I was looking forward to this book. I work for a Therapeutic Community where the top administrators, and other staff, are former Synanon residents and Synanon leaders who left when things got weird in the early '80s. The only other account of Synanon I've come across is the obviously biased and self-serving "The Light on Synanon," by the folks who won a Pulitzer Prize in the late '70s for their (overwhelmingly negative) coverage of Synanon. Knowing my co-workers as I do, and having heard the stories, I knew that a balanced story about Synanon was called for, and I was hoping this book was it. Sadly, although the book is unbiased and presents what seems to me to be a fair accounting of Synanon's history, it's a grind getting through some of the ponderous writing. Janzen has done his research (he cites the 714 boxes of Synanon files in the UCLA library frequently), and he intersperses it with a few interview comments. Sadly, too many comments are anonymous, or are limited to a select range of former Synanon associates. Synanon spawned the Therapeutic Community movement and is due respect and admiration for that alone. Synanon folk have done wonders in the world of substance abuse treatment and it's a shame that more details are missing from this book. The author apparently assumes the reader has some familiarity with Synanon, because various aspects of the utopian social experiment are just skimmed over lightly or are not covered in enough detail. The book, at about 250 pages, needed to be twice as long, and many, many more former Synanon residents (dope fiends and lifestylers alike) needed to be interviewed to "flesh" out this book. The book makes numerous references to previously published material, and that lack of original research comes through. Also missing are visual images. A few grainy photos showing Synanon facilities are in the book, but photos of the main players in this story are completely absent, as are other photos that could have provided more insight into life at Synanon. I give Janzen credit for making an effort to be fair, but he needed more facts, more first-person accounts, and better editing (there are a few typos, along with the ponderous prose). Sooner or later, someone will tell the full story of the TC movement and hopefully then Synanon's contributions will be put into perspective, and it won't be remembered by history as that "kooky cult" (as Janzen quotes people making reference to Synanon) that put a rattlesnake with its rattles removed in an oppossing attorney's home mailbox. Until a richer, more detailed, and obviously much longer and detailed work comes along, this will do -- barely.

Many people today have never heard of Synanon -- in many ways, the root of our drug rehab system today. Perhaps not surprisingly, Synanon is one of the many controversial organizations that wove its way through the 60s, becoming a commune, then developing a "cultish" reputation while at the same time becoming a powerful influence in Corporate America. How odd. It's a good history of the program, and is important reading for that reason alone. I read it to try to understand and come to grips with my own history in a "drug program" that apparently had its roots in this one. I understand a lot more about myself and the influence of the program on me now that I've read this book. It's tragic, I think, that we leave the most desperate of our citizens at the mercy of people who exploit them mercilessly because we don't know what else to do, and basically, we just don't care. We can do better than this, but only if we understand the roots of the dysfunction of our "rehab" system. It only compounds the dysfunction of addiction. For a balanced interpretation, also read "When Society Becomes an Addict" by Anne Wilson Schaef.

"The Rise and Fall of Synanon: A California Utopia" is a valiant effort at responsible reportage with many years of hindsight. I would not overlook its importance.