The Synanon Fix: Is the Cure a Cult? (HBO Max, 2024)

This week we’re talking about The Synanon Fix: Did the Cure Become a Cult? (HBO, 2024), yet another documentary that reminds us why we must always take care with a subtitle. It’s the story of Synanon, a drug addiction treatment community founded in the late 1950s by Chuck Dederich. The group offered solidarity and stability to people on society’s margins, they were unapologetically integrated, and they threw great parties. The centerpiece of their program was “the game,” which involved a lot of yelling and, ideally, self-reflection and catharsis. Celebrities like Lucille Ball and Leonard Nemoy came to hang, and there was even a movie made about them starring Eartha Kitt! Dederich became increasingly invested in the wealthy, self-aggrandizing allies who made hefty donations and less present for the people who helped build the group from the ground up. In the process, the man who invented the literal game began breaking his own rules. We talk about the ever-appealing rhetoric of individualism that got deployed even as assistance turned into assimilation. We also talk about how the trope of “cult leader” helps the documentary bury a lead regarding mental illness and psychosis. When and why do we distinguish a group from its leader, and when/why do we choose not to? Learn about this, as well as Mike’s new dog Otis.

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Production assistance from the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama.

Theme music produced with Udio.