Synanon

ABOUT THIS EPISODE

Synanon began as an addiction support group that gathered in a grimy Californian flat in the late 1950s. It would grow to become a well-funded utopian society throughout the late ’60s and early ’70s, before declaring itself a religion in 1974. This organisation would attract Hollywood stars like Leonard Nimoy and Jane Fonda to participate in its so-called “Game”, and eventually break up married couples, force men to have vasectomies and women to have abortions, amass assets worth tens of millions of dollars, and become entangled in a web of violence.

Synanon’s leader Charles Dederich is often credited with coining the phrase “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.”

EPISODE LINKS

• American National Biography: Supplement — Oxford University Press, 2002
• Self-Reliance — by Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1847 edition, Wikisource full text
• Estimating Emerson: An Anthology of Criticism from Carlyle to Cavell — edited by David LaRocca, A&C Black, 1 January 2013
• Charles Dederich, 83, Synanon Founder, Dies — by Lawrence van Gelder, The New York Times, 4 March 1997
• Synanon: Toward Building a Humanistic Organization — by Steven Simon, Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 18, No. 3, Summer 1978
• Paul Morantz's website — with extensive writings by the attorney and investigative journalist about Synanon
• The Man Who Fought the Synanon Cult and Won — by Matt Novak, Gizmodo, 27 August 2014
• Synanon's Sober Utopia: How A Drug Rehab Program Became A Violent Cult — by Matt Novak, Gizmodo, 20 April 2014
• The Rise and Fall of Synanon: A California Utopia — by Rod A. Janzen, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001
• 2-year forced stay in drug rehab home inspires art exhibition — by Sam Whiting, San Francisco Chronicle, 22 January 2018
• SYNONYM — Ongoing art/research project by Phillip Andrew Lewis
• From the Jaws of Victory: The Triumph and Tragedy of Cesar Chavez and the Farm Worker Movement — by Matthew Garcia, University of California Press, 2014
• SB-524 Private alternative boarding schools and outdoor programs — 2015-2016, California Legislative Information
• The Recovery Revolution: The Battle Over Addiction Treatment in the United States — by Claire D. Clark, Columbia University Press, 2017
• Hotel Casa del Mar website
• The Story of This Drug Rehab-Turned-Violent Cult Is Wild, Wild Country-Caliber Bizarre — by Hillel Aron, Los Angeles Magazine, 23 April 2018
• Synanon (1965) movie trailer
• Synanon Women Join Men In Head Shaving Routine — Daytona Beach Morning Journal, 3 March 1975
• Fornits » Treatment Abuse, Behavior Modification, Thought Reform » Synanon — One of the message boards where posts from self-identified former Synanon residents can be read
• Synanon Visitor Commments — via Cult Education Institute, copyright Rick Ross
• Chuck Dederich Still Rules Synanon, but Now He Has 1,300 Subjects and a $22 Million Empire — by Barbara Wilkins, People Magazine, 11 October 1976
• Challenging Synanon can be hazardous to health and wealth — TIME Magazine, 23 October 1978
• The Light on Synanon: How a Country Weekly Exposed a Corporate Cult – and Won the Pulitzer Prize — by Dave Mitchell, Cathy Mitchell and Richard Ofshe, Seaview Books, 1980
• Three former Synanon Foundation members have told investigators the... — by Chris Chrystal, UPI, 11 July 1983
• Synanon Museum — "This site is devoted to Synanon memories -- for a way of life now gone which was by turns joyful and terrifying, but which none of us can ever forget. Here you can get an idea of how we lived, what we did, and what happened."
• SHAVED HEADS, SNIPPED TUBES, IMPERIAL MARINES, AND DOPE FIENDS — by George Pendle, Cabinet Magazine, Winter 2012-2013
• LIBEL SUIT COSTS HEARST $600,000 — by Les Ledbetter, The New York Times, 3 July 1976
• Synanon opens house in Potrero — The Potrero View, 1 April 1971
• SYNANON SIGNS UP 550 CITY ADDICTS — by James M. Markham, The New York Times, 5 December 1971
• 9 LINKED TO SYNANON INDICTED BY U.S. — by Philip Shenon, The New York Times, 2 October 1985
• Doris Gambonini, a ranch woman who comforted Synanon refugees, dies at 80 — by Samantha Kimmey, Point Reyes Light, 25 September 2014
• Pulitzer's Gold: Behind the Prize for Public Service Journalism — by Roy J. Harris, University of Missouri Press, 2008
• Jonestown: Was the Story Spiked? — by Tom Clavin, Huffington Post, 2 August 2007
• The Death of a Story, the Death of a Cult: Pat Lynch and the Jonestown Tragedy — by Pat Lynch, the jonestown report, November 2009, Volume 11
• Synanon Germany website — About Us page with brief mention of Chuck Dederich
• A Changed Synanon The Subject of Inquiry — by Robert Lindsey, The New York Times, 10 December 1978
• SYNANON FOUNDER ADVOCATED VIOLENCE AGAINST OPPONENTS — The New York Times, 9 March 1982
• The Cult That Spawned the Tough-Love Teen Industry — by Maia Szalavitz, Mother Jones, September/October 2007
• The Social Development of the Synanon Cult: The Managerial Strategy of Organizational Transformation — by Richard Ofshe, Sociological Analysis, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Summer, 1980)
• Synanon Founder's Bid to Cut Probation Fails — by Ted Rohrlich, Los Angeles Times, 6 March 1985
• SYNANON MEMBERS ACCUSED IN BEATING — by Wayne King, The New York Times, 1 March 1981
• The Snake, The Cult and The NASA Rover — by Marie Tabela, Palisadian-Post, 15 March 2018
• Escape: My Lifelong War Against Cults — by Paul Morantz, Cresta Publications, 2013
• From Miracle to Madness: The True Story of Charles Dederich and Synanon — by Paul Morantz, Cresta Publications, 6 May 2015 (2nd Edition)
• ‘It’s Like, Who’s Next?’: A Troubled School’s Alarming Death Rate — by Michael Wilson, The New York Times, 2 September 2018
• Synanon Revisited — by Walker Winslow, MANAS Journal Vol. XIV, No. 6, 8 February 1961
• Children of Synanon — by John Dougherty, Phoenix New Times, 10 October 1996
• The Likely Cause of Addiction Has Been Discovered, and It Is Not What You Think — by Johann Hari, Huffington Post, 20 January 2015
• Drug addiction: the complex truth — by Tom Stafford, BBC, 10 September 2013
• THIS 38-YEAR-OLD STUDY IS STILL SPREADING BAD IDEAS ABOUT ADDICTION — by Katie MacBride, The Outline, 5 September 2017