Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Synanon: The Drug Rehab Program That Built Its Own Army

Episode Date: June 24, 2021

Robert is joined again by Paul F. Tompkins to continue to discuss Synanon. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science?

And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, God. Oh, God, I hate that lady. I really don't like her. I'm actually starting to get attracted to her. She's a cop.

I think we need to talk to this. It just turned around on him just now. I mean, she is a cop, but I think we all remember the little Wayne classic, Mrs. Officer. It's like that sort of situation, right? Like she's caught you, but also she's intrigued and you cannot be yourself. And maybe you're going to fuck in the back of that squad car like little Wayne absolutely didn't. Never has a song been more clearly alive than Lil Wayne's Mrs. Officer. This is Behind the Bastards, the podcast where we talk about Lil Wayne songs with Paul F. Tompkins.

Paul, can't believe we got this green lit. I know. I thought like, first of all, this was not the original idea. This is right before the pitch. Robert turns to me and says, change of plans. Just follow my lead. And son of a bitch, it worked. We got $14 million in funding, so we're going to take this to some fun places this year. This is better than the gardening podcast we had planned. Yeah, this is a lot better.

Less Lil Wayne than the gardening podcast. I would totally listen to a gardening podcast with the two of you just saying. That sounds like a really good time to me. I'm getting to be, I'm getting to be a pretty good gardener. My fucking cauliflower is going off the chain this year. And my potatoes are, I would brag more about my potatoes, but they are potatoes. And it's the hardest thing to fuck up in the Pacific Northwest. If you can't grow potatoes in Northern Oregon, you might not be able to grow things.

This is now a gardening podcast. I take that as a challenge. I have a, I have a completely black thumb. I've never been able to make any, keep anything alive. I will move to Northern Oregon and I will not grow potatoes. Oh, I'll try to. Paul's dead potato farm. Down.

Uh, Paul, how you feeling as we enter into part two? How you feeling about sending on? I feel good. That was such a good cliffhanger last week. Yeah. That, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm dying to dive into what happens next. What's fun about this one, part one, kind of a slow burn, right? For a lot of the episode, broadly reasonable, you know, there's some problematic aspects,

but like also you compare it to, you know, it slowly turns into something really toxic. At this point, they've just, he just puts his foot on the gas. Like we go very off the rails very quickly here. So by 1967, with the announcement that sent it on, was no longer curing addicts. Um, Charles Dederick was pretty much a full on cult leader. Now this slowly became obvious to some of the people inside, but to our casual observers, it still seemed to just be a drug treatment program. That said, it was a treatment program that was now bringing in the modern equivalent

of tens of millions of dollars a year through a dizzying variety of businesses, not just gas stations, but pottery shops, apartment buildings, and a specialty branded item business that sold pins and office supplies, bearing different company logos. Since the cult was technically a nonprofit, they advertised to businesses as a charity begging Fortune 500 companies to quote, buy from Synanon and save a life. Now, yeah, you're not compelled by that pitch.

The cherry angle is ingenious, I have to say. It's smart. Yeah. Businesses love to be able to claim they're supporting a good cause by doing a thing they would do anyway. Yeah. It is just the thing that's in their best interest. If you give them a way to say that this is a charity, they love that shit.

But in terms of cults, I mean, I think that it's very rare that they do the move of presenting themselves as trying to help the entire community. And if you give us this money, it goes towards this, that, and the other thing. Yeah. You know, Scientology, I think they missed the boat on that, making it all about the individual. I mean, I guess they do that charity stuff, but nobody cares. Yeah.

He's like, hey, thanks Scientology. Weird charity stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I showed up at Katrina and gave E-meter readings and shit. I was like, yeah, that's what we needed. Thanks, Church of Scientology. Bizarre.

So the reality is that Synanon had essentially used the structure of a cult to build a sizable corporation, one which did not have to pay its workers or pay taxes, which is the benefit of being a nonprofit like this. The promotional item business would expand massively until it was making more than $10 million a year in 1960s money, making branded ballpoint pens and wallets and t-shirts for corporate retreats. It was eventually the second largest firm of its kind in the United States. Wow.

That's a big business. I mean, this guy, once that seal was broken, this guy was like, I am off to the races. Yeah. Yeah. All gas, no brakes on this motherfucker. Like he was just like thinking of shit, like just inventing shit. Yeah.

Like, how about this? I mean, no one stopped me yet. I'll just keep going. Yeah, no one stopped me yet. That is, you pin upon, that's always what's going on with these guys. Is it just, is anyone going to stop me? No. It's like, I'll run Hubbard.

Is anyone going to stop me from having my own Navy and searching for gold in the Bahamas? Nope. Okay. Yeah. Guess that's my life now. Now, Synanon also made a lot of money from the game, which when they open up the cult to outside members,

when they open up the program to people who are not addicts, they start offering the game as like a general self-help thing. So you can just drop in and do a session of the game in the 1970s. And it's, they make like a lot of money doing this from LA Magazine, quote, Synanon rebranded itself in the 1970s from a drug treatment program to a psychotherapy program and started attracting middle-class people through the Synanon game. So sociologist Richard Offshe, who spent time in the organization

studying it as a non-resident. By the early 1970s, some 3,400 squares in California, New York, and Detroit were paying cash to participate in games. It was the heyday of the human potential movement. When Americans were rushing off to therapist couches, New Age movements like EST, religions like the Divine Light Mission, alternative communities like Esselam and cults like the People's Temple and Synanon, many of which began in California.

You know, that is, the West Coast is where this shit always happens. Because man, if you're going to get thousands of people together and try to start your own civilization, you're going to do it in California. Or Oregon. You can't do it, you can't do it where there's snow. You need a temperate climate to start a cult. You want a temperate climate. You also want a lot of wilderness.

And you want a place where everybody is a little bit off their rocker, which is the entirety of the West Coast. It's just the perfect place to have a cult. It's like, you know, yeah, it's just great. So all of this money had to go somewhere, right? They're taking in way more money than it costs to operate this motherfucker. And most of the money goes to real estate. In 1967, the Colton purchased the Club Casa del Mar,

a massive beachside hotel in Santa Monica, and turned it into a dormitory for their members. Now, when they bought the Casa, it was still in use as a club and still had members who the Colt pressured to resign their memberships. And this is one of those, you know, you live in LA, right? Absolutely. Yeah, these, you know, they'll have these big beach clubs that'll be like some of them are just restaurants,

some of them have like rooms. And they also have like a chunk of beach that is theirs. And they'll have like, you know, cabanas and bars and stuff. That's what this is, right? So the Colt forces the people who had been members to resign. And a lot of these people complain, and the city of Santa Monica gets involved. And Santa Monica...

Wait, just, I'm sorry, just so I'm clear. He buys this property, but the members of the club are still like, I don't care, we have a club. We have a club. I mean, I want my beachside cabana, right? Yeah. I don't want to give that up. I don't want to find another one.

And he's like, no, this is from my weird Colt now. You have to leave. We're going to make it weird for you. Also, you can't buy liquor on the beach now. And why even go to the beach? Why? Like, you're not going to be a member of a beach club and not order drinks on the beach.

What are you talking about? So yeah, these people complain, and the city of Santa Monica gets involved. And being the city of Santa Monica, they immediately go apeshit in a way that they don't have a right to do. They order, like, they basically say, hey, the beachfront property that this club owns,

you don't actually own that. That's property of the city, which was bullshit, right? Like, they did own the property. The city is breaking the law here. But they send in armed police officers and bulldozers and destroy the cabanas and pave the courts or destroy the paved courts in front of the club, which is like...

So the city is in the wrong here, legally. They didn't have the right to do that. And they knew they were... This is just like a massive, like, fake out, like... Yeah, it's just... Yeah, it's the city being the city, you know? It's assuming, like, what are they going to do, right? What are they going to do?

Well, it turns out they had tens of millions of dollars, and a lot of Synodon members were, like, Harvard educated lawyers. So this doesn't go well. So part of what goes wrong is that a bunch of Synodon members protest, and they're arrested en masse by the cops. Chuck Derrick holds a press conference to claim that the city had fallen into the hands of mad dogs.

And, of course, he promises to sue them all. We don't know precisely what legal threats they sent the city of Santa Monica, but the city surrenders immediately. And the result of this is that, for like a decade, Synodon is untouchable. No city or zoning commission in California is willing to stand in their way.

They just don't have to obey zoning laws for a decade now because of this. Wow. Everyone's scared of them. Wow. You know, there's a lot of people talking about armed self-defense these days, but nothing will protect you from the government

as well as a bunch of frightening-ass lawyers. Like, that's... I see your point. So in a matter of years, Synodon became the largest landowner in Santa Monica. The Colt bought a massive industrial building in Oakland, too, which they turned into a dormitory in a showroom where random people off the street could show up

to participate in the game. The state of California even gifted the Colt an entire building in San Francisco. And, you know, San Francisco law in real estate is not as expensive then, but like, that's a big gift. It was never cheap to own buildings in San Francisco. Through the end of the 1960s, Synodon and Chuck Deterick began to exhibit

weirder and weirder behavior. He issued a policy of containment, which ordered that his members ought to separate themselves from the world outside of the Colt. This, of course, cut them off from their families and friends, but also from hobbies or jobs that were not directly related to Synodon. Deterick justified this by claiming that Synodon

had a duty to lead the world into the 21st century. Doing this was going to take everyone's full effort and quote, anything less than changing the world is Mickey Mouse. Now, okay. So at this point, how many people are in this Colt? It's hard to say, but probably somewhere around 2,000 to 3,000 full-time members, but then thousands of people who are taking part

in it to a lesser extent, you know? Right. But just a couple of 1,000 full-time members. Right. Wow. But a lot of, you know, one of the things, because this is an organization of people who are addicted to hard drugs, there's a lot of hard drug addicts

that have little in the way of resources. A lot of the most powerful, talented people in the world are also heavily addicted to drugs. So if you can get those people in your Colt, again, some of his lawyers that were like Colt members had been top of their class at Harvard, which is why you see what they did. They frightened the city of Santa Monica

into saying, no more zoning laws for this Colt, which is not easy. And they clearly have connections to the government in California. But still, it's worth noting, while all this is happening in the late 1960s, the end of the 1960s, 1969, Synanon is still broadly respected, right? Judges increasingly were sending children there

when they were caught with drugs, and many addicts still claim to gain benefits from Synanon. Even if they didn't buy the whole, you never get to leave aspect. Art Pepper was a famous jazz saxophonist. He was one of the biggest jazz players of his day. He checked himself into Synanon in 1969 when the weird shit was in full swing. He was immediately suspicious of the self-policing

and the weird limitations to individual liberty. He also didn't trust Deterick, who he called the old whino, but he still found value in the program. Come on. What he found really valuable in the program was oddly enough, you know how I mentioned that like 24-hour day thing where like half the Colt is 12 hours awake during the day,

half the Colt during the night. He actually found that valuable. He said, quote, dope fiends and nuts can't stand routine, and when they get bored, they have to do something crazy. So Synanon made the insanity themselves. The people that ran it caused the insanity, which allows, he's arguing,

if you're mentally ill, if the organization you're in is crazy, it helps you actually be on a more even keel, right? I guess that's his argument. I don't know. Sure. If you get hit on the head with a coconut, you will get amnesia,

but if you get hit with a coconut again, you don't have amnesia anymore. You know what it is, I think, a little bit like. We talk about this in my podcast about like a second American Civil War. It could happen here, but during the Blitz in World War II, before, because everyone knew

there were going to be cities bombed in the next big war, but they didn't know how people would react. They euthanized all of the pets in London because they were sure that animals would go crazy and become dangerous. Yeah, that's a thing we don't talk about much. All the cats and dogs, they could.

They also assumed that people were going to lose their minds and start committing crimes en masse and just be completely uncontrolled, just because being bombed would shatter their minds. The opposite happened, and one of the things they noticed was that some people who had

required regular therapy, who had required regular psychiatric treatment stopped receiving it at all and were suddenly working as ambulance drivers because when the world fell apart around them, they were able to function more effectively. Right.

There's a variety of theories as to why that is. It's been observed in a lot of different disaster scenarios, and so maybe that's something of what he's talking about. Right? When you get this functional in the regular world, you get put in something that is very much not the regular world, and maybe you're able

to be more functional. I don't know. There's a lot to dig into in that statement by Art Pepper. But by the 1970s, Synanon was fully off the rocker as in whatever individual benefit some people may have gathered. It's no longer about treating addiction.

When health problems forced Chuck to give up sugar and refined grains, he banned them for all of his followers. There were more peanut butter sandwiches. When he started running in place to lose weight, running in place became mandatory for everyone. And when he shaved his head, everyone was pressured to shave their heads

as a sign of solidarity. People who refused would have their heads forcibly shaved for infractions against the rules. Chuck's most controversial rule change came when his doctors told him to give up smoking. He banned cigarettes, which led 150 members to quit on the spot.

People are like, no more sandwiches. They run in place at random. And they're like, all right, all right. Oh yeah, and you can't smoke. You know what? This is a bridge too far. They're like, ooh, this cold is getting coldy. It is 1970. Yeah.

Do you understand what 1970 is? There's only two things to do. Cocaine and cigarettes. And I can't do coke anymore. You're not taking this from me. One rule too far, dude. See, cigarettes save lives. This is what I've been arguing for years.

So by that point, the early 70s, when, you know, he banned cigarettes, Synodon could afford to lose people. By 1972, the cult had more than 1,700 live-in residents. These are permanent members, some of which paid monthly dues because they were squares, some of whom labored for free

in one of the cult's businesses. Rich people had also started handing over fortunes to Derrick, including some old lady who gave him a million dollars and some idiot who gave him a mortgage company. They operate a mortgage company because some guy just gives it to them. Gave him a mortgage.

It was fucking great. So yeah, slowly Chuck assembled an entire town of his own at Tamali's Bay, complete with a fleet of ships, hundreds of motorbikes, an airstrip with a private boat, motorbikes, an airstrip with a private plane,

hot tubs and riding stables. This was his perfect city. He called it home place and it was only open to the top members of the cult and of course to Chuck and his wife, Betty. So it was them and their friends basically and the other cult leader, cult members are like, I mean, actually it's not all bad, right?

Like if you're living on the beach in Santa Monica, worse fucking living arrangements on God's green earth. Absolutely, you got a hot tub? That's not so bad. The home place has, I don't know if they have the hot tub at Casa del Mar. Oh, I see, I see.

But it seems like almost all of their real estate was pretty nice places, right? Tamali's Bay, you know, Santa Monica. They actually become the largest landowners in Santa Monica for like 10 years. Jesus. I know and that wasn't that cheap a real estate then.

That's a big deal. And the Casa del Mar, the thing that was like their massive dormitory on the beach is still day. Like it's been, you can go to that place. Like it's still in operation, not as part of the cult, obviously. Because I guess it was just a good building.

But you know what is still in operation as part of a cult, Paul? Hmm. I have an idea, but why don't you tell me? The sponsors of this podcast are all cults. That's the only guarantee we make it behind the bastards.

My suspicions are confirmed. Absolutely. So, you know, buy some products, purge an unbeliever. Go do some cult shit and listen to these ads. And while you're buying these products, run in place.

Oh yeah. Run in place, but you can smoke in all of our cults. That's the promise that I make to you. In fact, smoking is mandatory. It's mandatory, that's right. It's mandatory. Puffing away on a camel

while you're running in place. Seems counterproductive, but okay. I did. When I was hiking volcanoes in Guatemala, the guy who was by far the best at it. He now makes

authentic viking equipment for the history channel and stuff using original methods. I would hike volcanoes with and he would chain smoke the whole way up. He's 15,000 feet elevation. You know,

just burning him down was amazing. Here's ads. We're also bringing you cinematic historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler and I got a lot to say. For one,

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I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you

can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991

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crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space. 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back!

We're back and we're talking about Synanon. Now in 1972, the Soviet Union now in 1972, the San Francisco Examiner decided to take a deeper, more critical look

at this drug rehab program that suddenly owned, like, all of California. They're like, seems like 1972! They bought the whole state, they have their own cops, perhaps a journalist ought to look into this.

They published a series of critical articles focused mainly on Charles Dederich, his weird policy of separating people from their families, and the fact that he had gotten rich operating a series of tax-free businesses under the guise of therapy. Their reporting was solid. But what was more

solid was Dederich's lawyers. By this point, 48 drug-addicted legal professionals had joined the cult, and Chuck set them all against the examiner. And when you have high-grade lawyers who don't bill you, you can do anything. You can do

anything in the world. Look, that's the dream, right? That is the dream. Just a squadron of frightening lawyers who don't charge you. Good God, yeah. So Chuck sets all of his lawyers against the examiner. And Hearst Newspapers

who own the paper has to settle out of court for, I think, 2.6 million. I've heard a couple of different numbers, but like, it hurts, you know? This was the day when Newspapers had millions of dollars, as opposed to today, where like, if you could give a newspaper a parking ticket, that's it.

They're out of business, right? Like, sorry. We can't keep doing this anymore. And I mean, did he have any idea that this story was coming, or was it a surprise to him, and then he sued? It was a couple of stories. So they launched like a series, and he sued. So he doesn't

have intelligence inside. I think it surprises, and he gets angry, and he sicks his law ghouls on them. The examiner's suit scared most newspapers away from investigating the cult. So they frightened all of the local governments in California away from enforcing zoning laws, and now

they frighten newspapers away from reporting on them. Which is, again, not dumb. The cult, this is so far, this is the game plan, right? If you're listening and you're going to start a cult, I'm planning to start a cult so far

so good, except for the banning cigarettes part. So it's unfortunate that the early 70s, or when newspapers got scared away from reporting on Synanon, because the early 70s were also the time that Chuck Dedrick decided it was a bad idea

for children to be raised by parents. So It was a bad idea to what? For parents, for children to be raised by parents. Oh, sure. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. You know the thing that human beings have been doing

for forever, we should just stop that and immediately try a new thing. But look, just because we've been doing it for a long time doesn't mean that it's perfect. I was raised by parents, and let me tell you, it was not all smooth sailing. It was not all smooth sailing. So it's

some Scientology level shit. Oh no, this is way more intense than what Scientology does. A phrase I don't hear often, let's hear this. Let's go. Chuck justified this by saying basically junkies are too much, are children,

right? And kids can't raise kids. So he started sending newborn babies and young children of his members away to be raised in a central facility he called the hatchery. Oh. He's got like, this is some good shit.

Like at this point, at this point he's like, why should I hide anything? Yeah, I'll call it the hatchery. Fuck it. I know what that sounds. Like I don't give a fuck. Yeah. Yeah, it's the hatchery. No one stopped me yet. Make the sign. Make the sign. I don't have time.

I bought Santa Monica in Marin County. I can do whatever I want. So children were to be reared communally by teachers in the Synanon School. Charles Derrick called mothers who wanted to see their own children too much, head suckers.

Ah, want to see your own kids. That seems like abusive behavior. Yeah, head sucker. Children were not allowed toys to own toys or anything else of their own. They slept in large rooms with many beds. They were only allowed occasional visitation from their parents.

Now I actually found a book, a memoir by a man who was raised as a child in a Synanon School. Wow. Most of the book is not about that, but that's how it starts and it obviously has a profound impact on him. This guy, Miquel Jolette, writes that he was raised to believe he was a drug addict because his father had been one.

Quote, he's like six. Quote, we never use the words drug addict. We would just say someone was a dope fiend. People said this with pride and I'm pretty sure that's what we are if someone were to ask us whether we are white or black or Dutch or Italian. I'm not really sure, but I know we're

all dope fiends because that's all anyone ever talks about. The book is written kind of in a present tense, right, when he's writing about his childhood. Right. So Miquel was very young, M-I-K-E-L, was very young when he left the cult. Again, I think he was like five or six, I'm not exactly sure.

He was a little kid, but he reported not fully as like a first grader or so. He didn't understand what a mother or a father was really. He would meet his mom occasionally, but he didn't really get what she was or what his dad

was and he had to be one of the, when his mom leaves the cult, their grandpa is who like rescues them and he didn't know what a grandfather was. He'd never heard the word before. Wow. Like, that's the level of like hiding from children

the concept of grandparents. Jesus. It is again, in Miquel's book, Hollywood Park deals with his life after the cult, but it talks a bit about what it was like there and there are some heart-rending passages about

Synanon School. The school is where they put the kids when they took us from our parents. It's where we all lived from the time we were six months old. Since Chuck, the old man, said that dope fiends would just mess up their kids anyway, we were all put in a building together to become children of the universe.

You had to listen to Chuck. We had demonstrators who were like teachers and classes and songs and I was lucky because I had a Bonnie. She would hug me every day and sing songs with me and call me son and ask me what I want for a snack. Most of the other kids didn't have a Bonnie though and some

never even saw their moms or dads. They just never came to visit. Dimitri said he doesn't remember his mom's face. She was somewhere else. He didn't know where his dad was. The demonstrators say we don't need our parents because we have each other, but we don't like sharing our toys and I don't know who to talk to

when I woke up with a bad dream or fell off of the monkey bars. Yeah. That really is... That's bad, yeah. It's a bummer. Yeah. Here's another passage. Now we're into more than

greed or megalomania. Now it's truly devious. This is fucked up. With the other things that are even abusive in the cult, there's still an element of consent because you chose to do this, you choose to stay. Not that cults don't

abuse consent and whatnot, but it's one thing when it's a bunch of adults who are choosing a lifestyle that may have abusive elements, these kids have no choice at any point and they are being fucked up. I'm going to read one more quote from Miguel's

book. Some of the kids were very sad. Tony, his brother, used to sit alone at the edge of the playground all day and his brother was a little older than him. He would turn away when one of the demonstrators tried to hug him. He doesn't trust the adults and he doesn't play with other kids that much. When mom came

to visit, she would say he's just like that and he needs to learn how to deal with his bad things to him. That happens sometimes. The kids would get hit really hard or locked in a closet and there was no mom or dad to tell because they lived somewhere else and you couldn't even remember their faces. Yeah.

I mean, how many kids didn't never recover from that experience and are like fucked up to this day? There's an element of it that is I don't know, worse, I don't want to use worse or better, but it's a different kind of like from a kid who's sexually abused, but still

understands broadly speaking what a family is, what grandparents are, like the basics of life and society. These kids have to learn everything when they get it. That's what McKell's book is about. It's like realizing that hotels exist, right? Realizing that

fast food, like all of this stuff, like because you're just in this separate world that's all the dream of this weird guy who by his own admission can't connect with children anyway, who's deciding how these infants are raised from six months on. It's pretty

bad, Paul. It's real bad. Hey, no argument here, Robert. In the 1970s, Chuck decided to launch a new version of the game. This one geared towards provoking the same sort of psychedelic experience he'd had on LSD, but without

using drugs. He called this the trip and it was initially offered to a select few, the elite. Chuck told them, at the end of this rainbow there will be a pot of gold. Through dissipation or long hours of activity without very much sleep, we hope to bring about in you a conscious state of inebriation.

We want to get you loaded without acid. Now, there's ways to do that. For my book, A Brief History of Ice, which was like I was experimenting with weird drugs, one of the things I would do, I tried to recreate this ancient Greek ritual where they had this weird wine that was by some accounts like a mix of grains

and stuff and wine that was psychedelic, but they would not eat for a week before they took it. Right. I think I went four or five days without eating, but it was the first thing you put on your stomach, especially you hike up a mountain

before you take it. That first putting something in your body, especially it hits real hard, and in the same way, if you don't let people sleep for days, they'll start to trip. Like, you will hallucinate. Absolutely.

Yeah. And the key to this insight producing experience was to keep people awake for days on end until they were delirious and started to lose. And you get really suggestible, right? If you've ever been gone days without sleeping, your willpower isn't the same, you know?

Yes. You're damaging your body and brain because it's very bad for you. People who took the trip were initially told that this was an honor meant to expand their consciousness and capabilities. Quote, and this is from Charles. You will learn more about yourself, your

fellow man, the world, the nature of reality in one weekend than you would in four years. Let your ego go. Let things happen to you. It's a feeling of closeness to each other that we are after, the death of the ego, a reference point for the rest of your life. You may change your value system, notions about life and viewpoints about people. It will produce

a new breed of human beings with greatly expanded potentials. If you do your best, you can't fail. So that sounds positive. But once the actual trip started, a different reality was revealed. So the whole experience started when an individual called a shepherd led the group,

which usually numbered about 50, through the lobby of the Cassadel Mar. They were ordered to strip out of their clothes and put on white robes. Watches were taken as time did not matter anymore. Women were told to remove makeup and jewelry in order to symbolically strip away their past selves.

Then, according to a write-up by Tony Morantz, the guides, all experienced game players, turned each group from enthusiasm to a depression and defeat, wallowing in its collective shame. Sitting in comfortable green arm chairs, they made the dope fiends tell their tales of drugs, rape, crime and beatings.

The squares were pushed to confess their prior loneliness and despair. The games turned on one and then another. Disoriented by lack of sleep, each was moved to the point of intense disillusionment. AIDS, who did their homework, provided ammunition to the doctors on each tripper. Everyone was ordered to cop out, confessed to past

sins. The result was implantation of a common bond and sense of ideals, all identified with Synanon. Each tripper was to write on a paper or on some feeling or admission. A big shot would advise the trippers they were not really chosen as an honor, but each was really selected because each was a resistor,

thinking he or she knew better the direction Synanon should go. Part of the dummies that hold Synanon back. Maybe, Dettarick said, one day we will put the dingbats like you against the wall and wash them off and bring them back into the human race. So, it starts like

this is a thing you've been selected because you're special and we're all going to grow and then it becomes days of not sleeping and being psychologically abused and being told you're here because you're resisting the cold. You're resisting the teachings and you have to be punished and realize your errors.

Now, there were other stages of the trip too. It would veer between, you would have these emotions of like profound emotional abuse and then all of these exhausted weeping people would be taken into a room filled with like other members of the cult who were well rested who would start cheering and clapping and hug them and love bomb them.

And it was this, yeah you get what this is doing, right? God damn! This is like, it's so insidious this guy. Yeah, it's you gotta get, look you have to hand it to Chuck Dettarick.

You gotta fuck up people. He truly did. You can't take that away from the man. All with the lessons he learned from AA. This is his improvement. This is all his improvement on alcoholic anonymous.

AA and one Emerson essay. Oh my god. Yeah, it's pretty great. And it would go on as long as like three I think sometimes four days without sleep and by the end of it pretty much everyone was hallucinating and traumatized

but of course also bonded with the people they'd gone through the experience with. And the trip was a massive success in its second year. Of course, of course it was. I mean it's one of those things I can tell you I've had a number of like, there was a festival

I went to one year that got like horribly, horribly rained out to the point where it was like it became a danger and like dealing with it was actually one of the most fun things that I've ever done with a group of people and everybody kind of came away like a degree of bonding.

The same thing was true last year during the riots like you do a terrible thing with a group of people and you all in some of it's that, you know if it's an actual dangerous situation you learn to trust people in ways that you don't normally trust. I think in this what it is is that this breaks your ability

to do what all trauma can do. And so that's I think consciously what he's doing is making it so that people can connect less with the world but it also draws them in more to the cult because they're the only other people who understand this thing. So in its second year

Synanon was making half a million dollars a year selling access to the trip or selling sessions or whatever you want to call them, selling trips. In the mid 1970s the cult's repression of its own members ramped up in ways that were even more intense and eventually violent.

Most histories of the cult will trace the tipping point to one specific moment in the summer of 1973 from Cabinet Magazine, quote Derrick himself was taking part in a game but one female member was showing him no respect and kept interrupting his gnomic utterances.

Infuriated Derrick stood up walked over to the woman and poured a can of root beer over her head. It was a small gesture of frustration but the effect within Synanon was earth shattering. No matter the other changes that had taken place the rules of the game had always been sacrosanct.

No drugs, no violence. Now Derrick himself had broken one of them. Some wondered whether he'd gone crazy but his more devoted followers preferred to see it as a sign, a call to arms. Yeah. I mean that, yeah.

Yeah. That's when you know your cult is firing on all cylinders when you change the rules and people are like yes. Yeah, when you commit what I would call the most minor act of violence imaginable

which is pouring root beer on someone and your cult really is like this is a sign that we should attempt to murder our enemies. Yeah. You have done it as a cult leader when you hit that moment. Yeah. But you know who will murder your enemies, Paul?

I have a guess but you go first. The products and services that support this podcast. That's really what we're selling with all of our products is someone who will murder your enemies.

Which is a service. Yeah, which is a service. This podcast is entirely supported by various death squads. So check it out. We've interviewed the world's foremost experts.

We're also bringing you cinematic historical recreations of moments left out of your history books. I'm Smedley Butler and I got a lot to say. For one, my personal history is raw, inspiring and mind-blowing. And for another, do we get the mattresses

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And talking about the introduction of violence to Synanon. I think for reasons that are heartbreaking, but not at all surprising, the first violence, serious violence within Synanon was done to children.

Specifically, the dozens of juvenile drug addicts, they weren't all even drug addicts. Some kids smoke in pot, the judge sends you to Synanon because you had a joint on you. Kids who the court system had sent to Synanon,

teenagers, and these kids were not voluntary members of the cult. They didn't want to be there. They didn't abide by the rules. These kids had zero time per chups bullshit and no desire to fit in with these weird adults doing dumb shit. So

Deterick couldn't handle that because these kids weren't willing to listen to him or follow the cult. So he put them into what he called his punk squad, which was a militaristic boot camp style unit dedicated to scaring children straight through harsh discipline and horrific physical abuse.

Children in the punk squad could be hit in the face, knocked down, or beaten with objects and then run through the game. So they would beat the shit out of kids for misbehaving and then immediately put them in a session of the game where they would be mentally abused. Yeah. And that was became

if you broke any of the rules as a child as a member of the punk squad, you just get the shit kicked out of you. There's no hair cuts. There's just, you wail on them. Now, some older members of the cult refuse to accept this, right? This is their cigarette. They're like, this is too

far. They had joined an organization defined in part by its commitment to non-violence. And so some people leave at this and the arguments over this lead to a series of purges by Deterick to remove all who complained. Betty, the cult leader's wife, claimed

we're beginning to find some creeps amongst the squares. The punk squad was markedly ineffective at stopping children from using drugs or otherwise breaking the law. But it was extremely good at maintaining Synanon's tax exempt status. That's why they take these kids is that you don't have to pay taxes

as long as when the government sends you juvenile delinquents, you take them and then beat the shit out of them. And because it's already been established that journalists and the government are not looking into Synanon at all because they're scared, these kids have no one. Well, not quite no one.

We'll get to that in a little bit, though. In 1974, Deterick decided it was time for Synanon to become a religion. For years, he told his father, yeah, here we go, baby, here we go. Yeah. You know, I thought it over. Shot through the whole bingo card.

Thought it over. I think this is going great. But I think if there's one thing that could really take us into the stratosphere, we should be a religion. And this is, you know, LRH, friend of the pod. Yeah. Made this same call.

Yeah. For a different reason. I think he was really the driver of that call. Chuck is not the initial driver of this. So for years, Chuck had told his followers that the cult was an experimental society and he would call it, quote, an ever-changing group of people with ever-changing goals, thrusts directions and so on,

which means nothing. And, yeah, he was not, so he was going definitely in weird directions. He didn't initiate the push to religious Synanon. Because he was an atheist still. Yeah, he was an atheist. That was not what it was about to him.

But his lawyer, Dan Garrett, had an idea. He pointed out that religions don't have to get licenses for treating medical issues for educating children, right? You don't have to get any kind of licensing if you're a fucking religion.

You can do anything without licenses if you're a religion. That's what he says. And he also notes that becoming a religion would, quote, eliminate a number of silly questions, such as, when do they graduate and why do they have to obey? Nobody graduates from a religion.

Good shit. So Garrett pitched his boss, Guru, this idea at a board meeting Yeah. Yeah, a board meeting. I think we should become a religion. That's going to happen to fucking Amazon or Apple at some point.

Apple for sure. Why don't we just become a religion? We don't have to pay taxes if our religion is making these phones. Maybe that will be Jeff's revelation from space when he gets back to earth. God spoke to me. I saw the planet as one big blue marble

and it was smaller than I was now. And by the way, warehouse workers don't get paid anymore. It's a sacrament to work in our workshops. That's right. Yeah, so the board unanimously approves this plan, although one person

we don't know who wrote on a copy of the proposal, who would be God? Which is a good question to ask when you're Absolutely. Again, drug abuse treatment program becomes a religion. Because you know it's going to come up later. It's going to come up.

You got to ask the question. Yeah. So the switch to a religion came right alongside a major expansion in Synanon's appreciation of violence. After children, the first group to have violence okayed against them were

splities, suspected thieves, spies, and enemies of the cult. People who thought they were going to be leaving basically. If you're leaving, you're a thief, you're a splitie, violence can be used against you. The first major group of outside enemies, people outside the cult that they go after, were local ranchers in Marin County.

And this is because the only group of people who cared about these abuse teams were like local farmers because a bunch of these kids would escape. And they would show up in the night at the houses of these ranchers and eventually the ranchers start talking to be like, there's a lot of kids talking about

like horrible abusive shit going on at this weird cult. And they started their own underground railroad to help the kids in the punk squad escape and get out, get away from Synanon and like get to somewhere where they couldn't be taken back to the cult. Which is fucking rad, right?

Good on those people. Yeah, that's great. But Derrick eventually found out that this underground railroad was operating and he started sickening his followers on ranchers. In 1975, three Synanon members were charged with assaulting a Marin County

rancher. Derrick called them heroes. Shortly thereafter, another rancher was pistol whipped by a cyanite while his family watched like they attack him in front of his house and like beat the hell out of him. And these are, do they not necessarily know that these particular

ranchers had anything to do with this? No, these do, these do. Oh, they do? Okay, okay. Yeah, yeah. And you know, this guy gets pistol whipped and the local sheriff does nothing because Derrick is bribing him and both of his deputies were members of the cult. Like he's got like two deputies I guess

in that part of the county at that point and they're both cult members. Yeah. So again, every part of society has failed the kids in this program except for random Marin County ranchers who are definitely the heroes of this podcast along with a lawyer we're going to talk about in a bit.

So in Santa Monica, cyanites mobbed and beat two black couples who had parked their cars at a Synanon owned apartment building. And this is just because like they'd gotten close to the offices like I don't know if it was a racist thing or not. They were both black couples.

It might have just been like I don't know why but it seems to have been like a property dispute. Like you're parked on our property so we're just going to assault you as a group. Because now like a real there's like a real paranoia that exists in this group and that everyone has to be able to look out for enemies.

And also you're a hero if you do violence on behalf of the cult. So a lot of people are just looking for an excuse. Yeah. Non-violence Deterick Bragg at a press conference was quote just a position we can change positions anytime we want to. So that's good.

Now the violence of cyanites was ginned up and encouraged by the wire an internal broadcasting system installed in all cult facilities around the country 24 hours a day the wire broadcast messages from Deterick

and from cult leadership. Yes he really goes all the way. I have to say like he is it's like when you when when you can like there's a musician that you like and then you can sort of see all their different influences and it makes

them into what they are. This guy is just like I'll take this from here and this from here and I'm just I can't I am trying to predict how this eventually all falls apart and I honestly can't because this guy seems to be

like really just rolling with every punch. He's adding shit like crazy like I'm dying to see what is the thing that happens. Yeah it's it's coming. Yeah I know. I will say this you're not gonna call it. No

like you can't call this specific twist. Fantastic. Yeah so many of the messages that went out through the wire were just Chuck ranting nonstop about enemies he started pulling out a call for volunteers young tough men who were willing to fight. He called them

the Imperial Marines and had them trained in a special form of karate named Sinnoh Doe. Now the Colt has its own karate and its own Marine Corps. This is I mean Oh it's so good.

This is Hall of Fame stuff. I know he's really hitting all of them out of the park. This is the first Colt leader who I'm willing to like this guy can sit in a room with Al Ron Hubbard you know like that. Yeah yeah yeah. You got to. Woo. Damn. Now the major

organizer of the Imperial Marines in their early days was Chuck's wife Betty. She attended their training sessions. She gave ranting speeches about the need for a militant Synanon. Our narcotics abuse program needs to a militant wait.

Derrick as a result his wife's dedication started calling them Her Majesty's Imperial Marines. So things have gone a little off the rails at this point. Now while this shit was going on Synanon's various corporate

entities were still extremely profitable. The Colt adopted the slogan the people business and by 1976 it had assets it had property assets of more than 22 million dollars which is around a hundred million dollars in real estate today.

Now it is a misconception to say that the IRS granted Synanon tax exempt status as a religion. You'll see that a lot in articles. That's not true. The U.S. government never recognized it as a religion. It was tax free because it was an addiction recovery charity. It was tax free

but now they filed they try to become a religion but they don't ever like like Scientology didn't get that done until the 90s. Right. Yeah. The main effect itself a religion seems to be that it drew a third wave of media attention to the Colt. Much of the scrutiny

was focused on the millions of dollars Dedrick himself was making. LA magazine notes. And this is sorry. This is LA magazine interviewing Dedrick. So this is Dedrick here. A lot of guys could do this thing from an old Ford Roadster and sit on an orange crate. They're holy men. I'm not.

I need a $17,000 Cadillac. He told Time Magazine that year. Did you ever play King of the Mountain when you were a kid? I liked King of the Mountain. I won. I won. I was their firstest with the mostest. I was the smartest. I was older than the rest of the guys. I won. I won. The gang

does not expect me to. Well, let me say let me say this terribly unforgiving thing that is true of all people in position. I am not bound by the rules. I make the rules in very peculiar ways. I am adorable. I am he's just saying that to Time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. One of my favorite recurring cult things is when the leader has to justify their expensive car. It comes up again and again. Yeah, it's always a thing. And I love it because even LRH would be like, well, you know,

let me explain using words I invented, why this is positive for the human mind or how we're expanding consciousness. Chuck's just like, I don't have to play by the rules. Fuck you. I'm God. Time magazine. So Charles kept sickening

his legal team on journalists who crossed him. He sued a local ABC outlet and they settled for a lot of money, probably. But when time called sending on a kooky cult in the article we just quoted from, Derrick decided something rather more serious was in order. Multiple reporters from the

magazine received death threats and Time's editor in chief was stopped outside his apartment by two imperial marines and they gave heads who told him, we are going to ruin your life. Now, were these were these Her Majesty's imperial marines? Yeah, Her Majesty's

imperial marines. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Sorry. I get, you know. I just wanted to make sure. Now, like all good cult leaders whose members start to commit crimes in their name, Chuck claimed not to have ordered the harassment campaign, but he also was too much of a narcissist to fully deny being

involved in this. In a TV interview, he used his denial of responsibility to further threaten Time magazine. Quote, I don't know what these people might do. I don't know what action they might take against the people responsible, their wives, their children. Bombs could

be thrown in odd places into the homes of some of the clowns who occupy high places in the time organization. Yeah, I don't know why they're doing this, but they might bomb your kids. Again, amazing shit to just say on TV. Wow. Like, and this is a guy

who up till now every time he's pushed back powerful organizations, the fucking cops, the local governments. Yeah. Newspapers have been like, OK, we're just not going to get involved. So he's just, he thinks there's no consequences. He thinks he's fucking God. So he's just saying

like, yeah, you know, I didn't order them too, but I wouldn't be surprised if my guys bombed your children to death. Might happen. Hey, they might not too. You know who might not. I said might. It's not a threat if you say might.

It's the first in Minecraft. So over its first few years, Imperial Marines and other Sinonites would be sent to carry out attacks on more than 40 people. Enemies were often assaulted and beaten in public so that everyone would know the hit had been carried out

for Sinonon. Deterit counseled members that if they were caught, they should admit everything and go to jail and deny Sinonon had anything to do with it. The group began stockpiling hundreds of firearms. By 1978, they had more than $200,000 in guns.

One cult newsletter explained we're concerned about the rising crime rate. Look, with crime the way it is, can you afford not to have a marine corps, right? You would do it if you could. Yeah, I mean who wouldn't.

Exactly, who amongst us? Who amongst us? In 1978, angry at a spate of negative news broadcasts by ABC affiliates, a number of Sinonites bought stock in ABC and attended a stockholders meeting. They read out the names of

other ABC stockholders and identified themselves as members of a group called Murder Incorporated. Then they asked the board members if their wives had bodyguards. Normal shit, Paul. Just do a normal drug abuse rehab program shit.

This is just... Wow. Wow, this is the boldest... Yeah. I don't have any fucks to give. I have never heard of shit like this before. I mean like... It's the first time I've been impressed since

Scientology by a cult. Absolutely. Good God, yeah. Scientology is very tame by comparison. Yeah. This is... Oh my God. Yeah. While his followers engaged in mass

violence, Chuck Dedereck devoted himself to bettering his cult. It had become clear to him, with all of Sinonon's issues with troubled teens, that kids were problematic. Teenaged addicts were at least profitable though, right? But cult leaders though, were just to drain on resources until they were old enough

to become unpaid labor. So, he had to get rid of children. From Cabinet Magazine, quote, in a speech he gave on the wire, he announced, there's no profit to this community in raising our own children. Every baby that we indulge in Sinonon female with takes up a bed

in somewhere between $100 and $2,000 worth of energy. To those who claimed they wanted to have a baby, he explained the experience was greatly overrated. I understand it's more like crapping a football than anything else. Oh. I understand.

Oh, amazing dude. I mean, look, there's men referring to women as females, a problem then, and a problem now. Yeah. It wasn't long before Dedereck came up with a practicable solution. All male members would receive

vasectomies. Pregnant females were ordered to have abortions. So mandatory vasectomies and abortions. Some agreed immediately, rushing to Sinonon's hospital. Oh, they had a hospital. Others had needed to be gamed into it.

Yeah. Others needed to be gamed into it, and we're talking about the game here. Sure. Regarding the baby ban, Dedereck opined, nothing is sacred just because it's been done for a million years. Curiously enough, only Dedereck himself failed to receive the snip,

but then he was having his own problems. In 1977, Betty died and Dedereck found himself alone. He immediately announced that he would accept applications from any woman who wanted to marry him. Six applied and he eventually chose a 31 year old. He was so delighted with the experiment

that he ordered all married couples to take separation vows and pick a new mate every three years. His wife dies. He gets married to someone half his age and then is like, this is great. Everyone has to get divorced immediately and marry someone new every three years now.

Fucking amazing. Now, all these shifts in policy, like the banning of cigarettes, caused some members to leave the cult, but new people kept joining and the more ridiculous rules Charles put in place, the more devoted and unhinged those who remained became.

As the 1970s... Question. Is there any type of fair game in these people leave like in Scientology? We're about to talk to that. Again, the second group of people after teenagers that they

use violence on is splities, which are people who try to leave because they're stealing from the cult. Splities. This is getting down into the real depths of the sadness here, of the people that are attracted to this kind of thing, like truly broken people,

and this is always, always, always at the core of these fucking cults is the preying on people who are having a hard time. It's so... Every time I think about it, it's so...

You are a truly depraved human being if you're doing this. It's interesting because that book with the kid who grew up and sent it on, he talks about his mom and his dad, he barely knew his dad, but his dad was a heroin addict and his mom said he would have died

from addiction if he hadn't found the cult. His mom, though, was a square and she got into it, she had been, she went to Berkeley, she was an activist at Berkeley, the whole of like the raging 60s, she was like an activist against the guy, she got tear gassed a bunch of times, she gets traumatized as an activist, she falls in love

with this guy who has an addiction and they get into the cult to save him and just because she's so frightened and like angry at the world and so disgusted with regular society, and it is like these people, it's what you said.

It just breaks your heart. It does, I mean the human shrapnel caused by this organization is titanic. As the 1970s rolled to a close, the former drug addiction self help group started to morph into a doomsday cult. This was partly the natural

extension of Dedrick's policy of having members separate their lives entirely from family and friends and work outside the cult. A we-they attitude formed. People grew paranoid and increasingly assaulted outsiders near Synanon property. That's why they started attacking people like Park nearby, it's like any outsider who comes near

is a danger. This attitude was reinforced by the fact that in 1977, the church picked up its most dedicated enemy, the man who would eventually kill it, Paul Morance. Like most people in LA, Paul had held a Marie-Andrean career as a screenwriter and a journalist while paying the bills.

His main job was an attorney. He was first hired by a former member who claimed the cult had abducted and brainwashed her when she tried to leave. He won a $300,000 judgment in this case, which sent Dedrick into a rage. So Paul

starts taking other clients who are people who tried to leave, who have been abused by the church and kind of going to war against the church. So Chuck gets on the wire and he announces to every Synanon member that the organization had what he called a new religious posture. We're not going to mess with the old

time turn the other cheek religious postures. Our religious posture is, don't mess with us. You can get killed dead, literally dead. I am quite willing to break some lawyer's legs and next break his wife's legs and threaten to cut their child's arm off. That is the end of that lawyer. That is a very satisfactory, humane

way of transmitting information. I really do want an ear and a glass of alcohol on my desk. Yes, indeed. Bring me an ear! Jesus Christ, man. And again, this is all recorded.

This is all recorded going out to places around the country. This is the Chuck program. Paul, I'm not a law knower. But it seems like that might cross the legal boundary over to incitement.

A case could be made. A case could be made. Paul was certainly worried and he had reason to be. A few weeks earlier, the imperial marines had gone after an aposite named Phil, who had fled the cult along with a female cult member and her two children.

Now, Miquel Gillette, the kid we heard from earlier, was one of those two children. Phil had become in like the months after they leave the cult and he's like learning about the world. Phil had been almost like a surrogate dad to him. And when he was at home with his brother, Synanon came for Phil because he was an aposite.

And this is what how Miquel recalled what happened next. They, being the Synanon assault team, are holding skinny black clubs that look a little like baseball bats. One carries his low in his hand and the other taps his softly on the ground as they walk up behind

Phil. At first, I think maybe they're playing a joke on him because I've heard people play dress up on Halloween even though we never did it in Synanon. Why else would they have those masks over their faces? Why else would they hide behind the orange camper van where Phil can't see them? Phil looks up at me and smiles when he gets out. Before I can say anything,

one of the men runs up behind and hits him over the head. Phil falls onto the ground. It's weird how he falls. Like a stack of Lincoln logs that's been topped, tipped over. His body folds into a weird shape with his legs sticking out under him. I jump back and look around the doorway to see if anyone else saw it. I don't know if I'm supposed

to scream or run or yell but I don't want the men to see me. The second man hits Phil's legs which seem to bounce around like rubber. One of his gray sneakers flies off. Phil puts his head between his arms and his face down and starts to scream. They nearly kill Phil. He's in a coma for a week.

He comes very close to death. He does survive. He does get better. But he could well have died and they clearly were willing to kill him. You're hitting people in the head with a bat. You're accepting, yeah, we might kill this motherfucker. Phil's story was

fresh in Paul's Paul Morance's mind when he learns that he's made Chuck Deadrich's shit list. So, first off, Paul buys a gun to protect himself. He checks under his car for bombs before starting it. But when Sinon eventually makes their move against Paul it is in a way that he could not have

expected. And that no one could have expected because I've never heard of anyone outside of a James Bond movie doing this shit. I'm going to quote from LA Magazine here. As Morance returned to his small home in the Pacific Palisades the evening of October 11th, 1977 he was eager to turn on the TV

and relax over game one of the World Series the Dodgers versus the Yankees. For one moment I'm not going to think about Sinon, he told himself. I'm just going to watch the baseball game. Morance placed his notebooks on the kitchen table and walked to the mail slot by his front door. Through the grill of the mailbox he could

see the outline of an unusually shaped package. A scarf perhaps? It was hard to tell without his glasses. Morance remembers not so much the pain as the rattlesnake sank his fangs into his outstretched hand. Are you fucking kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me?

Are you fucking kidding me? They rattlesnake him. They rattlesnake his ass. Come on. Wow. He remembers not so much the pain but the regret. They don't get me with this. I'm not that stupid he was thinking.

Then he heard a scream and realized it was his own. The four and a half foot reptile its rattler removed to keep it quiet. They went to the floor and recoiled. Morance dashed out the back door yelling call the police, call an ambulance. I've been bitten by a rattlesnake.

It's Synanon, Synanon got me. They cut off a rattlesnake's fucking tail and put it in the mailbox. Damn. That's out of its goddamn mind. They even hurt a snake. Yeah, that snake didn't do anything wrong.

It's just a snake. Exactly. He nearly died. He was in the hospital for 11 days. The attack was so bizarre and extreme that it went in 1970s viral at once and this was Synanon's big fuck up.

You can't ignore a rattlesnake assassination of an alarm. News anchor Walter Cronkite called it bizarre even by cult standards. Which is a good tagline for the whole Synanon story. This shit's weird for cults.

Yeah. Now, there were criminal trials, of course, for conspiracy to commit murder. When he was deposed, Chuck Derrick claimed to only have a quote, very dim memory of 1977 due to a series of strokes.

Even so, his ego was too great for him to claim total ignorance of crimes committed by his followers. He told the court this. Most of what Synanon did in 1977, at least what I knew about, I approved of. Because as I pointed out before, over and over again,

I'm one hell of a good executive and not too much ever went on in the organization that I ran that I didn't approve of. I don't know everything that went on, of course. Dude, you can't... He's too much of an egomaniac to fully deny an assassination attempt with a rattlesnake. He can't help it! He can't help it!

It's amazing. Oh, my God. God, he's the best. Oh, shit. There's this guy next to my Hubbard statue in my eventual compound. God. This dude, honestly,

he's taking all comers. He's really going for it. Why is he not a household name? I don't understand. Yeah. Well, because he gets stopped, I guess. Because LRH, who never gets stopped, you know, that's kind of the thing.

Yeah. Now, there is still some debate about Charles Dedrick explicitly ordered a rattlesnake assassination or just told people he wanted this guy dead and somebody independently was like, rattlesnake! I mean, this is the ear and the jar guy.

I think the worst... I feel like the word rattlesnake passed his lips. I think he said, it's so weird and specific, it has to be Charles Dedrick. You know what you should do? Cut a rattlesnake's tail off. At the very least, cutting off the tail

is a good suggestion. It might have been a pitch meeting. Someone says rattlesnake. He's like, well, you're going to have to deal with the rattle. That's an idea man sort of solution. I didn't hear that, but if I were you, I would cut off the tail. If I and Minecraft were mailing a rattlesnake

to a lawyer, I would cut its rattler off. So, multiple members of the cult were eventually arrested and sentenced for planning and executing a murder attempt. And the law did come for Dedrick himself for conspiracy to commit murder. 30 police officers

were sent to arrest him once the charges dropped. The prosecutor, John Watson, was there when Dedrick was arrested in his compound in Lake Havasu. They found him, quote, in a stupor, staring straight ahead, an empty bottle of chivas regal in front of him. Oh, no, he relapsed.

He relapsed. Chuck, no. Chuck, we were so proud of you up till now. He was so drunk, he had to be carried to jail in a stretcher. Fuck. This is the one time it's okay to laugh at a relapse.

I feel like this guy here did. Absolutely. He earned it, for sure. In 1980, Dedrick pleaded no contest to conspiracy to commit murder. He was fined $10,000 and sentenced to five years probation.

Morance himself agreed to let the cult leader avoid prison time due to the older man's poor health. Chuck was, however, barred from having any further contact with the cult he'd founded. And without him, Synanon slowly collapsed. The IRS revoked its tax exempt status because it was found that they owed

the IRS $17 million in back taxes. A series of court battles ensued, organized by Dedrick's successors, but in 1984, a California court ruled that Synanon, quote, had a policy of terror and violence and a practice of, quote,

of individuals. Synanon declared bankruptcy and, in 1991, dissolved entirely. I think there's one branch in Germany still. Yeah, in 1991, that's when they find... There's still a branch in Germany? At least according to one article,

there's still a branch in Germany. I don't think it's affiliated with, like, the weirdest... I don't know, though. Maybe look into that. Maybe look into that. Hey, look, the basic ideas are sound. You sin, circle, yell at each other. Yeah. It's like having a family.

Yeah. Um... After being convicted, Dedrick moved with his new wife to a double-wide trailer in Visalia, California, which some might argue is a fate worse than prison. Everyone I know who grew up in Visalia

will argue that for sure. He died in... He died in 1997, almost 84 years old. And he still held the respect of some influential people. He was mourned openly on the floor of the House of Representatives by California Congressman and future

Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums. Ron said, quote, Dedrick distinguished himself in the area of drug rehabilitation and amassed great wealth before his organization was associated with violence and tax problems, which is a hell of a way to summarize, try to

rattle, snake, murder a lawyer. His approach to rehabilitating drug addicts has become a major paradigm for drug recovery and therapeutic communities the world over. And here's the most fucked up part of the whole story. That's not inaccurate. It's not a good thing

like Ron Dellums thinks, but it's not inaccurate. Synanon remains maybe the most influential drug abuse treatment program of all time. You remember the punk squad, Paul? But... What do you ask me? You remember the punk

squad, right? I do remember the punk squad. They're never far from my thoughts. Never far from your thoughts. Have you heard of the troubled teen industry? No, I have not. You know, those camps where they send teenagers who are delinquents and like a lot of them get like beaten and molested and murdered.

Paris Hilton's doing a documentary about them. Dr. Phil was involved with them. These like ranches. Yeah. It starts because of synanon. The first variants of that is the punk squad. And I'm from Mother Jones here. No fewer than 50 programs can

trace their treatment philosophy directly or indirectly to an anti-drug cult called synanon. Founded in 1958, synanon sold itself as a cure for hardcore heroin addicts who could help each other by breaking new initiates with isolation, humiliation, hard labor, and sleep deprivation.

Studies found that synanons and countergroups could produce lasting psychological harm and that only 10 to 15% of the addicts who participated in them recovered. But despite not working and despite the guy who dreamed up synanon's treatments had also tried to murder a lawyer with a

rattlesnake, they remained the basis for the multi-million dollar teen troubled teen industry to this day. In 1971, the federal government gave a grant to a group called the SEED, which applied synanon tactics to troubled teens, many of whom were only suspected of having tried drugs.

In 1974, Congress opened an investigation into the SEED, finding it had used methods similar to highly refined brainwashing techniques employed by the North Koreans. Fearful of bad PR, supporters of the SEED spun off a copycat group called Straight Inc. This is where

Scared Straight comes from. Okay. Wait, so this goes back to synanon. How far does this go? This is the 70s. This is when synanon's at its peak as people are spinning off from it. So people picked up the punk squad and ran with it with these other

ones? Yeah, and ran with it. Yes. I think in the 80s, this is in the 70s still, when Straight Inc. is found. The guy who found Straight Inc. is a fellow named Mel Simbler, who is a close friend of the Bush family and became the GOP's 2000 finance chair.

He also headed Scooter Libby's legal defense fund. Now, Mel's abused teens away from drugs group was a hit. By the mid 1980s in the synanon and shambles, Straight Inc. was operating in seven states. Nancy Reagan declared it her favorite anti-drug program. Of course,

Straight Inc. was a factory for child molestation to physical abuse. The group was so inundated with millions of dollars in legal judgments that it had to close in 1993. But because the premise of Straight Inc. was so replicable and profitable and because the Republican Party was now in bed

with this whole growing industry and drugs were such a boogeyman of Republicans in this period, state after state carved exemptions into state laws that allowed programs shut down from mass child abuse to reopen under different names with the same staff.

As troubled teen and scared straight programs made hundreds of millions of dollars, they spread beyond the borders of the United States. From Mother Jones. Confrontation and humiliation are also used by religious programs, such as in Scuela Caribe in the Dominican Republic and myriad emotional growth

boarding schools affiliated with the World Wide Association of Specialty Programs WWASP, such as Tranquility Bay in Jamaica. WWASP's president told me that the organization took a little bit of what Synanon did. Lobbying by well connected supporters such as WWASP

founder Robert Lickfield, who like Simbler is a fundraiser for Republican presidential aspirant, Mitt Romney, has kept state regulators at bay and blocked federal regulation entirely. Utah is where a lot of these are based. By the 90s tough love had spawned military style boot camps and wilderness

programs that thrust kids into extreme survival scenarios. At least 3 dozen teens have died in these programs, often because staff see medical complaints as malingering. This May, a 15 year old boy died from a staff infection at a Colorado wilderness program. His family claims his pleas for help were ignored.

In his final letter to his mother, he wrote they found my weakness and I want to go home. Oh, god. Damn. Yeah. Like the idea of first of all, stay away from any organization called

WWASP. That's terrifying. To be honest straight to be honest, straight ink. Yeah, get right away from straight incorporated. None good's gonna come there. I mean, you know, the idea

of like when I was a kid, it was this was never a threat for me, but the threat you would always hear was military school. Yeah. If you fucked up, that's where you were gonna end up going. But you know, there's a certain amount of leeway

I guess we give the military for completely breaking someone down. Yep. But just to send them to some weird camp where, I mean, of course I never thought about it, but of course there were protesting kids. Of course kids were being used. Of course it wasn't just

drill sergeants yelling at them. Of course there was this horrible shit going on. When they weren't molesting them, they were letting them die of exposure in the wilderness of Utah. I had a friend growing up that got sent to a ranch in Utah and they left her outside for a week with no food, no water

and she had to fend for herself and definitely could have died. That's just not a thing that most people need to know. Do you know what I mean? I don't think that's going to help you avoid crimes. Most people are not adventurers and they don't need

to know how to survive in the fucking wilderness. Well, and adventurers learn how to survive in the wilderness not by being left to die of exposure as small children generally by training and how to make that experience not be dangerous or as dangerous, right?

It was 14. Yeah. Good. It's fucking rad. It's a situation that just gets a little worse every year and because the entire Republican party is heavily invested in

the troubled teen industry every time there are attempts to regulate it they get shot down and because the Democratic Party is invested in continuing the criminalization of substances kids keep getting sent to horribly abusive programs they have no choice to be in where they are then molested

and mass or murdered. Now, that's what I call bipartisanship. Thanks, Chuck Dederick. You made it possible for everybody. You united a nation. We couldn't have done it without you, buddy. Oh, man. Oh, boy.

God, what a guy. What a dude. What a fellow. Just flabbergasted. From the just the sheer the sheer enormity

of the moves from one thing to another as you went along is I mean, this dude everyone should know about him and I, Robert, I salute you. I salute you. Thank you. I have to say, you know, most of the bastards we talk about don't get any

kind of comeuppance and I would have to say that like, you know he's right up there like Saddam Hussein, you know, getting hung in public. I would say having to live in Vasalia is definitely a public execution level punishment. So at least there's that.

I mean, the chivis regal relapse is like it's scripted. Is there no movie about this guy other than the one with There is a movie with Earth again about this guy. I don't think there's been

well, I know there's been I think there's been a couple of documentaries. I'm sure there've been a couple of documentaries. I believe I heard about at least one, but I don't think there's another like fictional movie about it where Earth a kid plays his wife. I wonder what she felt about that when, you know,

the rattlesnake thing happens. You know what take taking this one off my reel. Please have that struck from my resume. Oh, it was a good Earth a kit. Thank you. Well, Paul,

that's going to do it for buying the bastards this week. Well, thank you for having me. And honestly, I am so I'm glad I didn't know anything about this guy. I was thrilled to learn about him from you. What a story. It's really insane. Jesus, just man.

Oh, man. I was one that like someone on Reddit was like, hey, you should check out this story to do an episode. And like I read halfway through one article and I was like, well, I got to I got to reach out to Paul. I got to tell him about this rattlesnake shit.

I am touched that you thought of me. Thank you very much. Oh, he's going to love that. And I did. Oh, man. Well, all right. We did plugables, right? Plugables. Yeah. My memory is broken.

We did not. We did not last time. We did them in part one. No, but we okay. Plug again to it. Plug. Plug. Come on, Paul. Hey, everybody. I'm at P.F. Tompkins on Twitter and Instagram. I will always be talking about

myself always self promoting. That's where if you want to find out who who the fuck I am, go there and you'll find out. I promise. You can also find out his enemies. If you have a rattlesnake, you're willing to send them. That's true.

I'm not saying that that's going to happen. It's something that could happen. It's something that could happen, right? You can't vouch for all of the people who are fans of you. They might start raining right now. It could start raining and it could happen. Absolutely.

Well, you can find me on this podcast, which you know how to find because you just listened to it for three hours. You can also find my book After the Revolution in audio form. It's podcast. Just look for After the Revolution. You can also find the EPUB of the book at atrbook.com.

That's atrbook.com. Check it out. Go with God and figure out who he wants you to rattlesnake to death. Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside cover investigations.

In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse look like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date,

the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian-trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow

hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know. Because I'm Lance Bass. And I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space

with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, the Soviet Union liberated the Earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio App,

Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price?

Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.