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, 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 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, 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. 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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. 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 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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? 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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. 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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, 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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. 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, 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 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. 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? 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, 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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, 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, 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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. 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 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 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 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 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. 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, 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,