American Rehab: A Venomous Snake
After amassing a small fortune, Synanon turns from a revolutionary rehab into a violent cult with mass sterilizations and a rattlesnake in a mailbox.
Reveal · The Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX
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Show Notes
By the end of the 1960s, Synanon was a widely respected drug rehab with a celebrated treatment program. It had intake centers and commune-style rehabs all over the country.
It subsisted by turning members into unpaid workers who hustled donations and ran Synanon businesses. As the money poured in, Synanon’s founder, Charles Dederich, transitioned the group from a rehab into an “experimental society.”
Dederich instituted a series of increasingly authoritarian rules on members: He banned sugar, dissolved marriages, separated children from their parents and forced vasectomies. Synanon ultimately became a religion, with Dederich as its violent and vengeful leader.
Synanon descended into madness. But before it crumbled, the group inspired an entire generation of rehabs. By one researcher’s count in the 1970s, there were 500 programs in the United States stemming from Synanon. Many of those rehabs still exist today, including Cenikor.
This is a rebroadcast of an episode that was originally aired in 2020.
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