Dark City

19. CULT: Synanon's Degeneration from Addiction Treatment to Violent Cult Pt 1

• Leah & April • Season 1 • Episode 19

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Santa Monica, CA | How does a group once celebrated for its success treating heroin addicts become a violent cult?  Founded in 1958 by Charles "Chuck" Diederich, Synanon initially presented itself as an innovative and promising program for those struggling with addiction. However, beneath its acclaimed exterior lay a deeply flawed foundation. Despite praise from the media and endorsements from prominent figures - including one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century - Synanon was always rotten at the core. You’ll be shocked by the methods Synanon used to treat drug addiction, all while enjoying public recognition.

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Our top sources for this episode include:
-Katherine, Kubler (Director/Executive Producer). (2024). The Program: Cons, Cults, and Kidnapping. https://www.netflix.com/title/81579761
-The Sunshine Place (2022). [Audio podcast]. Executive Produced by Robert Downey Jr., Susan Downey, and Emily Barclay Ford for Team Downey, together with Josh McLaughlin for Wink Pictures. https://www.audacy.com/podcast/all.
-Janzen, R. (2001). The Rise and Fall of Synanon: A California Utopia. Johns Hopkins University Press.
-That’s So Fcked Up (2024, April 17). TRENDING TOPIC: Synanon- Drug Rehab Turned Dangerous Cult [Audio podcast episode]. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/thats-so-fcked-up/id1508752329?i=1000652758034  

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Speaker 1:

Hello Dark City fans. This is Leah and this is April. Once praised as a beacon of hope for heroin addicts, Synanon started under the name Tender Loving Care and was praised by the media and high-profile figures, including one of the most influential psychologists of the 20th century. But its fall from grace was as dramatic as it was disturbing. How did a group once celebrated for its success transform into a violent sect that terrorized its own members and waged war on its critics? This is Dark City Season 1, Los Angeles, April.

Speaker 1:

Did I ever tell you about the research assistant position I had in college? It was for a research group called the ADAM Project. Adam stands for Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring. I vaguely remember this. Yeah, understand drug use among people who were arrested and booked in the United States. To do this, as research assistants, we would conduct 30 to 45 minute long interviews with people soon after they had been booked into jail. The interviews were really extensive. We would go drug by drug, coke, heroin, ask if they had taken it, how frequently, over what time frame the past week, past six months, If they agreed and also gave a urine sample to test, they would get a Snickers bar for participation.

Speaker 2:

That's hilarious a Snickers bar.

Speaker 1:

It's so random, a Snickers bar.

Speaker 2:

If you're really hungry, have a Snickers. That's what they say, right.

Speaker 1:

True, this is true, and it's jail, so it's probably the best food you're getting for a while. I mean, yeah, of all the people I interviewed, there's two individuals I remember most and they were both heroin addicts. They were in early stage withdrawal and I have never seen anything like it. Their bodies were in clear distress. They're crying, scratching their skin. The woman I interviewed literally started crying like she lost a child.

Speaker 2:

It was that severe.

Speaker 1:

She agreed to do the interview, but I believe we had to cut it off. It was just too much. In short, heroin addiction is almost impossible to overcome. Withdrawals are painful and they can extend for days. Just think of the worst possible flu you've ever had. Those are the symptoms and even if you get past that phase, it's really hard to break the habit permanently Going back about seven or eight decades, to the 1950s.

Speaker 2:

Little was known about how to help heroin addicts. Back then most would just end up in jail. The rest were confined to a small number of mental institutions that used techniques such as solitary confinement and straitjackets. When a small nonprofit based in Santa Monica started reporting astonishing successes helping heroin addicts overcome their addiction in the late 1950s, it received a lot of press and recognition. Founded in 1958 by Charles Diederich, initially under the name Tender Loving Care, the group would become known as quote the Miracle on the Beach, as it was described by the former senator of Connecticut, thomas Dodd. Born in 1913 in Toledo, ohio, chuck Diederich's early life was shaped by tragedy. His father was an alcoholic and he died in a car accident with another woman when he was only four years old. His mother was Catholic in the most militant way and he remembers living in fear that simple mistakes would send him to eternal damnation.

Speaker 1:

So it sounds like his mom and his dad were really polar opposite and maybe his mom was like a reaction to his dad.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, like through her controlling him, she got that. I don't know, maybe that security that she didn't feel with Chuck's dad, maybe. Still, they were very close. They would often stay up late talking at night. But when Chuck was 12, his mother remarried. It really put a wedge between him and his mom because he did not like his stepfather, who he thought was proper and capitalistic. He enrolled in Notre Dame but never finished.

Speaker 2:

Chuck became an alcoholic. He bounced from job to job, marriage to marriage. When he hit 40, he decided time to make a life change. So he packed up and headed west to California. There he discovered Alcoholics Anonymous. He got better and became heavily involved in the community. Before we go forward, I need to give you a picture of what Chuck looked like. He was an intimidating presence. He was a big man with a booming voice and he didn't exactly have a stable personality. One Synanon member put it well you kind of don't know who's showing up, the jovial, charismatic guy or the angry bully. He was always wearing khaki pants and a short-sleeved collar shirt, which I think is a very interesting choice of clothing.

Speaker 1:

I know, and also just noting too, guys, we'll post a picture or two on Instagram so you can picture him.

Speaker 2:

What was most striking about his appearance was that complications from meningitis left half of his face drooping. He was a sight to behold, To say the least. Chuck eventually broke away from AA when he became interested in using its teachings to help drug addicts. He also wanted to break free from its religious foundation, teaching people to be self-reliant, responsible for their own actions and kicking their addiction not through a dependence on any higher power.

Speaker 1:

And I wonder too if part of this was a reaction to his mom's extreme teachings.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I kind of thought the same thing.

Speaker 1:

He was also reading a lot of philosophy, not clear exactly how it ultimately got filtered through his head.

Speaker 2:

Lot of philosophy, not clear exactly how it ultimately got filtered through his head. It starts with Chuck meeting with a few others from his AA group. Eventually the group expanded into include individuals addicted to heroin. They grow into kind of a small community in Venice, california. They grow out of that space and move into a three-floor abandoned armory on a beach in Santa Monica. Along the way, they renamed themselves Synanon. The exact origin of the word is not clear, but it was probably a mashup of the words symposium and seminar, which was what Chakthadi was doing as he was conducting this treatment. Symposium, seminar sounds pretty tame, right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it does sound tame.

Speaker 2:

Fairly altruistic. Okay, we'll talk about this soon, though. Chuck had a famous quote Today is the first day of the rest of your life, and that's exactly what he intended for the individuals who signed up for the Synanon program. It was no joke. You had to commit to two years living at Synanon facilities following a very strict program. To start, people would have to stay in a public room until their painful drug withdrawal phase was complete no medicine or anything.

Speaker 1:

And just remembering from that experience as a researcher for the Adam Project, I cannot imagine a room full of people going through that.

Speaker 2:

Oh my gosh, it must have been just complete misery, right? You would have people in this group setting puking in buckets. It was really very intense. Once withdrawal is complete, you get household assignments cooking, cleaning and other things around the house. There is a consistent emphasis on strict discipline, group therapy, peer support and mentoring. It's basically run like a commune All your clothes, food, everything taken care of collectively by the group.

Speaker 1:

And this is where I think it sounds great and innovative, because, remember, the alternative was you're getting hospitalized or you're going to jail.

Speaker 2:

Committed. Yeah, I feel like everything starts out really great always and there's like it sounds really nice, it sounds like things are running efficiently.

Speaker 1:

Well, synanon never started out great, but we're going to talk about the aspect that's not great in a moment here.

Speaker 2:

Yes, To pay for all of this. There is a thousand dollar fee charged, but often people can't afford it and it's waived. To finance this, they do what's called hustling Literally, the people in recovery would go out into the community and ask for donations, everything from food to Christmas trees. Chuck, as the leader, compared managing Synanon to running a large corporation like Gulf Oil, where he had worked. At one point, chuck claimed that 80% of addicts stay clean after Synanon, which is phenomenal. What's also phenomenal is a group of ex-heroin addicts with no leadership experience doing such a great job running this whole operation. It's very smooth. Doing such a great job running this whole operation it's very smooth. Also really amazing is that Santa Monica and Los Angeles in general are still racially segregated. Through the 1960s, the Santa Monica beach, where Synanon was headquartered, was segregated. In Synanon, though, there was no segregation and people were not judged by the color of their skin.

Speaker 1:

So Synanon is getting noticed. It's getting written up in publications like Life Magazine, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times. Prominent political leaders like Senator Dodd and civil rights activists such as Cesar Chavez are singing its praises. When Chuck gets arrested for treating drug addicts without a license because he doesn't have an official background in this, california Governor Ed Brown signed a bill exempting the group from health licensing law. The armed forces are considering placing drug-addicted soldiers in Synanon.

Speaker 1:

Abraham Maslow, as I mentioned in the beginning, one of the most consequential psychologists in the 20th century, is really complimentary of Synanon throughout much of the sixties. I'm going to quickly go over his model. In the background it might feel like we're taking a little bit of a tangent, but it's so. You can truly feel the gravity of what's being praised here and who is doing the praising. To give you a sense of the state of what therapy could look like, abraham Maslow is best known for Maslow's hierarchy of needs. In college it's covered in psychology and leadership classes, among others, and when you learn it for the first time, usually people light up because it just really resonates. Maslow is, I envisioned, human needs as a pyramid with the most basic physiological needs at the bottom, things like food, water, shelter make sense. As you climb the pyramid, you then encounter safety needs. Then you can start to think about things like love and belonging, followed by esteem, and at the very top sits self-actualization, the need to fulfill one's full potential.

Speaker 1:

I remember learning about this. Most people do. It's one of those like just, it's so simple when you think about it. According to Rod Janssen's book the Rise and Fall of Synanon, a California Utopia, maslow came to the conclusion after visiting the commune in the 1960s Synanon members were the most self-actualized group he had ever met. Maslow would later encourage one of his students to take up residence here and study Synanon. In a 1968 letter to the Synanon leader, reed Kimball, he states quote it seems to me that Synanon is now the only functioning total utopia or Euseikian subculture in the United States. Euseikia is, by the way, a special term to describe the best possible human society, and I don't know if that's exactly how you pronounce it and I don't care because it's academic hogwash, but we'll get there.

Speaker 1:

Maslow is particularly impressed by the cornerstone of Sinanon's approach to treating drug addiction. It's called the game. This is a group therapy technique. Everyone sits around in a circle and takes turns, honing in on each other's challenge, in on each other's challenge. From Rod Jansen's book, he describes it as a place where quote individual beliefs and practices were energetically debated and where new ideas were tested and discussed. If you watch the documentary the Synanon Fix, you're going to hear former Synanon members rave about how the game helped them. They miss it. It was just such a wonderful experience. April, would you like to hear a few quotes of the typical things that people say to each other in these sessions of the game? Absolutely.

Speaker 1:

I'm kind of intrigued, you thought that it was your job to be a martyr. That is a lie, because you are such an affected fool.

Speaker 2:

Okay.

Speaker 1:

You are such a phony bitch. How is this helpful? You are a minimum daily motherfucker. You are going to grow up, you old asshole. And it's super easy for us to laugh now because we are not sitting in these sessions at an incredibly vulnerable time in life or just ever, when you're going for therapy and you're being attacked this way.

Speaker 2:

I think the motherfucker one is my favorite.

Speaker 1:

Oh, not if you're in the hot seat, though. Oh my gosh, what was the?

Speaker 2:

point of these.

Speaker 1:

Well, first I'll just say that's not a great representation of what actually happened, because they weren't just saying those things, april, they were screaming them happened because they weren't just saying those things, april, they were screaming them. What, yes, like? Think of just the angriest person you've heard If you watch the Synanon fix. A lot of these quotes came from that. It's just people yelling and screaming at each other. I'm not going to scream because I have kids in the other room, thankfully my child, who is sitting here for most of the beginning for the conference is not here.

Speaker 1:

So I'm not going to scream because I don't want my kids to hear that in the other room. But by the way, speaking of kids, they started playing the game with kids as young as three. There was one quote from Chuck that was so racist. I refuse to repeat it here, but just to give you a sense of like, there was nothing off limits to be said, even in a society that claimed to not be racist. Maslow thought that though.

Speaker 1:

Maslow, getting back to him, he thought that well, if you air your verbal aggression, then you're less likely to be physically violent because you got it out of your system. This makes me so angry and so sad. When he constructed his pyramid and he put safety second in terms of basic needs, he clearly did not mean psychological safety, because words can't possibly traumatize you for the rest of your life. That never dawned on him, which is why the vast majority of people who played the game in the least disliked it or were traumatized by it for the rest of their life. Chuck used this technique of attack therapy because he believed people emerged changed and accountable. In his pamphlet Chuck Diedrich's 12 Favorite Gaming Techniques, he outlines practices that include ridicule, and he suggested starting games with questions like the most boring person in this circle is you fill in the blank.

Speaker 2:

That's kind of messed up. I don't. I guess I don't see how this technique was supposed to work.

Speaker 1:

And the most boring person in the circle. Okay, I do not understand how that relates at all to drug addiction and how it relates to anything ever. It's just cruel.

Speaker 2:

It's almost better to be the most boring person, because then you're the one that has the fewest issues that you got to work out Like you're just chill.

Speaker 1:

You're just hanging out, and if you're the most boring person, you're probably not yelling and screaming at everybody else in the group. Yeah, but Chuck Hefton.

Speaker 2:

I'd be pretty boring in that circle.

Speaker 1:

I think being boring means you're sane. He has one basic rule though no physical violence. What really happens, as reporter and author Maya Cezalovitz explains in the documentary the Program? Humiliation and emotional attacks knock people off balance, and groups like Synanon use that to get compliance and to get people to adopt their ideology. Oh okay, another great quote from this documentary from John Jalalik, a leading coal expert. She says quote they're tearing apart your self-esteem and tearing apart your trust in yourself and eventually tearing apart yourself.

Speaker 2:

That makes more sense.

Speaker 1:

Exactly, and it's so obvious to us now, and I don't even honestly know back then, even when so little was talked about in terms of mental health or therapy, how anyone could sit in that and not understand. This is completely messed up. The games were played several times a week. They would go on for a few hours. Eventually they would run all day with people rotating in and out, and they would eventually be broadcast on their own radio station, the Wire, and Chuck wasn't on there talking, and then they played some other things too. I have to note here too that there's never an experienced therapist sitting in any of these circles. Former Synanon member Mike Gible observed quote whoever had a loud voice would play the game better. Because they were. There were a lot of people that were terrified. We never say a word because they were scared. The group pressure, whether it was to support or go against it, was very powerful, but all the time, whether it was in the game or out of the game, everyone said if you leave here, you're going to die.

Speaker 2:

That is a lot of pressure.

Speaker 1:

There is another key component of drug addiction treatment at Synanon, while in AA, chuck also participated in an experiment at UCLA to see if LSD could cure alcoholism. His experience was so profound he said he emerged a different person After crying for three days and intense feelings of love and omnipotence, among others. He was a changed man. Chuck wanted Synanon members to also have the same transformative peak experience, but without the LSD. He eventually came up with the trip. First on your trip, itinerary hours of the game where you all get a term being told what a horrible human being you are and why. Then you are laid out in a big room and put into an alpha state with a big group of people. You're not allowed to sleep. For three days you will do things like play the Ouija board To channel group consciousness. No, some members communicated with Moses, thomas Aquinas witches, which is actually kind of cool, I will admit. At the end you join a big party with everyone in white robes where you feel transformed or probably just severely tired, hungry and dysregulated.

Speaker 2:

Did Moses, thomas Aquinas or none of the witches tell them get out? I guess not.

Speaker 1:

I have a feeling at that point, if they did, they would not admit it. This whole radical. Transparency was great, unless you were questioning Synanon. Well, not so much in the beginning, but it definitely evolved that way and three days with no sleep oh my gosh.

Speaker 2:

Sleep is so important to your brain. It cannot function for three days, 72 hours. Yeah, that is terrible. Then you end up taking, like your brain takes, like micro naps. It'll like shut itself off, oh my gosh.

Speaker 1:

Exactly so I I don't know how anyone could ever think this is a good idea, but they did. Now, well, attack therapy and the trip have some obvious issues and open up people for abuse. It's not dissuading Synanon from growing to people who are not addicted to anything, people that just like the community and want to live in the commune. They learned about Synanon not just from the news, but also by coming to their Saturday night parties.

Speaker 2:

Why do all of the cults always have parties? I feel like they always have these big lavish parties? Well, because Mark Vicente you got to attract that positive attention somehow. I don't know.

Speaker 1:

Well, mark Vicente, he was a former NXIVM cult member. He had this quote it was so good it was and I shared this on the Source Family. Nobody joins a cult, they join a good thing. If there were never parties or really amazing aspects of this, nobody would ever be there and there would be no cult.

Speaker 2:

I guess, that's true.

Speaker 1:

That's how they I mean, that's how people idealize and stay and join in the first place.

Speaker 2:

Well, to drive awareness and membership, synanon was having those huge parties every Saturday night, complete with jazz bands and dancing.

Speaker 1:

Oh, by the way, you could see, by the way, synanon even had its own Synanon dance, true story. Oh, they did. I won't. I'll pass.

Speaker 2:

I wonder what it was.

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh, you like shake your arms and legs and it's not like a choreographed, I don't know. You know like the whole thing is just nonsense, but go on like dancing, like um.

Speaker 2:

what's her name on Seinfeld? Oh I. Who's Julia Louis-Dreyfus's? Oh God. You could see celebrities such as Jane Fonda, charlton Heston, lucille Ball hanging out at Synanon. Leonard Nimoy, who played Dr Spock on Star Trek, started teaching an acting class there too.

Speaker 1:

Well, you know April when the celebrities show up. Now it's legitimate.

Speaker 2:

It must be good Must be good. But, you know, none of them stayed. So what the non-heroine addicts or squares as Chuck called them saw in Synanon was an enlightened community. Surprisingly, despite the combative nature of the game, people from all different backgrounds were getting along really well Now, this just really amazes me.

Speaker 1:

I don't understand how people can come out of those sessions and not have at least some hard feelings.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, or like irritation or anger towards someone I don't know. I don't think I could do it. I would probably be mad at people for a while.

Speaker 1:

Yes, you would rightfully have that very human emotion of being mad, as you should be.

Speaker 2:

And then you'd have this like stress response and anger and defensiveness. I don't know.

Speaker 1:

I think I just I don't. I don't understand how they did it, but they did.

Speaker 2:

There is also a general undercurrent of distrust in government from the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal and an openness to experiment with different social arrangements. During that Right Right, chuck said dope fiends the original synonym members had nine fingers and he wanted to surround himself with people who had ten fingers the squares. He allowed them to move.

Speaker 1:

Sorry. I'm sure they felt amazing about themselves after hearing that.

Speaker 2:

I know, come on, he allowed them to move into the community starting in the mid-1960s. It also did not hurt that they had money and resources to give to Sinanon.

Speaker 1:

I suspect, the real reason for the change.

Speaker 2:

Hmm, with more squares moving in, sinanon had to house and educate their children too. They opened up a private school, which meant they had wide latitude to do whatever they wanted. Some of the teaching styles and curriculum were innovative, almost like a Montessori school, and some were just nonsense. Regardless, it was challenging all the time because Chuck wanted to experiment and the result was a very uneven educational experience For the first few years that Synanon accepted kids. Many said later in life that they loved it. They were never lonely and they constantly had activities to occupy their time. And living on the beach was amazing Like what kid wouldn't like that? But their lives were far from conventional. Chuck believed that it was better for kids' brains to be placed separately from their parents. With no degree, by the way. Right, he's an expert or research or education, right, okay?

Speaker 1:

He's read a lot of Emerson and Thoreau and he's got Maslow's blessing.

Speaker 2:

And they know all about the brain Right.

Speaker 1:

As do the celebrities that are coming all the time.

Speaker 2:

Yes, child development Starting at six months, babies were separated from their mothers and grew up in the hatchery.

Speaker 1:

Okay, I have to pause here because, speaking of utopia, which is what Maslow was talking about, with the society, that reminds me of Brave New World, where they called it the hatchery where the kids were, which was a dystopian novel. I do not understand this, but keep going.

Speaker 2:

Parents could visit their children there, but under the condition of communal parenting. All of the parents are the kids' parents, not just the ones that they were born to. In 1969, chuck decides there will be no more graduation for former heroin addicts. That cure rate of 80% that he once claimed, he now says that anyone who lives outside of the community will relapse and die.

Speaker 1:

Oh, so now they have to live there permanently? That sounds like a cult.

Speaker 2:

The reality is, many did relapse after leaving the Synanon program and there is a large and continuous defection rate throughout the two-year program.

Speaker 1:

I'm pretty sure they did not mention that to the reporters.

Speaker 2:

Probably not, or any of the celebrities we will never really know who truly stayed clean during and after the program, because Synanon never did drug tests, despite the fact that they would have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in government funding if they had. To me that makes me a little bit skeptical.

Speaker 1:

To me that says it all. So, yes, yeah, let's recap. We are 11 years into this organization that started as Tender Loving Care. Actually, synanon is not a miracle on the beach. Synanon can't permanently treat heroin addicts, if at all. By this point, most of Synanon's members are not even former addicts, they just want to live in this commune. Synanon has sharply pivoted away from its original mission of addiction treatment. This is no longer the same organization, but it's still run by the same Chuck, and the same cornerstone to this community is still the game, which means all of the building blocks are in place for Synanon's eventual evolution into a violent cult, and that will happen over the next decade. And with that we're going to stop here and continue with that story next week in part two.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much for joining. You can follow us on social media under the name dark city pod on Instagram, facebook and threads. Also, to continue to grow our audience, we would love it If you could share dark city with anyone you think might enjoy it. Until next time, bye, thank you.