Word: synanon
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Look at Me." Such was the formal dedication of Synanon House a self-run, haphazardly financed experiment in human reclamation whose success has been hailed by Dr. Donald Cressey, University of California at Los Angeles sociologist, as "the most significant attempt to keep addicts off drugs that has ever been made...
Thus far, in 2½ years, of 150 addicts who voluntarily enrolled as roommates in Synanon House for at least one month, only half went back to drugs, and of 90 who stayed longer than three months, only 15 fell back. "Look at me," said one proud graduate, a recent father who works steadily in an electronics plant, "a real square." Such success is hardly even fractional compared with the overall U.S. narcotics problem, which claims from 45,000 to 100,000 addicts. But Synanon* offers more than a few cures: it offers a workable formula of rehabilitation-something that...
...Something That Works." The technique was patterned roughly after the group-therapy methods of Alcoholics Anonymous. The Synanon system cannot work until the addict really decides that he wants to kick the habit; but after that, it promises critical discipline and confinement through the first bad days of withdrawal, followed by a psychological treatment that usually kills the desire. Dr. Cressey describes the psychology: "A group in which Criminal A joins with some noncriminals to change Criminal B is probably most effective in changing Criminal...