Word: synanon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Calling themselves the Delancey Street Family, these unlikely tenants have formed a new "therapeutic community" that is partly modeled after the well-publicized Synanon program, yet is crucially different from it. Both organizations seek to rehabilitate addicts. Synanon members usually expect to live out their lives in one of the organization's residences. (Says Synanon Founder Charles Dederich, "I know damn well if they go out of Synanon, they are dead.") The new group, however, believes that its members can look forward to a future as nonaddicts. Consequently, the Delancey Street Family asks its members to stay only...
...family was established in 1971 by John Maher, then 30, and three other ex-addicts. All four had served prison terms, and three were disillusioned dropouts from Synanon. The name they chose for themselves was inspired by Maher's boyhood on Manhattan's Lower East Side, where, in the 19th century, Delancey Street came to symbolize the self-reliant spirit of Old World immigrants working their way into the mainstream of American life...
...getting a doctorate, one man heads a poverty-research company, two are federal poverty officials. Only one is back in prison. To Grant, this shows that criminals can be cured by trying their best to cure other criminals?an idea confirmed by many other experiments and selfhelp groups like Synanon and Alcoholics Anonymous...
White Man's Opiate. Dr. Karl Deissler, medical director of Synanon, thinks that methadone alone deprives its users of the will to deal with the problems that led them into drugs. Hassan Jeru-Ahmed, who runs the Black Man's Development Center in Washington, D.C., shares that skepticism. Describing methadone as a "white man's opiate," he uses it to ease withdrawal, not for maintenance. Other critics question the wisdom of allowing an individual to remain dependent upon any drug...
What's most enduring, though, about the movie qua movie is the depth of intimacy between camera and subject, a depth which bespeaks much patience and long familiarity. Warrendale is neither the expose that Follies was not a panegyric like Synanon, but a complex view of an institution which isn't open to easy evaluation. It's clear that more such places are needed, yet it's also clear that personal as well as social obstacles are in the way; with the possible exception of Walter, none of the staff comes off appealing or even particularly competent, more like...