By: Laura L. Dell, M. Ed. Mahopac, NY 8/14/26
I had never heard of Synanon until the summer of 1974. I was about to turn twenty-six years old, and I had been a middle school teacher for three years. But already I was beginning to notice that recreational drug use among my students was affecting not only their behavior in my class but their ability to focus and to retain the information that I was teaching them.
Although I was a teacher of Spanish language, I was assigned, in my second year, to teach a course on Health. So in preparation, I took a college course on “Use, Abuse, and Addiction”. And I set out to learn about local drug programs like Phoenix House, Daytop Village, and Rennaissance Project (all of which, unbeknownst to me at the time, used the principles of Synanon). In the summer of 1974, I had combined a summer vacation in Hawaii with a summer school course in Counseling, at U of H, in Manoa, on the island of Oahu. My roommate, that summer, was from California, and she invited me to spend a few days, with her, at her parents’ home in San Jose, before I returned to New York. Her mom was a delightfully funny lady, who “tricked me” into admiring her own mother’s antique vase… in order to see my reaction to the marijuana plant ‘growing’ out of it!! It was an artificial marijuana plant, but it even had its own plant tag identifying it as Cannabis Sativa! This was 1976; I was speechless; she laughed! And then she told me that, if I was really concerned about drug treatment for young people, I should go and check out a place called Synanon, which she described as a kind of self-help community with properties in several areas in California. That was the first time that I had ever heard of Synanon, and I made a note to find out more.
Two summers later, in 1976, still on a mission to better understand this increasing substance abuse issue with my students, I put together a summer journey for myself that would give me more experience and understanding. I spent a week with Outward Bound Southwest rafting down the Green River, through our western states. Outward Bound is an organization teaching self-reliance in combination with interdependence, both of which would become ‘recovery skills’. I worked as a journalist with the Do It Now Foundation in Phoenix, which was publishing harm reduction literature for our Armed Forces. I ‘rode along’, on the weekends, with an overdose ambulance service, in Phoenix. And then I spent eleven days living in Synanon, which had come to be termed a “therapeutic community”, or a “TC”. Brooks Carder was assigned to be my ‘handler’ to make sure I had a place to stay and to introduce me to people who would help me get into my daily routine. I was set up with a job; they made sure that I experienced all aspects of the program at The Ranch; and they took me to see some of the other properties as well. I was included in all the events and I was ‘eased into’ playing the Game, having been coached on the nature of the various types of Games, which were played for various purposes (employer/employee; elders/newcomers; housemates, etc).
My first impression of the community, other than being surprised by all the shaved heads, was that it was just like summer camp! My summer camps as a child, were pretty rustic and bare bones, but the Ranch had bunk houses that were comfortable, and the dining hall was as one would expect at camp. I felt very much at home right away. And people were nice to me… of course, knowing right away that I was a visitor! …basically because I had hair!
Actually, early on in drug treatment, getting your head shaved was a ‘pull up’ for bad or stupid behavior, but later on, at least at Synanon, it was just a practical way to save time on hair washing, and primping, and on money for shampoo for hundreds of residents. But it also turned out to be a symbol of solidarity, especially for the women. Apparently, the founder, Chuck Dederich, had been inspecting a new office space created in a kind of loft in one of the many pre-fab buildings on the property. But, unfortunately, to navigate this space, one had to actually duck under a beam that cut across the whole office space… which was a safety hazard and totally unacceptable. Chuck said that whoever designed that space should have their head shaved! But when he learned that the designer had actually been a woman, he changed his mind. But the women, in solidarity with the one woman who had been singled out for reprimand – but more importantly, as an expression of the equality of women in the community – decided that they would ALL shave their heads… and the practice began and took hold.
Historically, in drug treatment in the early days, shaved heads and other techniques used to point out someone’s failings were not meant to be “cruel and unusual punishment”. Everyone was expected to be, or at least ‘act as if’ they were, responsible adults… and not only for themselves, but for everyone else in the community. Life in a TC was in the proverbial ‘fish bowl!’ There was no ‘narcing’ on any body else – it was flat out ‘outing’ of anyone’s unacceptable, and, therefore, potentially relapse-causing, behavior! When someone was “visually labeled” as having done something that they needed to own up to, it signaled the group members to ask them about it. This caused the individual to have to explain their behavior and to avoid keeping it a secret or allowing it to be a cause of shame, as secrets and shame are both very dangerous drivers of addiction. This was a signal to the community to speak to this person, but it also allowed for teasing, joking, and sharing of similar mis-steps, allowing for bonding, support, and brotherhood with all the other community members, all of whom had most likely done such ‘stupid things’ themselves. I was intrigued to learn the reasons behind the ways that things were done. There were always reasons.
Everyday life in Synanon was like life in any functional community – or family! – It was designed to approximate life in “Middle Class America”. We had a daily routine and schedule; we had meals together; we had time for shared conversation on any number of topics that would benefit the members of the ‘family’, based on ‘best practices’ in research at the time. I remember a session on the importance of including bran in the diet and a discussion on when our little children should start flossing their teeth. We socialized in the evenings. There were formal dinners when one cabin would serve and the others would be ‘invited’ to dinner at tables set for formal dining. (This taught, or reviewed, table manners that would no doubt be required for life on the ‘outside’.) There was also the Hoopla, a night of square dancing and general ‘frolic’.
There were ‘straights’ in the Synanon community, people who came into Synanon for the lifestyle, and they brought with them all manner of vital skills. But there were also community members who had grown up in chaotic homes, who had lived on the streets as kids, who were runaways, who had come from lives of prostitution, who had come out of prison, and who had come to Synanon from (and this is how it was described to me) “the Mendocino Home for the Incredibly Far Out”…a.k.a. the Mendocino State Hospital, originally the Mendocino State Asylum for the Insane. I think it was the night that I learned this last item that I pushed my bed up against the door of my little guest bedroom and barricaded myself in, thinking, “Oh my God! What am I doing here among these people!” 🙂 But, by the next morning, things were back to Synanon normal, and I was back at my assigned job; taking care of the three-year-olds.
I had initially written to Synanon at its Walker Ranch property in Marin County, north of San Francisco, to ask if I might come to observe the school which they had set up for the children. These were the children of the members of their community who had achieved a certain level of control over their addictions and were then allowed to bring their own children to live on the Synanon property. My job was to work with actual three-year-olds (not the adult residents who had been clean and sober in the community for three years… also known as three-year-olds). My handlers wanted me to see some of the foundational principles of healthy living that were being implemented with some of the youngest residents in hopes that this would give them the tools to avoid the drug-related lifestyles to which their parents had succumbed.
There were facilities in the Synanon community that were designed just for the little ones – with age-appropriate accommodations, activities, and schooling. Each child had a bed in a kind of ‘cubby’ that gave a secure space, with some privacy, and that had storage underneath for their clothes (provided free by Synanon for all occasions). Their bunk had shelves for their few necessities and a bulletin board where they could display their art work, etc. When their clothes would become worn and tattered, the children would have “Junk on the Bunk”, and their caregiver would inspect all their clothes and make sure that they had replacements. This was done to be sure that nobody felt ‘less than’, and it was important for self-esteem. The youngest children had large and appropriate play areas and were taught to put their toys away in order to internalize the principles of order and organization. The older children attended school on property and were also taught, by experienced Synanon members, life skills that their parents had yet to master as adults.
I had found, in ‘my’ 3-year-olds, a large group of adorable and loving children who were craving the love and attention of adults, something that Synanon wasn’t sure was a good thing… perhaps because of the whole focus on ‘self reliance’, but which taught me a lot about our basic need, as human children in this world. It was of special significance to me when a Synanon “Elder” explained to me that, at Synanon, they basically had to ‘re-parent’ people whose lives had been derailed somehow. It was then, and, in large part, because of that conversation, that I decided to continue my own journey by becoming a single adoptive mom to three little orphans from an orphanage in South America! (My children are all, now, independent adults, but continue to struggle because of their own early childhoods, which included poverty, deprivation, and abandonment by the adults who should have been there for them.)
I could go on and on about all that I experienced and observed in just eleven days in this most fascinating of human experiments. And that’s what this was. It was an experiment in communal living designed to attempt to get at the root of why its members were having trouble staying clean and sober living in the ‘outside world’, and trying to figure out what this communal family could do to help rectify that. I am writing this memoir just about fifty years ‘to the day’, in August of 2026, and I don’t think that anyone has figured this out yet! But I think that Synanon sincerely tried to recreate a healthy family and community that would, with all the pieces somehow put in place, help its members to live healthy lives.)
But the physical, and the relational, and all that, were just the ‘externals’. Synanon attempted to delve into the ‘internal’ workings of the addict mind to figure out what to do with thoughts that were affecting behaviors. The battle is always won or lost in the mind first… and Chuck Dederich knew that. All over property were posters with quotes from (my favorite essay): “Self-reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson. There must be a balance, in an individual, between being able to be independent, on his own, and being able to be interdependent, in community with others. The Synanon Game was key, in the lives of Synanon members, to getting into, and examining, the thought life of individuals. Books have been written on this subject, but I will just sum up briefly what I think was its significance.
We all have thoughts that we are afraid to voice. Some are about things that we feel guilty about… things that we’ve done that we need to face up to and make right. Some are thoughts about things that bring us shame… things that we can do nothing about and that we just have to accept. Guilt tells us we’ve done something wrong; shame tells us we are something wrong. There are ways to assuage one’s feelings of guilt. But no one deserves to live with shame. And, so, by talking, in a safe and supportive setting, about the things, about ourselves, of which we are ashamed (i.e., what we look like; how our body works, or doesn’t; the things about us that are a result of our upbringing; the things that are governed by our DNA; the things in our past that we cannot change) we can lessen the impact of that shame and start to remove it. Well, the Synanon Game may not have looked ‘safe and supportive’ to an outsider like me, but for those who lived it, and loved it, it seemed to help to ‘get out’ all of those bad thoughts, negative self images, and irrelevant sensitivities that could wreak havoc in a person’s thought, and therefore, their life.
The Synanon Game, played by people who live closely together, work together, observe each other, and who know each other, better sometimes, than each person knows himself, is designed to bring into ‘the thousand-eyed present’ (another phrase from “Self-Reliance”) all those innermost thoughts and secrets. This “pulling of covers” brings out the most hidden and protected of a person’s thoughts and secrets… so that everyone can look at them, relate to them, make fun of them, verify them, deny them… in short, de-sensitize the individual to the power of those thoughts and secrets, so that they can never control him – and drive him to his addictions – ever again.
And, as a person matures in Synanon, they will use their own understanding of their own thought life to ‘pry’ into the thoughts of newcomers… sometimes ‘accusing’ another of having a thought (that the more experienced player has had to wrestle with himself) and then encouraging that newcomer to defend himself, argue the point, agree with his accuser, sit in silence, cry in recognition and defeat, vent his pent up rage and anger; even accuse his accuser… It doesn’t matter! In the Game, everyone gets experience in doing all those things, sometimes expressing real feelings, sometimes trying on a persona, sometimes flipping the accusation back on the accuser, or sometimes outright lying about what he really thinks just to see how it feels to say it out loud. Again…It doesn’t matter… Because after the game, everyone supports everyone else; everyone is reminded that “it’s only a game”… (even, in a way, out in the ‘real world’) and it doesn’t matter… it’s only words. And words are not actions. Actions are what’s important.
So, after everyone has ‘calmed down’, after the excitement and the emotionality of being ‘In the Game’, everyone goes back to being ‘On the Floor’: behaving like a responsible adult; showing good character and being in control of one’s emotions; being kind and respectful to each other; following a healthy, daily self-discipline; and being a good role model to newcomers who are seeking a clean and sober lifestyle.
But it’s not as easy as I can make it sound. Everyone works at all of this every day. As the Eagles sing in their classic, “Hotel California” (written, I understand, about Synanon) “They stab it with their steely knives but they just can’t kill the beast.”
Being an addict is a life-long struggle. I, myself, have food intolerances, which cause certain foods to act like addictive substances. And I believe that this is what, somehow, started me down this most frustrating, but most interesting, path. (And, after fifty years, I still try to understand why some of us have to live every day putting to use all the tools that human wisdom has developed to assist us on this journey!)
For all the bad press that Synanon received, and in spite of certain events, which caused this program to close its doors, I think that Synanon was a brilliant experiment. It spread quickly; it resonated with, and helped, many people; and many of its
foundational ideas are still recognizable in treatment programs today. There is a saying in 12-step programs that the program is ‘simple, but not easy’. On the contrary, life in Synanon was somewhat easy. It was an organized program, with routines and rules and support and oversight, and you were expected to do ‘the right thing’…always… every time. But the attempt to understand the inner workings of the mind, the key to life-giving and life-affirming spirituality – and to master fine-tuned control of our innermost thoughts to put them in synch with the Mind of our Creator – is really, really far from simple… but, for some, at least, vital for our very survival. Chuck Dederich attempted to put the acquisition of that vital understanding, gleaned from all of our human wisdom, into a practice, a hands-on learning experience, for untold numbers of people who looked to him for guidance…
And, eventually, it overwhelmed him. Synanon got too big. A parent can only effectively guide so many kids; a teacher can only effectively reach so many students at once; a therapist has to limit their client load. And a man can only be ‘the old man’ to just so many addicts and alcoholics. But Chuck Dederich didn’t just give ‘lip service’ to his beliefs. To quote again from “Self Reliance”: “There is a time in every man’s education when he arrives at the conclusion… that no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.” Chuck Dederich tried!
I still hold my eleven days at Synanon as one of the most incredible experiences of my 78 years. And I continue to think that, if Synanon could at least begin to ‘touch the hem of Christ’s garment’, that we, as a human race, ought to be able to do better at teaching humans how to live clean, sober, and productive lives. We need to do better.
Laura L. Dell, M. Ed. Mahopac, NY 8/14/26
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