Word: addicts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...says that it is a crime to possess narcotics, and by jailing many of the 20,000 addicts arrested in the U.S. each year, it brands them as criminals. But most doctors and lawyers believe that drug addiction is not primarily a matter of wilful lawbreaking, agree that most cases result rather from some form of emotional disturbance, which is a medical condition. In a new book, Drug Addiction: Crime or Disease? (Indiana University; $5), a joint committee of the American Bar Association and the American Medical Association suggests that the law, no less than the addict, may need overhauling...
...often brutally frank personal exchanges", the addicts slowly reveal to themselves the anxieties that led them to the needle, and through daily contact with similarly beset persons are reinforced in their determination to quit narcotics permanently. Says the founder of Synanon House, 48-year-old Charles E. Dederich, a potbellied Irishman who was once an alcoholic but never a drug addict: "It is something that works...
...They're like Children." The Synanon curriculum is divided into three stages. During the first phase, the emotionally shaken, physically weak addict gradually adjusts to his new surroundings. Says Dederich: "Addicts are babies who look like men and women. They have to grow up emotionally. After they've kicked, they're like children, and they have to be told to turn off the lights, flush the toilet, keep their fingers out of lamp sockets." Such, for example, is Synanon's youngest member, a plump girl of 19 who was trapped by narcotics at 13. After eight...
During the second stage, the ex-addict works at a regular job on the outside, contributes part of his wages to the group, continues to live at the house. One such is a middle-class college graduate who is now a salesgirl in a Santa Monica department store, after a flight that took her through prostitution and prison. Despite the new start, she still feels unable to live on her own in the world...
...addict's mispronunciation of seminar, which is part of Synanon's program for rehabilitation...