S.S. Hang Tough

Early in August 1959, homeowners along the stylish Pacific Ocean beaches in Santa Monica, Calif., were dismayed to get a new set of neighbors: a bedraggled platoon of half a hundred men and women, who moved into a rundown, three-story, red brick building that once was a National Guard armory. White and black, young and middleaged, criminals and innocents, artists and loafers, the unlikely assortment shared one trait: they were narcotics addicts determined to kick their habit for good.

Scrounging lumber, paint and old furniture, the troupe converted the top floor of the armory into a barracks-style men's dormitory. They turned the second floor into offices, kitchen, dining hall and living room, and the main floor into women's sleeping quarters. Over the doors in the living room they hung their emblem: a life preserver with the words "S.S. Hang Tough," slang for "don't give up."

"Look at Me." Such was the formal dedication of Synanon House a self-run, haphazardly financed experiment in human reclamation whose success has been hailed by Dr. Donald Cressey, University of California at Los Angeles sociologist, as "the most significant attempt to keep addicts off drugs that has ever been made."

Thus far, in 2 1/2 years, of 150 addicts who voluntarily enrolled as roommates in Synanon House for at least one month, only half went back to drugs, and of 90 who stayed longer than three months, only 15 fell back. "Look at me," said one proud graduate, a recent father who works steadily in an electronics plant, "a real square." Such success is hardly even fractional compared with the overall U.S. narcotics problem, which claims from 45,000 to 100,000 addicts. But Synanon* offers more than a few cures: it offers a workable formula of rehabilitation--something that most local authorities, who confine themselves to jailing addicts after they steal to get dope, do not tackle.

"Something That Works." The technique was patterned roughly after the group-therapy methods of Alcoholics Anonymous. The Synanon system cannot work until the addict really decides that he wants to kick the habit; but after that, it promises critical discipline and confinement through the first bad days of withdrawal, followed by a psychological treatment that usually kills the desire. Dr. Cressey describes the psychology: "A group in which Criminal A joins with some noncriminals to change Criminal B is probably most effective in changing Criminal A."

In the often brutally frank personal exchanges", the addicts slowly reveal to themselves the anxieties that led them to the needle, and through daily contact with similarly beset persons are reinforced in their determination to quit narcotics permanently. Says the founder of Synanon House, 48-year-old Charles E. Dederich, a potbellied Irishman who was once an alcoholic but never a drug addict: "It is something that works."

"They're like Children." The Synanon curriculum is divided into three stages. During the first phase, the emotionally shaken, physically weak addict gradually adjusts to his new surroundings. Says Dederich: "Addicts are babies who look like men and women. They have to grow up emotionally. After they've kicked, they're like children, and they have to be told to turn off the lights, flush the toilet, keep their fingers out of lamp sockets." Such, for example, is Synanon's youngest member, a plump girl of 19 who was trapped by narcotics at 13. After eight months at Synanon, she finally had the courage to raise a shaky voice to sing with a four-man musical combo that is a feature of Saturday night socials. Her emotional triumph won a thunderous ovation from the crowd.

During the second stage, the ex-addict works at a regular job on the outside, contributes part of his wages to the group, continues to live at the house. One such is a middle-class college graduate who is now a salesgirl in a Santa Monica department store, after a flight that took her through prostitution and prison. Despite the new start, she still feels unable to live on her own in the world.

In its final stage, Synanon sends its member out into society, but not until he has saved a few hundred dollars, owns a car, and has a place to live away from the haunts of addicts. Said the electronics worker: "There's much I want and nothing I need. I get home tired, and I look in that crib and I say everything's O.K."

Local Hostility. Synanon's record in curing narcotics addicts is a matter of indifference to many of its respectable neighbors along the Santa Monica beachfront. Although the institution has won many friends in the community by dispatching its members to address local service-club meetings and high school assemblies, within days after it moved into the deserted armory a petition signed by 31 of Synanon's neighbors protested the invasion. Six months later, a municipal judge found Synanon guilty of violating the local zoning ordnance. A final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court failed last February when the court refused to hear the case, and Synanon House may now have to find a new location.

There is little gloom on the premises, however. In the course of legal battles, Synanon House was designated by the Internal Revenue Bureau as a tax-deductible foundation. And it managed to support an average of 50 residents all last year for just $26,000. For Synanon's essential needs are simple: a roomy house with a place to hang the life preserver.

* One addict's mispronunciation of seminar, which is part of Synanon's program for rehabilitation.

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