Narconon
is a rehabilitation programme for addicts run on a system devised by
Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard. Experts say it is based on
junk science and potentially lethal.
The
way Narconon tells it, their addiction treatment programme is about
as good as it gets.
Studies
have shown that the programme has a 75-percent
success rate, the organisation claims on its website.
“This
is one of the best success rates in the field of addiction recovery,”
it says.
Narconon
puts its success down to the unique system it follows, which was
developed by Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard.
“Recovery
is possible,” says the website. “Since 1966, thousands have
achieved productive, drug-free lives through doing the Narconon rehab
program.”
But
if all this seems too good to be true, that's because it is, say the
critics.
A
2008 study, commisioned by the Norwegian Health Directorate,
conducted a view of the relevant scientific literature.
It
looked at six studies on the effectiveness of the Narconon programme
before reporting back. It concluded:
There is currently no reliable evidence for the effectiveness of Narconon as a primary or secondary drug prevention program. To the extent our extensive database search could determine, no randomized controlled trials about the program have been conducted...
In
the 2004, two leading critics of Scientology, Chris Owen and Dave
Touretzky reached a similar conclusion.
The
research in Narconon
Exposed
also went over the
lies that Hubbard had told about his own scientific credentials as
detailed by previous writers.
After
an exhaustive examination of the evidence advanced by Narconon in
support of its claims to scientific validity and effectiveness, Owen
and Touretzky concluded that their claims of incredible success rates
were just that: incredible; unbelievable. They wrote:
It
has to be said, in fairness, that the paucity of the data means that
one can no more reliably say that Narconon does not
work than that it does.
There is simply too little evidence to tell either way.
What
can
comfortably be said, though, is that Narconon's claims of very high
success levels are wholly unreliable; a close examination of what
evidence does exist shows that it has invariably been misquoted,
misused or quite simply lied about by Narconon. In short, its claimed
success rates are not credible and should not be believed.
Having
it both ways
Narconon
describes itself as a non-profit, secular drug outreach programme,
and while mentioning Hubbard in its literature, plays down any links
to Scientology. You will be hard put to find a direct reference to
Scientology on its website: Hubbard is described simply as “an
author and humanitarian”.
Scientology,
on its websites, vaunts Narconon as “the most effective drug
rehabilitation and prevention programme on Earth”. But it is
careful to describe it as an outreach programme that it sponsors,
rather than an integral part of its operations.
For
a number of reasons however, the claim that Scientology and Narconon
are entirely distinct entities – that there are no lines of control
from the former to the latter – is difficult to sustain.
First,
even a cursory look at the components of the Narconon programme
reveals a striking similarity to Scientology's own courses.
Narconon,
for example, runs something called the “New Life Detoxification
Program”, which it describes as a “combination of exercise,
induced sweating in a sauna, and nutritional supplements”.
This
programme, Narconon claims, reduces or eliminates drug or alcohol
cravings and the symptoms associated with addiction, such as
depression, irritability and fatigue.
But
to all intents and purposes, this programme is the same as the one
run inside Scientology itself, where it is known as the Purification
Rundown.
During
the 2009 fraud trial of several leading Scientologists and two
Scientology organisations in France, the Paris court examined the
Purification Rundown in some detail.
There,
Scientology insisted it was a religious ritual.
“This
is nothing to do with medicine,” one Scientologist told the court.
“We are curing nothing. It is a purification rite, in which we have
no pretensions towards curing anything.”
Scientology's
lawyers brought in a former emeritus professor at Paris's Sorbonne
University, ethnologist and anthropologist Philippe Laburthe-Tolra,
to testify as to the Rundown's religious credentials.
But
they also flew in Dr David Root from the United States to support
claims as to the Rundown's efficacy as a detoxification programme.
Root has appeared on the Narconon website to endorse the programme.
In
its judgment, the court noted what it said was a blurring of the
lines between the religious and the scientific and concluded that
Scientology was trying to have it both ways.
For
while the defendants may have described the Rundown in spiritual
terms, Scientology's own literature used pseudo-scientific terms to
vaunt the programme's efficacy, it noted.
Three
defendants were convicted on charges relating to the illegal practice
of pharmacy for the sale and distribution of what experts said were
the dangerously high doses of vitamins used in the Rundown.
'Hypnotic'
training routines
Another
feature of Narconon is a course which, it claims, gets subjects “into
better communication with others and with the environment...
“Each
is a specific drill on the parts of communication and how to get
oneself understood and how to communicate with others.”
Again,
the Communication Course is also a key element of Scientology: the
training routines, or TRs, that comprise the course are often offered
to relatively new recruits to the movement.
The
TRs are mainly two-person exercises: in one, you have to stare at
each other without talking or moving (TR 0: confronting). In another
one person shouts abuse at the other while the other tries not to
react in any way: then the roles are reversed (TR 0: Bullbait).
In
another, you command an inanimate object, such as an ash tray, to
move, basically by shouting at it (TR 8: Tone 40 on an Object).
Former
member Marc Headley, one of the movement's leading critics, has
described how he did this exercise with celebrity member Tom Cruise.
The details are sketchy in Headley's book, Blown
for Good,
but Tony Ortega coaxed some more details from him for a piece for his
Village
Voice
blog.
“You
tell the ashtray, 'Sit in that chair',” Marc told him.
“Then
you actually go over and put the ashtray on the chair. Then you tell
the ashtray, 'Thank you.' Then you do the same thing with the bottle,
and the book. And you do this for hours and hours.”
In
God's name, why? Ortega asked.
“It
was supposed to rehabilitate your ability to control things. And to
be controlled,” Headley told him.
Scientologists
call this kind of shouting a Tone 40 command.
Headley
is not alone among former members in arguing that participants are
learning not just to give orders, but to take them too. Cult expert
Steven Hassan, author of Combatting Cult Mind Control,
has called these training routines the most overt use of hypnosis by
any cult.
The
fact is that most if not all of the Narconon materials derive from
Scientology, according to sociologist Professor Stephen Kent of the
University of Alberta, Canada – arguably the leading academic
expert on Scientology.
“I'd
say that L. Ron Hubbard included in Scientology techniques,
principles, morals etc, that transferred... directly into the Narcon
programme,” he said in a recent court deposition.
A
final point on the link between Scientology and Narconon: the
movement's own leader, David Miscavige, underlined the connection in
a famous 1993 speech.
This
was when Miscavige announced that the movement's battle with the U.S.
Internal Revenue Service was over – and that Scientology had won
tax-exempt status as a church. He made much of the fact that the
“non-religious groups” that Scientology sponsored “which use
LRH's tech to improve society” were also covered.
“All
such groups have been recognized as fully tax exempt!” he declared.
And Narconon, of course, was among them.
Junk
science
Over
the years, the science behind the Narconon programme has been harshly
criticised by several experts.
In
1989, when Narconon set up a 75-bed facility on Indian territory in
Chilocco, Oklahama, editor of the local paper Newkirk Herald
Journal started investigating.
He asked Mark Palmer, a local medical doctor with some
experience with other rehabilitation programmes, for his view.
He
offered the following comments after reviewing Narconon's official
literature:
The
material is full of generalizations that have no substantiation in
fact. There are internal inconsistent statements. There is no
documentation.
The
Purification Rundown is somewhat patterned after many reputable
detoxification programs in which diet, exercise, education and
behavioral modification are used. But due to the above mentioned
deficiencies as well as several outright untruths, I think that it is
fair to say that the Purification Rundown is without merit.
The
Journal also asked Bruce A. Roe, Professor of Chemistry and
Biochemistry at Oklahoma University to review the official literature
on Narconon. Roe did not mince his words either.
Overall
the program proposed by Mr. Hubbard is pure unadulterated "cow
pies". It is filled with some scientific truth but mainly is
illogical and the conclusions drawn by Mr. Hubbard are without any
basis in scientific fact.
Nor
has the criticism come exclusively from the United States.
In
Sweden, the National Board of Health and Welfare asked
Professor of Pharmacology Folke Sjoqvist to give his view of the
science behind the Narconon programme.
Reporting
back in November 1996, he concluded:
[T]here
is no documentation to show that the Hubbard method of detoxification
from drug abuse conforms to scientific standards and medical
experience.
On
the contrary, one may from a pharmacological point of view strongly
question the idea of using enforced sweating to expel drugs from the
body.
The
risks and side effects of the treatment method have also not been
evaluated in a serious way. Methods that have not been evaluated
and/or rest on incorrect theories should not be used in Swedish
medical care.
Medical
doctors are to prescribe vitamins in the doses recommended...
The
professor joined an already extensive list of qualified
professionals who have dismissed the supposedly scientific basis of
Hubbard's detoxification programme and warned of its potential
dangers.
But
perhaps the most damning single document on Narconon was drawn up by
the Oklahoma state investigators.
The
Oklahoma report
As
concern grew over the unlicensed activities of the Narconon Chilocco
New Life Center – thanks in large part to the investigative series
run by the Newkirk Herald Journal – state officials finally
acted.
They
asked for their specialists to investigate and in 1991 the state
Board of Mental Health delivered its findings. The
board's “Findings of Fact” amounted
to a damning indictment of the facility.
It
was scathing about the science underpinning the
sauna-vitamins-exercise detoxification programme, rejecting Hubbard's
claim that drugs could be sweated out of one's body.
“[T]here
is no scientific basis
for the technique,” it said.
It
was not impressed either by the one-size-fits-all approach to
treating addicts. "No scientific evidence was produced to show
that all drug addictions are properly treated in the same manner."
The
report also expressed concern about the massive doses of vitamins and
minerals handed out during treatment: according to “the more
credible medical evidence,” this was potentially dangerous, it
said.
Worse
still, it noted, the programme also "exposes its patients to the
risk of delayed withdrawal phenomena such as seizures, delirium
and/or hallucinations." It was all the more dangerous because
Narconon used unqualified, non-medical staff who might miss or
misinterpret the symptoms, it added.
“Narconon
employs staff inadequately educated and trained in the care and
treatment of drug and alcohol abuse clients,” it said. “Such a
practice endangers the safety, health and/or the physical or mental
well being of the clients of Narconon.”
The
dangers of having medically unqualified staff imposing a
one-size-fits-all programme were illustrated when inspectors visited
the Chilocco centre. A student, the report noted, “...was found
with a potentially dangerous low level of potassium which could lead
to cramps, (muscular, skeletal problems) and cardiac arrhythmia.”
Perhaps
unaware of Hubbard's views on psychiatry, the panel put its finger on
another weakness of the Narconon programme: it failed to take into
account the well-established link between drug abuse and psychiatric
disorders.
“[A]
chemical dependency disorder may co-exist with or be secondary to a
specific psychiatric illness, such as schizophrenia or major
depression, which should be treated by established psychiatric
procedures,” it said.
This
ignorance – or phobia – of the psychiatric dimension, had serious
implications, it noted. They had seen evidence that some clients had
been taken off psychiatric medication without regard for the
consequences.
Whether
they knew it or not however, they were knocking on the wrong door.
The problem here was that for Hubbard psychiatry is the root of all
evil – and that dogma had been imported wholesale not just into
Scientology, but into Narconon.
The
report expressed unease at Narconon's practice of hiring former
students of the programme to work there straight after having
completed it. There should be a delay between graduation from the
programme and recruitment “...to ensure sobriety and to avoid
putting patients in contact with addicts who are not fully
recovered,” it said.
It
expressed concern too about the amount of time Narconon devoted to
activities unrelated to drug and alcohol abuse treatment or addiction
issues. Apparently they did not see the value of shouting at ash
trays.
The
report also had a problem with the vague objectives set for the
students – to have a clear mind, for example. How was one supposed
to measure success here? “This objective is essentially
meaningless,” the report noted.
“In
order for a bonafide drug treatment plan to be effective it is
essential to have individualized measured objectives which Narconon's
treatment plan lacks.”
The
inspectors were uneasy too, about the use of “touch assists”, a
kind of laying on of hands practised by Scientologists to help ease
physical pain.
This
was hardly appropriate in the context of vulnerable individuals in a
rehab environment, it argued: “An
accepted standard in such programs is for the patients to keep their
hands to themselves.”
Summing
up, the inspectors said that Narconon had failed to show that its
system was either safe or effective: in fact, it said, the evidence
pointed the other way.
Their
conclusion, in summary, was that the treatment offered by Narconon
Chilocco was not just ineffective; it was also medically unsafe.
But
while the state authorities denied Narconon its certification, the
centre nevertheless managed to stay open.
Since
it was on Indian territory, the state found it could not actually
force it to close.
In
1992, Narconon won an injunction from the Oklahoma State Supreme
Court to stay a lower court order that had backed the state's bid to
shut Narconon down. This allowed it to keep operating while it
appealed that lower court ruling.
Narconon
eventually found a way to stay open by winning accreditation from a
private agency rather than the state – the Arizona-based Commission
on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities. And this allowed it to
seek – and win – exemption from state accreditation from the
Oklahoma state authorities.
By
the end of 1992, despite the damning report from its own medical
experts, the state authorities appeared to have thrown in the towel
and granted it exemption from accreditation.
It
was a decision that was to come back and haunt them.
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