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The rise and fall of Synanon : a California utopia / Rod Janzen.

by Janzen, Rod A., author.

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Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023.

Synanon (Foundation) -- History.

Drug addicts -- Rehabilitation -- California.

9781421448107 (paperback) :

1421448106 (paperback)

xv, 300 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Johns Hopkins paperback edition.

Synanon and the image of a rattlesnake in a mailbox -- In the beginning: a cure for drug addicts -- The coming of the squares -- Integration and the game -- The Synanon school -- Dopefiends and squares -- Communal art, re-creation, and a new religious identity -- Violence and shaved heads -- The end of childbirth and changing partners -- Legal issues and materialism -- A period of darkened light -- The final years -- Reasons for the decline -- Synanon people on the outside.

"On a fall day in 1978, Los Angeles attorney Paul Morantz reached into his mailbox to collect his mail and was nearly killed. He was bitten by a four-foot-long rattlesnake that had been put there by members of a cultlike group called Synanon. Chuck Dederich--a former Alcoholics Anonymous member who coined the phrase 'Today is the first day of the rest of your life'--established Synanon as an innovative drug rehabilitation center near the Santa Monica beach in 1958. Synanon quickly evolved into an experimental commune and religion that attracted thousands of members and was strongly committed to social justice and progressive education. Twenty years later, when Dederich was arrested for the Morantz attack, Synanon had devolved into a paranoid community..."--Jacket.

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