I did a lot of research while writing my memoir, The Cost of Belonging: Breaking Free From the Synanon Cult. Here is some of it, with my comments in italics.
There are over 15,000 substance abuse facilities in the United States today (Substance abuse treatment facilities number by U.S. state 2020 | Statista), many of which are residential self-help organizations.
In 1958, when Charles E. Dederich incorporated Synanon, there were zero. Synanon has rightfully been called the granddaddy of all drug rehab. It was free. How many rehab organizations today are free? Not many.
There were only two rules: No drugs or alcohol and no violence or threat of physical violence.
While rampant today, substance abuse is nothing new. In 1914, Congress passed the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act, in essence making narcotics a federal offense unless medically prescribed. The Harrison Act regulated and taxed the production, importation, and distribution of opiates (derived from opium) and coca. Coca is any of the four cultivated plants in the family Erythroxylaceae, known worldwide for its psychoactive alkaloid, cocaine.[1]
The courts interpreted the Act to mean that physicians could prescribe narcotics to patients in the course of routine treatment but not for the treatment of addiction.
The odor of opium was a dead giveaway to illegal drug use. Eventually, morphine, cocaine, and then heroin took its place. And today, we have fentanyl.
In 1958, there was no cure for addiction. People convicted of heroin possession received jail sentences of two to ten years. They had to kick their habits cold turkey.
In Synanon, people with an addiction also kicked cold turkey. But they weren’t in a jail cell; they were on a couch, with someone by their side twenty-four/seven, helping them rid their body of the drug, assuring them that they could learn to live without drugs.
In New York City, no city hospital would admit an adult addict solely for addiction treatment. After a wait of four weeks, an adult could enter a federal public hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, for withdrawal and counseling. Still, juvenile addicts could only be committed with a parent’s consent. There weren’t enough beds, so teens often had to wait months for admittance.
In California, it was against the law to treat addiction anywhere other than a hospital or sanitarium.
With that societal backdrop, Dederich, a self-proclaimed raging alcoholic, incorporated his fledgling assemblage of ex-alcoholics and ex-addicts in 1958, a year after his first LSD trip.
And I, a self-proclaimed anti-drug square, followed an ex-alcoholic into his LSD-induced experimental community. The fact that Dederich had taken LSD slipped right by me. Would it have mattered? I was mesmerized by the story and by the community.
Dederich was a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. He began inviting AA members to his tiny abode on the beach near Santa Monica, where he led boisterous, no-holds-barred discussions late into the night. One day, a drug addict showed up and stuck around. He stopped using drugs.
By the early 1960s, members of the public referred to Synanon’s evening discussion group as therapy, but Dederich insisted they were synanons (so named when a member stumbled over the word seminar and instead said synanon). “Small s synanons” were later called Games to differentiate them from any connection to psychiatry.[2]
Many of Synanon’s original ex-alcoholics liked the informal setting, but Dederich said that when heroin addicts stopped using drugs, he knew he was onto something big. That something kept drug addicts clean, and he wanted it to grow. Addicts began pouring in, joining in the synanons, finding a place to sleep and a pot of stew to share, all the while not using drugs.
I now wonder what Dederich meant by being onto something big. I always assumed it was a revelation that he had figured out how to cure addiction. Now, I speculate that he had finally figured out how to be self-reliant, build a company from scratch with his band of followers, and make money. Dederich once said, “I always wanted to be rich, and now I am… And so is everybody else in Synanon.”[3]
As Synanon grew, Dederich’s affluence grew along with it.
As Synanon’s population expanded, so did Santa Monica’s. Dederich’s tiny home in a raggedy beachfront area was designated to be torn down to build parking lots for beachgoers (I can hear Joni Mitchell singing, “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot”). Dederich was offered a deal to rent the old red brick armory building on Ocean Front in Santa Monica for $500 a month. NIMBYism set in, and a community group complained about drug addicts living in their neighborhood. Heated arguments ensued at City Council meetings. If Synanon was treating drug addicts, it must be a hospital, and the armory property wasn’t zoned as a hospital.
Dederich argued they weren’t treating addicts; addicts kicked cold turkey. In fact, no drugs were allowed at all. Synanon was merely providing an environment that kept heroin addicts from wanting to use drugs. But in 1960, the only place you could kick cold turkey was in a jail or hospital; it was technically illegal to kick a habit at home.
Talk about a Catch-22. It was illegal to use drugs and illegal to kick them anywhere but in jail or a hospital. And there was no room in the hospitals. Here I was, eleven years after Synanon started, experiencing drug addicts living drug-free. It wasn’t just the Game. They only played Games a few hours a week. The rest of the time, they worked and lived together without strife.
A lawsuit was filed over the zoning, and Synanon lost. Dederich went to jail for twenty-five days over the zoning violation, the only person at that time to have gone to jail over zoning. Thus, the Synanon lore that “Chuck went to jail for us.”
I wasn’t willing to go to Santa Rita prison to protest the Vietnam War. Yet, here was a man willing to go to jail to stand up for his right to allow addicts to live a drug-free life. I admired him. He wasn’t a Mahatma Gandhi or a Martin Luther King, but he took a stand for his beliefs, more than I had been willing to do.
Ahh, the lure of following someone who stands up to authority, who goes to jail for his convictions. Then add the lure of following someone who saved you from addiction, and you can see why ex-addicts followed him. Add the lure of following someone who was building a society without violence, drugs, homelessness, or racism, and you can see why idealistic squares (non-substance abusers) followed him.
I alone can fix it, Dederich proclaimed.
The zoning lawsuit followed by Dederich’s jail stint put Synanon on the map. Over a hundred visitors flocked to Synanon’s Saturday night open houses each week. Hollywood elites began donating food and money. Steve Allen hired Synanon’s jazz band, the Synanon Combo, to appear on his TV series Jazz Scene, USA. A movie deal was optioned. Synanon was now making money from Hollywood: $50,000 for Dederich’s story, which was told in the movie, “Synanon.” Timothy O’Leary visited Synanon (to learn about Dederich’s communication techniques). Life Magazine published a 15-page spread entitled “The Story of Synanon,” and Time Magazine featured an article on Synanon entitled “Medicine: S.S. Hang Tough,” extolling the success of keeping drug addicts off drugs. Collins Online Dictionary defines Hang Tough as, “If someone who is to achieve something hangs tough, they remain determined and do not give up, even when there are difficulties or problems.” (https://www.collinsdictionary.com/us/dictionary/english/hang-tough)
Hang Tough was a phrase we used throughout my time in Synanon like we might say “hang in there” today, encouraging someone not to give up. When I moved to the Santa Monica facility, I finally saw the old life preserver inscribed with S.S. Hang Tough hanging on a wall . . . a piece of history as real to me as the Liberty Bell.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coca
[2]Endore, Guy. Synanon (1967, 1968), Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York., page 21.
[3] Gerstel, David U. Paradise Incoroporated: Synanon (1982), Presidio Press, Novato, California, page 135.
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