Healing Through Magic: Scientology's Drug Rehab Program

"I asked about detox meds, because, although not life-threatening like alcohol or benzodiazepine withdrawal, heroin withdrawal does require medicines to get through. I was told no medicine is necessary," Jeffrey says. What he was given instead was calmat, "a mixture of calcium, magnesium, and vinegar that they believe detoxes the body," which is exactly as delicious as it is effective.

"They [also] took me on walks every few hours and did little thought exercises with me, one being, 'Tell me what you see,' [where you] tell them everything you see, but they won't let you stop until you say something meaningful, such as, 'I see my whole future ahead of me.' Or, 'I see that everything is beautiful and that I can enjoy things without drugs.'"

Apparently, what someone potentially dying of withdrawal really needs is not medicine but mineral potions and Hallmark-caliber personal revelations. Oh, did we mention that people have died there? Because people have totally died there, mostly under "mysterious circumstances." (It's kind of hard to investigate when the people in charge of doing that keep getting suspiciously fired.) While Narconon does advise that severe alcoholics undergo initial detox elsewhere, given that their medical training doesn't include learning how to respond to a fatal epileptic seizure, you might not want to trust them to assess your risk of dying to death.

Experts recommend spending no longer than 15 to 20 minutes in a sauna, so it's impressive that Jeffrey is still standing. And that's only the first day -- we haven't even gotten to the poison yet. Narconon has this whole medicine thing so backward that they've figured out how to poison people with vitamins. The second day, you get more niacin. "Each day they'd bump you up until you reach 5,000 milligrams," Jeffrey says. "Once up to a high dose, like 250 milligrams is what it took me, you get to where you turn bright red and get hives. My skin would feel on fire."

Had there been a doctor in the house, they would have advised Jeffrey to get to the hospital right away. And then they would've been lectured about thetans or some bullshit until they rolled their eyes so hard their retinas detached. In case you're wondering -- yes, some of the deaths at Narconon have involved kidney and liver failure, which is consistent with the symptoms of niacin poisoning. So get off that evil, poisonous heroin, son, and get onto the really good poison.

If you've survived The Gauntlet Of Bad Ideas so far, you're in for a treat. "Then the indoctrination begins," Jeffrey says. "They had us start OT TR-0 (OT being 'Operating Thetan,' TR being 'training routine'). It consists of sitting across from someone face-to-face with eyes closed, for an hour."

That sounds like a goddamn vacation after your hot, wet poisoning, but you're not allowed to move at all or fall asleep. "I have severe anxiety and couldn't do it; plus I have back pain, so anytime I moved or anything, I had to start over," Jeffrey says. "Needless to say, it was a nightmare."

Still, he somehow graduated to the next level, where even more torture and confusion awaited. "TR-1 is the same but eyes open, and they almost expect you not to blink," Jeffrey says. "TR-2, they have you do what they call 'acks,' short for 'acknowledging,' where someone says something and you acknowledge them. TR-3 is similar, but TR-4 is what they call the bullpen. You sit staring straight while people try to get a reaction out of you."

Well, that almost sounds fun! Like some kind of party game ...

"I had recently tried to kill myself, and they laughed about it, so I got up and refused to go back to that part of program."

... at the worst party in history.

Little did Jeffrey know, he was walking into not just a rehab facility but a job training program. Narconon routinely recruits its employees from its patients. "The day you graduate the program, you can start working there as an employee," he says. "So all the people working there had been through the program and had been clean under a year."

They're typically as inexperienced in medicine as they are in sobriety, which explains a lot. But contrary to the popular notion that drug addicts are allergic to work, a ready-made job was too tempting to resist for many in Jeffrey's cohort.

"Some took the job and beliefs dead serious; others had burned every bridge in their life and had nowhere else to go," Jeffrey says. But working for the Church of Scientology isn't quite like what we all fantasized about as children: "It was basically slave labor, with a never-ending flow of new workers when needed."

Along with low pay and the requirement to live on-site -- the better to cult you with, my dear -- the rules are surprisingly prudish for an industry run by Hollywood. "Couples cannot live with, or be in each other's on-site housing, without being married, so there were multiple couples who'd know each other three to five months -- including as patients, most likely -- and then would get married," Jeffrey says. "Having children was borderline forbidden, and [there were] rumors of forced abortions, but I never saw proof."

Well, of course -- we wouldn't want recently recovered addicts to be rushing into any hasty commitments.