If any of you can offer an opinion or first hand knowledge on this, it would be greatly appreciated. (First hand knowledge appreciated much more, since pretty much anyone can form an opinion about something, even with little to no facts, or only hearsay.)
My ex worked for Walden House for a while, one of the synanon first gen offshoots, with a drug rehab-styled program, as opposed to the CEDU "emotional growth school" one. I asked him if they ever talked about Synanon there. He said "Oh my god, all they talked about was synanon. It was ridiculous." So.. it sounds as if Walden was essentially proud of their parent program, and spoke of it freely.
The first of my many questions is... does anyone know if Phoenix House did this too? (For those who don't know, they are also first-gen). They used to come and do drug awareness crap at our school when I was an adolescent, but mostly that consisted of a multiple-choice quiz to test our drug awareness, with the most obviously labeled correct answers I've ever seen, and *I* even noticed as a sixth grader. Synanon was not mentioned, but that could have been for many reasons... such as we weren't considered old enough to understand or appreciate.... but probably would if we ever ended up there. That last part, is, of course, pure speculation, so lets just go with the fact that the limited contact I did have with them as a child, no Synanon was mentioned.
Regardless if any pro-synanon general sentiment was kept strictly in house or not, if there was, indeed any mention of it at all at Phoenix House, (I'm trying to be fair, here.), think about this:
At the CEDU schools, when we were there: (Myself, 1987-89)
Synanon was never talked about:
In raps
In the house
In workshops
To our parents
To us
To ANYONE
Now, the story goes that Mel changed the meaning of the acronym CEDU from Charles E. Diederich University to "see yourself as you are and do something about it" when it really hit the fan with the rattlesnake incident. That attempted homicide happened in the late 70s. (And also, has anyone officially verified yet what the original meaning of CEDU is? Chuckie or SeeDo?)
IF there was indeed a period of time at CEDU where Synanon was mentioned often and with pride, and IF Mel decided to distance himself from Synanon after that obvious display of fruit-loopery on the synanites' part... (or even if he did it *before* that... even as far back as the school's inception.)
Why didn't Walden House? Where does Phoenix House stand?
Is it really a question how much kool-aid you ingested while you were at synanon?
So, (speculation again) IF Mel's motivation for distancing himself from the program was a result of rational thought, (regardless of when he did it).
Why did he still teach the program?
How much closer was Mel's template to the original Synanon program, as opposed to Walden and Phoenix House's?
Because, if Phoenix House still talks synanon, and is different from the original program in similar ways to walden house's...
Isn't that a suspiciously inversely proportional?
I hope this makes sense.
Regardless of what the real answer is for any of this, whether it goes with any half-baked theory I may or may not have at the moment (which is at this point, closer to "may not have"... too many question marks to be filled.) it will be interesting, even if inconsistent.... to me, anyway.
I lovez obzervink peoplez. Zey are so qvaint.
