The Perpetual Stew

It was in the seventies when this happened. Synanon. It was the first drug rehab center. But it was more than that. It was its own little world. Chuck Dederick (the founder and number 1 guru) said the whole world had to go the Synanon way to make it. We had no crime, no racial prejudice, no jail.

That was what he said anyway. I was what they called an old time dope fiend, so I knew better but I kept my mouth shut. Keeping your mouth shut about certain things and your ears open were the best ways to survive Synanon.

By the time of the Perpetual Stew we already had the Wire. That was our own radio broadcast system so everybody in Synanon from Santa Monica to San Diego and San Francisco could hear Chuck’s booming voice anytime, anywhere in every facility. He was in every moment of your life. And that is how you knew what new thing was coming, something we all were expected to be enthusiastic about and talk around. I wasn’t enthusiastic by that time but I didn’t show it. Of course they all knew it. We had encounter groups three times a week and they were like chickens spying a hole in another chicken and pecking it to death.

But I was going to talk about the Perpetual Stew. This was an encounter group forum that went on 24 hours a day in every facility. You were scheduled into it or if someone wanted you could just be pulled in anytime. It was a big round circle with an audience on one end. Everybody had coffee and a lit cigarette. Everybody was tired. And it was a rat’s nest.

They called a special Stew for the wives of some Synanon executives. I was one of those. They came around at midnight and told us we were going in the stew. But first they had a special set up for us. The wives were to sit on a bench outside the stew room and be called in one at a time. This went on until dawn, sitting on that bench trying to find out what was going on. It wasn’t good. I knew that.

Finally at about 8 in the morning I was called in. Jack (a tall thin blue eyed, handsome young man of about 30) asked me, “Why don’t you respect your husband?” My husband of the time was a spineless wonder if I ever saw one.

I said “Well if he did anything that was respectable I would respect him.” Jam it right down their teeth see how they liked it. There was a huge roar and I was sent back out to sit on the bench until I got the right attitude.

Then a few hours later they let all of us in.

Dope Fiends carry a deep well of hatred for the other sex and now the men had been given the right to let it all hang out. And it did. The first time I knew we had gone over the edge was when I saw Barbara, a thin black woman 8 months pregnant crawling across the floor with a wrench tied to her neck and her belly dragging the floor to kiss her mechanic husband’s feet and ask for his forgiveness.

I looked around the room frantically looking for somebody with some authority to put a stop to this. But there was no one, only Reid Kimball, a way old time dope fiend at the age of fifty. And Reid’s blue eyes were glimmering with glee. This was the most fun he had had in a long time.

I went outside for a break and I frantically searched my head for a place to run away to. But there was nothing but Synanon. I had no money, no way of going anywhere. I was lost. I went back in. I was one of a very few women who never gave in and asked my husband for his forgiveness.

There was some orange juice there. I got up and got some. I tried to drink it then noticed that it was spoiled. Finally I got rid of it. I don’t remember how. Then a few hours later I went and poured myself some more spoiled orange juice. I had already forgotten. The room smelled awful with cigarettes and old farts building for now 24 hours. We were not allowed to sleep. I was so terrified I could not have slept anyway.

Outside the waves of ocean broke on Santa Monica Beach. Outside this old building there was peace but not here. The building was at the end of Pico I believe. It had once been a private club and Ronald Reagan was a member. It had a huge ballroom which somehow reminded me of The Shining. The ballroom in The Shining. A very grim place. I lived in one of the rooms upstairs and oh, how I wanted to be in that room instead of there.

There was a great deal of screaming at me. Those people always though I thought I was better than them. I smoked my Marlboro with a tar guard which looked to them like a cigarette holder. I used big words sometimes and I was, of course, a woman and I was an intelligent woman. I was also one of the few who were not Brooklyn.

A man had perfect power over his wife in that room. One jolly fellow we called Swede put his wife on the bench. That meant she was neither in Synanon or out and there she sat for a long time. Then he threw her out of Synanon. Just out into the streets, no money, no clothes, absolutely nothing. She was a Paiute woman there for killing her babies. She was from Nevada.

It was in the days when Synanon was expanding from just dope fiends to everyone. Normal people were brought in on a higher level than the dope fiend. No scrubbing dishes and making ashtray runs for them. They just moved in and got an apartment right away. No hard work for them. And they were immediately able to tell us what to do. It galled the old dope fiends who fought for every little thing on the way up.

We were called “The Walking Dead.” We were no use to Chuck anymore and he wanted us out so Synanon could become a World Movement to change destiny.

And the stew went on in the rat’s nest. – Delmar Club that is what it used to be called – in the days of big private Clubs.

I was accused of cutting my man’s balls off for not bowing down before him. But I didn’t. For one fleeting moment I stood on principle then I went back to my crafty backstabbing lifestyle.

I didn’t care anymore that “Synanon was the twenty first century” and that everybody had to become one big Synanon to survive. We were what the world would have to become. Chuck declared that the dope fiends were worthless. We didn’t know how to do anything. And we did not change. We never jumped on the twenty first century. We just paid lip service and went back to our apartments or rooms to get a little rest from the future. But now not even that was private. Chuck had plugged the Wire into every apartment and you could not turn it off. It was propaganda 24 hours now.

In a way I did cut his balls off that night. He could never have sex with me after that; it just didn’t work.

There were squares in Synanon who never went out for a pastrami sandwich. Chuck said that if we never went out to anywhere the thing we wanted would come to us. So they followed that. The old time dope fiends ignored him and went out to eat once in awhile. We could not be cured he said. We would die if we left Synanon. So I was there for 10 years before I finally decided I would rather be dead than live in Synanon anyway.

We gave him the core of his movement and after that he wanted us out. Slowly we left. We had dedicated our lives to Synanon. We thought we would be there until we died and then all of the sudden we were “The Walking Dead.”

Wearing striped coveralls and shaving our heads was as much as I could take but when we had to quit smoking I left. Only to find that I didn’t die.

The woman hate stew was called off by “the old man” (Chuck Dederich) and went on a little saner. I had for once stood up to them and it made it easier for me to leave.

I heard Chuck died an old drunk in a Fresno motel. He was a millionaire on paper but he could not touch the money because it went to the State of California.