SOCIAL BETTERMENT ACTIVITIES
NARCONON:A NEW LIFE FOR DRUG ADDICTS
Narconon (meaning no drugs) began in 1966 through the efforts of Arizona State Prison inmate William Benitez. A hard-core addict from the age of thirteen, then serving his fourth prison term, Benitez had unsuccessfully tried numerous ways to kick his drug habit.
In Mr. Benitez’s words:
“My failure to come off drugs wasn’t due to not wanting to. Believe me, I really tried. I read and read . . . Freud, Jung, Menninger – and studied one philosophy after another, everything I could get my hands on to find out about myself. I underwent psychiatric aid and participated in all sorts of programs and as time went on, I knew less about myself instead of more. The only thing that kept me from putting a gun to my head was that I knew someday I would make it. I felt so sorry for my friends who were constantly trying to get off drugs. I wanted to help them and yet I couldn’t even help myself. . . . I was so tired of the life of addiction, thieving, prostitution and all that goes with it. On my fourth and last trip to Arizona State Penitentiary, I was tried as a habitual criminal, which sentence carried a mandatory fifteen years to life, of which I received fifteen to sixteen years. It was at this point that I began to go into agreement with the idea that once you were an addict, you remained an addict.”
His search for solutions led him to L. Ron Hubbard’s Scientology: The Fundamentals of Thought, and with the principles in this book, he was at last able to kick his addiction.
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