When I was 15 I was exposed to Synanon.

I wouldn’t have gone without my quasi-beau Raymond. I didn’t drive and I’d never heard of the organization. But Ray was a grade ahead of me, nearly two years older than I, and a seeker.

He scooped up my heart shortly after I started high school. He asked me out on a date and he made me laugh. He was overweight, not an athlete, but he had friends. He was president of the Key Club and he may have had the best personality I ever loved.

We didn’t go out long and we never progressed to sex. I don’t remember as much as a kiss, although it’s possible we got around to that a few years later, after I moved, during a visit.

But we talked and we laughed and he took me to Synanon.

He wasn’t an addict and neither was I. We both had addictive tendencies, certainly, and some other day I’ll describe the activities on which I later got hooked, but at 15 I don’t recall any damaging habits.

What I remember about Synanon was a couple of dreary rooms, clouds of tobacco smoke and bottomless urns of mediocre coffee, encounters with ashen people. My memory is populated with bent men, prematurely aged women, bad hair bleach, scruffy whiskers, hand tremors that flicked cigarette ash sideways.

More than anything I recall hearing “stoo-pid.” Addiction was stoopid, using was stoopid, reneging was stoopid.

The catechism seemed so shallow. It went wide, it was comprehensive, it clearly became a mantra and a consolation after awhile, but that occurred inside people who were isolated and desolated. I watched it pull some sufferers into harness. As long as they stayed in that harness it was like a magic feather; they could exist without their junk and slowly proceed and make connections they hadn’t experienced before, which in turn kept them in harness hoping for more.

My acquaintance with Synanon didn’t last long. It ended when my family moved, half a year later. But that move was to the bay area and into the late 60s. I was headed for the summer of love and Berkeley. I’d soon be surrounded by encounter groups, screamers, drummers, moonies, EST.
ETC.