[SYNANON DRUG REHABILITATION PROGRAM DOCUMENTARY OUTTAKES (SILENT)]

[Music] I had heard about senon on the streets of Los Angeles from other addicts and i' had been searching for some solution I suppose to my problem I heard about senon of course I didn't believe it and one day I mustered up enough courage to walk in the place that was in 19 19 59 and I've been there ever since I was casually acquainted with uh sinon for a uh very short time as a resident of Westport I had attended one of their open houses on Saturday night and I've been tremendously impressed with what sinon was doing for a dope addiction for e well a whole lifetime of crime uh delinquency when I was a minor and uh about 37 years of addiction and all uh humiliation and degradation that goes hand in hand with addiction that's the way my life has been before coming to senon I had 19 years of addiction and uh I'm originally from New York when I came to cinon there was no Westport cinon house I went directly to California uh I had tried just about every therapeutic means that I could have availed myself of and uh nothing seemed to work I got a lot of answers to why I was using drugs but I had to leave my therapist office and and I didn't have the environment in which I could act out differently in the greater New York area especially we're usually contacted by parents our friends our clergymen our uh judges for old probation officers they simply call maybe sometimes the addict himself or herself they simply call and we set up an appointment and they come and we interview them the parents usually come with the attic we like this but so the parents can also understand the program Westport is primarily an intake station we have a few of the older members that are sticking around and kind of Staffing the house but as far as the people coming in brand new they may stay anywhere from 3 days to 3 weeks and then they go on to a facility in California well it becomes more than a job far more than a job because it be you become dedicated to the work and there's uh somewhere inside your own skin you get the feeling well what better people to take care of this problem than I who I'm an addict and and can deal with it and can help other ICS and it becomes a a whole way of life I think my problem was I didn't know how to live and here I found the solution just learning that I didn't have to be afraid to interact with other people for for e my name is Jee alburo I'm from the Hartford area of Connecticut I've been here at sinon house in Westport for 3 months now prior to my coming to sinon I had a history of seven years of addiction of these seven years I had spent approximately 2 years in Penal institutions and hospitals uh I never thought it possible that a drug addict could be cured I was impressed by the physical layout but I was very cynical I I'd never seen a clean drug addict and I didn't believe that these people were drug addicts or that they could help me it's amazing it's an amazing comparison uh the whole setup here I'm fascinated by it for the first time in my life I can see that I I can be helped that something can be done it's the whole thing of the basic assumption that the addict is an emotional child and we're treated as emotional children here and it's a growing up process more than anything else and this process has been found to be most effective we work together we we live together we do the things a family should do uh we all have we console each other on each other's problems it's a real family situation well I've been engaged in all sorts of activities here in the house I've worked on the service crew which is what we're doing right now cleaning up the yard keeping the house in order I worked in the kitchen washing dishes preparing food I worked on our hustling crew which we go out into the community and we get donations of food and services for their house eventually I'll be sent to one of our facilities on the west coast either Santa Monica San Diego or San Francisco we have greater activities out there which aren't possible here because this is more or less a receiving Center for e I guess there are as many reasons for sinon success as there are people in synon because of course it takes every one of us sinon first of all concerns itself with the solution rather than as has been so feudly done in all past and other present methods the problem itself in other words we're concerned with what happens to the person person from here on in and we address ourselves to the task of of helping him grow up to learn to live and and produce as an honest creative and self-aware and responsible adult for one thing there is no we they situation here there's no patient or staff the minute a person comes into sinon he becomes a member of the staff he goes to work for the sinon foundation and for himself a Smalls synon is an arena where uh people can confront each other and themselves in an atmosphere of complete subjective honesty it's a way in which they can begin relating to each other emotionally begin showing and expressing their feelings begin working through some of the unrealistic ideas and and attitudes that they have which here to before have never been expressed uh either privately or publicly and therefore are never uh uh never been given the opportunity to really be refuted for one of our employees here at Stratford Town Fair was apprehended during the night on an early shift when he was caught stealing a number of albums photograph of photograph records this boy if 21 was arrested and indicted for petty ly and then he was released on Bale it was a few weeks later that this lad came into my office and asked me to help him in this matter of uh with the lore in the course of our conversation he told me that he had been a dope adct he was a dope addict and had been a dope addict for a number of years it was then that uh myself and a priest and a rabbi got together and we succeeded in getting the boy a suspended sentence and he went into sinon it is now one year later and this boy is a totally different man I say he was a boy then today he is a man he's being trained as an assistant director of sinon house and the difference to me is just a amazing as it is to everyone else including his family my relationship to sinon is is U I think a constantly changing one when I came into syonan I was hooked on drugs I had been using drugs for about 8 years I came into synon a totally helpless person in terms of of making it in the greater Society although I had had held jobs and had responsibility on with various companies nevertheless I had not been able to function without the use of drugs so I came into cinon totally dependent on it and as I went through the sinon program I guess you would say that I began to be more and more U self-reliant is a term that that we use in sinon I began to become more independent so that my my need for syonan uh changed and I would say that that uh I've reached a point now where where sinon is is something that uh I'm very interested in I'm very active in in much the same way that uh uh any person is very interested in his own uh let's say private charity or activity or something of that sort and then the obvious thing is also that I'm very qualified to work in this particular area as you know cinon is a is a very poor organization we can't go out and just pick out any property we want and spend all the money that that might be required to get it so I was looking for what you might call White Elephant properties and I came across this property here in Westport which had been a very wealthy man's home here in the Westport area but uh its property uh value had gone down a great deal because of the uh the Super Highway that uh came in just uh a few blocks away from the house as a matter of fact you might be able to hear the the traffic going by right now these are semis uh semi trucks rolling by on their way between New York and and Boston and uh naturally no one wants to spend a lot of money to live in a house that that has this kind of of noise so nearby so it simply looked as if this could be a very good spot for cinan to get a start and and uh we went into negotiations with the help of some local people here in the Westport area and we obtained the house a program was given in our local high school presenting this uh wonderful thing that sinon represents and I was greatly impressed about the work that is being done and feeling very fortunate being a uh Westport Community minded person to find that we are as having as one of our neighbors a place that could help and and back to health the most unfortunate people who up to now have never had any health oh I have no doubt about it I would say there are still people who have a great deal of reservation there will always be people are afraid of new things who are afraid of disease who are afraid of uh an area of uh human suffering that is associated with crime but I believe that the West Porters know by now that these people here have nothing to do with crime they're going towards health and they're going towards rebuilding a personality that is exemplary and that is a beautiful thing to behold I think everybody who has visited here and has come in contact here feels this way and naturally they speak and share this with their neighbors I think it is a great challenge to help a cause that is new that shows promise that uh gives us the opportunity to give something of ourselves it is our friendship it is our love it is our warmth and the response is uh so immediate and so wonderful I believe uh many people I don't believe that I'm exceptional many people feel gratified to be able to participate in something where their help is so much needed and so um greatly respons responded to as here at cinon this is a one family uh Zone that they are in what it means is what we went up to the court to find out and one of the things that the court decided was that what what the use that's made of this house by uh the uh sinon residents here is that they were a family this was the the net effect of the Court's decision I can't recall the exact language of Black's dictionary but it is a very broad definition which doesn't require for example necessarily co- sanguinity uh you don't have to be related by blood uh you uh it it's the idea of living in a common household and sharing the burdens of of making that household function that that's correct and there were a couple of other precedents there was a case for example of some priests out in Wisconsin who I think it was six of them shared a house and the same issue arose and out there the court found that they they were in effect a family six Catholic priests were a family the case is being appealed by the town of Westport and and one of the things that the judge said was that you know that that what a family was could have been more uh more defined by the zoning rules of the town of Westport if they had said we mean by family people that are related by blood well then the court might well have found that the residents of syonan were not a family but the zoning regulations of Westport only say family they don't Define it further everybody in pay is for cinon we go tapping at their doors and they willing to help us I two weeks ago gave a card party just amongst my own friends I raised $1,000 just myself and another woman and to whichever door I went to nobody closed it in my face they all helped me it's just a little thing but I feel so great that I did it I feel wonderful I never thought that synon would do so much for my son has given him a new life in fact it has given me and my husband a new life that I can put my head on my pillow and I could sleep nights saying thank God that this miracle has happened here at sinon it's unbelievable until you come here and see it with your own eyes what's going on somebody once said our problem isn't that we can't find the right answers it's that we ask the wrong questions and I think that Society generally speaking has been asking the wrong questions about drug addiction they've been asking the questions of how does somebody become an addict sinon is concerned with with a solution we take people and we teach them how to live successfully and we're concerned with with enabling them to become something other than what they are well first of all drug addicts are not Monsters uh they are uh essentially people who are childish and immature and kind of stupid in their approach to life and themselves and other people and I think it's time that Society begin to deal and help the solution rather than the problem Carl Sandberg kind of summed up one aspect of of how we feel about people he said it something like this there's only one man in the world and his name is all men there is only one woman in the world and her name is all woman and there is only one child in the world and the child's name is all children for e for