Conversion, addiction, and intervention

Joe Szimhart, 2007

 

Sometimes brainwashing and cult affiliations are compared to addiction models. The comparisons seem obvious, as reaction behaviors are similar especially during surprise interventions. The targeted client usually reacts with some combination of shock, anger, fear, confusion, hurt feelings, and denial. Rarely does the targeted client react with relief, but sometimes that is the case. A drug addicted person that yet functions at work (the job is almost always the last thing to fail in an addict’s world) will use anything like the fact of job performance to deny that he or she has a problem. People in cults react to intervention, most often, by denying that the group is a cult and that his or her life has gotten worse since joining it.

    The comparisons fall apart when one considers the neuro-physiological components of drug addiction as compared to the social identity roles of group affiliation. The former has a very real medical treatment protocol (detoxification, rehabilitation, and psychiatric intervention with medication), while the latter responds to primarily educational and social remedies with psychological treatment only when indicated. We strain to compare drug (alcohol included) addiction to obsession with a belief as an addiction, but the comparison is not totally wrong.

    Seekers I’ve interviewed from cult-like groups, especially those that joined in the 1970s after years of drug abuse, have told me that their group experience was a “high” and even higher than anything experienced on a drug. By high they meant real euphoria as well as closeness to God or enlightenment. Often the high feeling or ecstasy attended group meditation, chanting, or sacred bodily movements. The euphoria readily increased as group size increased. I felt the power of large charismatic group euphoria when chanting decrees in unison with thousands of Church Universal and Triumphant members. It is quite different than decreeing alone or in small groups.

    Mental health professionals from Freud through W.R. Bion and Philip G. Zimbardo have noted the power of group charisma over the individual.[i] The group high in cults dissolves the individual into group identity or into and an ethereal bond with group ideology. Drug induced elation most often drives addicts into a selfish need to repeat the high at the expense of the group, family, and society. Cult groups tend to exclude or restrict substance abuse to ritual only, for this very reason—the individual member must remain a selfless agent for the group. Drug abuse will alienate a member from group processes as an addiction increases. Only the leader or those designated by the leader have that selfish possibility as long as he or she still maintains a charismatic hold on the members. Drug abuse by cult leaders is legend.

    In the last chapter of his ambitiously titled book Cults, psychiatrist Marc Galanter tackles the Alcoholics Anonymous model of recovery. Galanter notes cultic features in AA, but goes on to compare it with the extremist group Synanon that went far beyond AA’s 12-Step democratic approach. Synanon created an abusive, paranoid system.[ii] AA does not qualify as a self-sealing system that is the restricted model of a cult that most people recognize as harmful. Galanter calls AA a “charismatic healing group” because AA’s effectiveness depends on a ritualistic and charismatic relationship between the members and the group’s transcendent philosophy. AA members maintain sobriety by connecting with a sponsor and going regularly to the rooms or AA meetings halls. A primary step is to acknowledge a higher power that helps to keep an addict’s life in order after the addict acknowledges his or her powerlessness over the “disease.” This echoes the primary definition of cult as a devotional system dedicated to an idea—the Twelve Steps.

    Galanter argues that AA differs from Synanon because AA does not rely on a single authority figure; rather, on local groups forming around AA’s democratic principles. Donations remain modest and grass roots, so the organization on the local level can not get “top heavy.” AA, by his definition, is a healthy charismatic group. Synanon, by contrast, evolved from a successful therapeutic community that began in 1958 into an insular cult ruled by founder Chuck Dederich. “Synanon impinged on all aspects of social adaptation,” wrote Galanter. Spin-offs of the Synanon model in the 1970s were equally restrictive. If the reader recalls (A flawed A-team), I worked with two deprogrammers who had to escape after one year of “treatment” in the Family Tree in Ohio. The vulnerability of recovering addicts to self-sealing systems or cult answers is not unusual. People with addictions have a host of insecurities that can set them apart from the sober cult recruit for no other reason that their lives are out of control at the time they enter a treatment facility.

    At that stage early in recovery any kind of stability is preferable to none. Recovery almost demands a supportive community for success, as it is rare that any addict beats the addiction alone. Cults can provide a supportive community as long as the member in recovery bonds with group members and ideology during the recovery experience. The openness one feels for the group and its ideology increases during sharing sessions, self-analysis, and the utter feeling of helplessness that can overcome a client or patient during treatment. The brain’s neurological connections or cogwebs will adapt to the new information through the euphoria of real change with new, strong and memorable connections in the recovery milieu.[iii] The question is what milieu is one bonding with during the irrational, mystical, or ecstatic experience? Consider what anthropologist I. M. Lewis has to say:

 

“… [E]very transcendental encounter is unique and can be apprehended only by direct, personal experience. At an individual level this of course is always true. But it does not alter the fact that mystical experience, like any other experience, is grounded in and must relate to the social environment in which it is achieved. It thus inevitably bears the stamp of the culture and society in which it arises.”[iv]

 

    Brainwashing (controlled influence within a totalist or self-sealing milieu) depends a lot on repetition and reinforcement to succeed. It is not enough to merely fall in love. To remain in love the charismatic relationship will need reinforcement through physical and emotional communication, dating rituals, celebrations, and recovery rituals to overcome lapses in love. Once inside the system it is difficult to see outside as the cult recruit like the marriage partner with the strong investment in a new identity will try every which way to rationalize and deny what outsiders see as abuse or harm. We view attacks on our beliefs, self-perceptions, and decisions as identity threats if not life threats. This is who I am, I have a right to be me, leave me alone or you will pay the consequences. Thus, families critical of a cult member are cut off.

    Of course identification varies from person to person, but in the extreme the battered wife syndrome has many parallels to the cult member who may take years to eventually break with the group, after he or she recognizes the need to leave. Many an abusive husband has thoughts to kill her if she ever tries to leave me. Or, in frustration, he has impulses to kill himself too. Tragically, some men act on their thoughts and impulses. Cult identity, once formed, is similar, as the group will look at traitors as especially condemned. Intervention with a person in an abusive relationship or harmful cult can shorten his or her tenure as well as reinforce the decision to leave with solid insight. The struggling member finds it hard to believe, at first, that defection does not equal transcendent condemnation. Intervention offers an introduction to appropriate social supports that will strengthen resolve. The recovering addict’s needs for social support is perhaps more acute because a return to addiction will mean personal ruin and perhaps certain death. The addict returns to a drug partner like heroin that has absolutely no concern over the addict’s welfare. A cult, at the very least, pretends to be concerned, as long as you submit to the agenda.

    Not all addicts in recovery view Alcoholics Anonymous as a healthy system. In my work with men at a Halfway House (where I was a primary therapist and caseworker), I ran group sessions and offered individual counseling. The men committed, or were court-committed as some came straight from jail, to six months or more to stay sober, participate in recovery therapy, and find jobs. The Halfway House used a Twelve-Step model developed by AA. Some of the men complained that AA was a “cult” because of its strict definitions of addiction as a lifetime disease and reliance on strict recovery steps. Some of the men preferred not to attend AA rooms regularly. These folks believed that they could handle a casual drink now and then after treatment. Most of the men argued against that view as naïve. Most of my clients felt that they needed to follow AA rules to survive and not merely to stay sober, but the cult jargon and repetitive testimonies in the rooms (AA meetings) bothered them. The men knew of my background as a “cult expert” and they responded with interesting and challenging questions.

    Among the staff I was unique as the only therapist not in recovery. By AA standards, I am not an addict nor has my life ever been out of control because I drink alcohol now and then. My earlier, relatively mild use of drugs, including marijuana and cigarettes, ceased in 1975 altogether. I smoked tobacco in a pipe off and on through 1985 and quit that too. I drank (and still drink) caffeine in moderation. On average, I have had one or two alcoholic drinks a week; some weeks, nothing. I had to work to gain respect from those men in recovery as someone who might understand their problem. Initially, they viewed me as someone that was never there. I had no war stories of my own that amounted to anything spectacular. Some of these men lived lives of crime to support their habits. How could a non-addict possibly identify with one? I had never bottomed out or nearly lost my life to addiction. I found my cult experience gave me an advantage over deprogrammers with no history of cult affiliation, so I could relate to the suspicion in my Halfway House clients. In the end I convinced them that AA was far less autocratic than the groups that concerned me as a deprogrammer. The Synanon example defined the distinction well.

 

 

 

Exit stages, recovery, and recidivism

 

Effective intervention presents a timing problem because there is no right time to launch an intervention. Confrontations are always awkward and rarely go smoothly, although solid preparation and an experienced team leader can minimize expected resistance. However, there are times when confrontations are optimal. Those times depend on what stage of recovery or exit the client is in, and that stage can be very mysterious, even to the addict or cult member yet in the crucible of the habit. I use habit both to mean addiction and metaphorically as symbolic attire because nuns’ habits are indicative of a religious path. Sometimes the intervention uncovers feelings and intellectual needs that the client has repressed for years in their quest to comply with group dogma. They feel a need to shed a habit, yet can not find the will or a good enough reason to do it. With new information revealed, the client or group member may contemplate defection or a change in habit.

    Changing for Good is a self-help and recovery book that offers “A six-stage program for overcoming bad habits and moving your life positively forward.”[v] The authors established a workable and relatively successful program for people with addictions and bad habits. There is a remarkably high recidivism or relapse rate among recovering addicts, up to 90%, which frustrates insurance companies, law enforcement, therapists, and families alike. The authors of Changing for Good developed a six-stage process, confirmed through decades of research, which works much better than the usual detoxification and “28 day” approaches. The six-stage process is not only for addicts and smokers but also seems to be a useful model for anyone who wants to change bad habits.

    The key here is “wants to” but can not seem to. The authors of Changing for Good have almost nothing to say about exiting cults but a lot to say about the process of change. Here, I will attempt to relate the six stages to a cult exit in a brief exercise. The stages are pre-contemplation, contemplation, determination, action, maintenance, and lapse. Until someone gets to the second stage of contemplation the desire to change is not there, according to Changing for Good. Pre-contemplation is the first stage of any change. At that stage things seem fine, in control, and perhaps enlightening. In pre-contemplation the actor sees no reason for change, but circumstances that define a bad habit are active

    The third or determination stage of change means that the addict or cult member, who has begun a process of research and reassessment, dares to hear what ex-members say, and decides to leave the group. Once out, or once the substance abuse stops, the person is in the action stage and stays away from the bad habit or group. This period of change is usually tenuous for addicts who continue to crave the substance, especially in weak moments of high stress. For exiting cult members the desire for camaraderie and ritual, as well as for the security of identity, can produce urges to return to the group. Life initially outside of a cult can be disconcerting, full of sin, or in a word, messy. So the maintenance of change or exit from the group or bad habit is key. The maintenance stage depends on support, conviction, and reliable information that continue to support the reason for exit or the reason to stay sober.

    For the recovering addict, the end of active addiction comes through the maintenance stage, but relapse is a possibility. A return to the habit may or may not be brief, but all the stages remain in play in every case. Lapse is included as the sixth of a six-stage process that works as much interactively as it does in sequence. For example, a contemplation stage can be brief with action and maintenance stages arising simultaneously if someone is suddenly motivated to get sober. The stimulus could be a death in the family or from a near death experience, for example. The therapist or intervention specialist can better assist the situation if he or she recognizes the stage of change the client is in. For exit counselors this means time spent with the concerned family to assess which stage of cult affiliation to address when an intervention takes place. The assessment can take weeks or months if a family has little or no recent access to the cult member. It can take hours if the family or concerned person has maintained good communication with the cultist.

    If a member is in a contemplation stage, meaning that they had begun a questioning process however tentative, the set-up for the intervention may not have to be a complete surprise. I have met with cultists who began the action stage of exit by living away from a group on their own, but refused to talk with an “expert” for some months. The exit session with someone in the action stage usually amounts to clarifying recovery issues that remain confusing. Some ex-members I’ve interviewed were in this stage for ten years or more. People in this stage can be stuck in a limbo (a different crucible) in which they float psychologically from contemplation to determination and back to action without resolve. These intermediate stages can be times of incredible growth as well as debilitating depression.

    Most interventions occur by surprise when a client is yet in a pre-contemplation stage, thus the exit counselor has the triply difficult task of encouraging contemplation of the problem first, encouraging the determination to exit second, and then of suggesting action to leave the group. How to maintain life after a cult is a stage that the exit counselor initiates, but is not necessarily a part of that stage. Usually, an ex-cultist employs therapy, self-education, and re-socialization on their own to maintain recovery. Some ex-members go to retreat and treatment centers (Wellspring in Athens, Ohio is a good example today), cult awareness education conferences, and interact with other former members. Unlike with recovering drug addicts, the recidivism rate among former cultists is on the opposite end of the spectrum of bad habits. Once out of a cult, defectors will most likely stay out. There is a distinct difference from how a high demand group affects the brain and the will than does a cult.

    Unfortunately, there are no reliable studies, but my best estimate from surveys taken by biased and unbiased sources and from my experience it seems to me that 10 to 20 percent of lapsed cult members will return to either their old group or enter another high-demand one. If you’ve read this far I hope you can see that what we call cults has no easy, all-encompassing definition, so defection and reentry is nearly impossible to measure statistically without strict parameters that involve specific groups.[vi] Moreover, not many scholars have studied defection from social movements much less cults. Sociologist Stuart Wright states, “Though empirical work on conversion and recruitment to social and religious movements abounds in sociology, there exists relatively little systematic investigation of defection, deconversion, or disaffiliation.”[vii]

    In my experience it is less likely that an ex-member will cult-hop or return to their group after formal exit counseling as compared to leaving a cult without intervention. This is not to say that formal exit counseling has a high degree of success. Overall if you plan an intervention with a cultist in the pre-contemplation stage, and you have hired a competent consultant or team, your chances are between 50 and 70 percent that the cult member will determine to exit the group during the intervention.

    It may help to look at stages of entry that seekers exhibit prior to conversion. Curiosity is a good first stage label. Seekers of any age are folks dissatisfied with an existing tradition or suddenly in need of way to understand being and meaning. The story of the founder of Buddhism exemplifies this stage. His curiosity emerged when as a young, isolated and married prince he saw for the first time a poor man who was suffering. His quest to understand suffering and how to transcend it led to the Four Noble Truths and establishment of the Eightfold Path that inspires one of the great world religions in Buddhism.

    However, most seekers, with me included, are hardly exemplary. We get curious about mysteries that we do not comprehend, stumble along through books, check out gurus or ministers, and have long discussions with fellow seekers. If we are not curious about a spiritual quest we might meet someone who makes us curious, someone like a cult recruiter. At some stage we begin to realize or know what the truth might be, but we need to experiment to find out. We apply the old occult adage: To know, to dare, to do or will, and to be silent. We have to dare to try a new path. When we are ready to do, we enter a crucible that can be anything from a rite-of-passage workshop to an intentional community with ties that bind. The quest compels us to seek beyond mere knowledge—we need gnosis or the experience of truth in itself. Because the experience and truth we find is so extraordinary, we will tend to keep silent bout it around critics and ignorant outsiders.

 

Going against the intent of the authors, we can convert the stages of Changing for Good that define an exit process from a bad habit to an entry process to a cult. From the seeker’s perspective the change to cult life is a good change or the seeker would not do it. Relative ignorance of a need for a quest or lack of desire for one is the pre-contemplation stage. Curiosity complements the contemplation stage, experimentation the determination stage, experience the action stage, and the rituals of cult life where the experience is repeated and sustained is the maintenance stage. Based on Changing for Good the stages in parallel would look like this:

 

Entry into harmful cult life                                  Exit from harmful cult life

 

Ignorance Curiosity Experimentation Experience Rituals Doubt

Pre-contemplation Contemplation Determination Action Maintenance Lapse

 

In this configuration doubt at the entry column is a lapse that can lead to contemplation in the exit column through a return to ignorance/pre-contemplation. Most high demand groups discourage and even condemn doubt as an aberration of the mind and will. Positive thinking, faith without question, single-mindedness, and avoiding dissent at all costs reduce doubt and the fear to keep on keeping on. Ours is not to reason why, ours is but to do or die. Falling into doubt can lead to defection. I’ve heard devotees say, “Do not fall prey to doubt because defection is like a dog returning to eat its own vomit.” Of course this is a complete restriction of the value of doubt that can be the sign of a healthy mind. Kathleen Taylor in her book Brainwashing calls this process of healthy doubt “stop and think.” When devotees of aberrant groups begin to stop and think if and why the group is aberrant, the floodgates of determination to leave can open. To keep this from happening cult managers and gurus reinforce the wickedness and ignorance of the outside world and the wonderful possibilities through faith in the guru and participation in the group system.

    With this proven model that assists change from bad habits, we can better understand why some people may be so difficult to dissuade from cult life while others defect from a cult after a few hours conversation with an ex-member. It behooves concerned relatives or exit counselors to assess the readiness of a cult member to hear critical information. Additionally, every concerned family should assess whether an exit counselor has the skill and knowledge to evoke contemplation from a resistant cult member.