Found a great article on Synanon:
http://www.ptreyeslight.com/stories/apr15_04/synanon_story.html
Point Reyes Light - April 15, 2004
Light to celebrate 25th anniversary of its Pulitzer
By Dave Mitchell
This Friday, April 16, will be the 25th anniversary of
The Point Reyes Lights winning a Pulitzer Prize for Meritorious Public Service. It was the fourth time in the 61-year history of the Pulitzers that a prize in any division had gone to a weekly newspaper instead of a daily.
The prize was for an expose of the Synanon cult, which was then headquartered in Marshall. A reformed alcoholic, Charles Dederich, started the group in Santa Monica during 1958. Dederich had learned to hold an audience as a speaker for Alcoholics Anonymous, warning about Demon rum.
Dederich, who was living on unemployment benefits, allowed his apartment to become a crash pad for a number of derelicts, but while they were under his roof, they had to obey his directives. For their meals, he scrounged old food from grocers.
The group contained several drug addicts, who were not welcome at AA meetings, so Dederich pulled his faction out and started his own organization, Synanon. A master of self-promotion, Dederich managed to convince the public he was doing something no one else could do: cure drug addicts. In fact, 90 percent of those he admitted left before receiving rehabilitation, and of those who completed rehabilitation, only 10 percent demonstrated long-term abstention from drugs.
In 1968, Dederich abolished the idea of residents ever "graduating" to the outside world. Synanon then became an "alternative-lifestyle community," with former addicts providing a low-paid workforce for the Synanon corporation, which ultimately was focused on a $10 million per year Advertising Gifts and Premiums business. Synanon members simply acted as middlemen between manufacturer and retailers who wanted their logos on promotional knickknacks.
Synanon remained minimally in the treatment business, in part by providing juvenile authorities with a cheap place for dumping troubled kids, but the targets for its recruitment became members of the middleclass, such as doctors, lawyers, and architects. Most turned over all their wealth when they joined Synanon, believing they would be taken care of forever.
Entire article here:
http://www.ptreyeslight.com/stories/apr15_04/synanon_story.html