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« on: February 02, 2011, 09:52:15 PM »
As per a conversation that had with Greg Fl a few years back he told me that he had infiltrated Synanon and found no connection with Art Barker. There is no record of Art ever being part of Synanon. That being said there are some strange similarities especially that both use the 7 steps versus the traditional 12 steps from AA. I can remember conversations with Art and he always claimed that the Seed was a direct offshoot of AA and that he had condensed the 12 steps down to 7 steps. The reason he gave was that some steps were repetitive and not needed. The story I can recall was that the Seed started off behind the Playboy club in North Miami Beach on his 1929 Elco "trade Winds" yacht as impromptu meetings with some local junkies. He also told stories of AA meetings in New York with some actors such as George C Scott, Art Carnie, Bobby Darren. He claimed the meetings were held during the day when he was not performing his comedy act in the Playboy club. The other comedian happened to be a young George Carlin. He told me once at dinner that George Carlin was an arrogant prick. The meetings got bigger and he moved to Ft. Lauderdale to bigger locations some of the early members was Libby later changing her name to Lybbi Barker, Robert Chun ect. who later ended up as the main Staff members. I'm going off some old memories in the hope of trying to shed some light to your question. The time I went thru the Seed was during the early 80's as one of the last court ordered persons. Soon after that due to the state of Florida changing the laws regarding the supervision of minors and back ground checks for those who would be in charge of the minors the Seed stopped taking in minors.The changes in the law was a knee jerk reaction by law makers because of the child molestation case of Frank and Illiana Fuste from the infamous Country Walk Day Care center. Art stated in the group he would not have anyone subject to scrutiny by any agency federal or State. The Seed was attributed to have been the first of it's kind a rehab dedicated to younger drug user. Keeping in mind that back in the late 60's and early seventies is when many kids began using drugs such as pot and acid and whatever else and many of the parents freaked because it was a new and scary problem that no one knew how to deal with. Art addressed the issue to this generations parents. Contrary to popular beliefArt was not a republican in fact hated them. He was a staunch Democrat a big fan of JFK, Rosevelt, Clinton. He despised Nixon and claimed that in the early 70's due some statements he made in favor of Edwin Muskee some false statements were made in an attempt to discredit the Seed and later actual agents were sent in to audit the Seed under direct orders from Nixon's "Plumbers" in an attempt to close the Seed. Some of what I can remember from those old days while I was there.