to help
Speaker 1: addicts get control over their lives again, but he also
Speaker 1: saw evidence that it was starting to head in a
Speaker 1: very dark direction. Quote. I recall being rooted out of
Speaker 1: bed about midnight to witness a long term members sitting
Speaker 1: in a garbage can with his head shaved because he
Speaker 1: had been caught using. This was quite common and an
Speaker 1: indication of that some of the cured weren't quite so cured.
Speaker 1: Despite the egalitarian veneer of Synanon, det Eric was always
Speaker 1: the father figure, Big Cahuna, boss of bosses. At mass meetings,
Speaker 1: new Synton triumphs were announced and new enemies were announced.
Speaker 1: Such techniques kept the wagons circled. The game evolved from
Speaker 1: being primarily a therapeutic tool to being an instrument of
Speaker 1: social will control. Members were increasingly forced to confess to
Speaker 1: misdeeds during sessions. Secrets were not allowed, and the information
Speaker 1: members gave up about themselves provided the organization with blackmail
Speaker 1: material they could use if they later tried to leave.
Speaker 1: Scientology does the same thing. It's really like very similar
Speaker 1: to like the auditing sessions and stuff in Night exceparates.
Speaker 1: You're in a huge group too, which is an interesting wrinkle.
Speaker 1: In nineteen sixty seven, Charles Dederic decided to end the
Speaker 1: concept of graduation entirely. His justification was that most X
Speaker 1: addicts would revert to using once they left. Now, this
Speaker 1: is still a problem today. Relapse rates for addiction within
Speaker 1: the first year of people who go to modern rehab
Speaker 1: facilities are between forty and six. Chuck considered this unacceptable,
Speaker 1: and the best way to ensure no one relapsed was
Speaker 1: to ensure that no one ever left rehab. He told
Speaker 1: one follower, We're getting out of the dope fiend business now. Now,
Speaker 1: the goal of cent and On was not to perform
Speaker 1: attics to get them clean, to help them take control
Speaker 1: of their lives. If you entered the program, you were
Speaker 1: expected to never leave. The goal was no longer sobriety.
Speaker 1: The goal was to build, with the guidance of Chuck Detoric,
Speaker 1: a new utopian world order destined to take the world
Speaker 1: by storm. Now fully occult leader, Chuck began to insist
Speaker 1: to his followers, this is the kind of revolution that
Speaker 1: moved the world from Judaism to Catholicism, to Protestantism to Sinninism.
Speaker 1: This is a total revolution game. Remember, he's starting his
Speaker 1: addicts trying to get off doubt. He's really going for it.
Speaker 1: He's really going for it. If you're gonna do something,
Speaker 1: do it right. He's really going all the way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's This is the first cult leader since l Ron
Speaker 1: Hubbard who at least is like, yeah, you know what
Speaker 1: you committed. Motherfucker can take that away from you. You
Speaker 1: with all in on this ship. Yeah. Uh, Paul, you
Speaker 1: got any plug doubles to plug? Well? Sure, I always
Speaker 1: like to plug. Um. One of life simple joys I have.
Speaker 1: I have a handful of podcasts happening right now. I
Speaker 1: have the Stay of Homekins with that I do with
Speaker 1: my wife Jenny had Had Tompkins. I have a Freedom,
Speaker 1: which I do with Scott Ackerman and Lauren Lapkus. Um,
Speaker 1: I have uh Star Trek the Pod Directive, which is
Speaker 1: a the official Star Trek podcast that I host with
Speaker 1: Tony Newsome. Those are all free wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker 1: and then uh, if you have a little extra money
Speaker 1: at the end of the month, Um, the Neighborhood Listen
Speaker 1: will be coming back. That will be on Stitcher Premium
Speaker 1: before it becomes free at some point in the indeterminate future. Well,
Speaker 1: I am glad since you do a Star Trek podcast
Speaker 1: that I was able to give you this fun fact
Speaker 1: about Leonard Nemo which I cannot wait to tell Tonny
Speaker 1: this is really well, this has been behind the bastards.
Speaker 1: You can find us various places online, but what you
Speaker 1: should really do is check out my new podcast, the
Speaker 1: audio book of my novel After the Revolution, wherever podcasts
Speaker 1: are sold. You can also find the e book, which
Speaker 1: is being announced, you know, coming out three chapters a
Speaker 1: week on a t r book dot com. That's a
Speaker 1: t r book dot com. It's free. Check it out,
Speaker 1: check out Paul's podcasts, and I don't know, start an
Speaker 1: addiction recovery center that buys up most of southern California
Speaker 1: and creates its own police force. Maybe maybe you'll do
Speaker 1: it nice this time. Maybe maybe you'll be the one
Speaker 1: who figures it out. Part one,