Interesting read with a couple of links to related stories of this rehab turned to cult out of wherelse...California

...From forced sterilization to attempted murder by rattlesnake bite, Synanon has a wild legacy...

...Christopher Bathum had no formal training in addiction treatment. He was a licensed hypnotherapist, a wild-haired oddball and convicted felon who was sued in 2010 for sexually assaulting a female patient in a rehab program he co-founded, Seasons. The suit was settled for an undisclosed amount, and Bathum was allowed to start another treatment center, and then another. That enterprise, Community Recovery, would grow into a chain of 20 sober-living homes and outpatient clinics in California and Colorado. It was a tight-knit, insular community. Patients became interns, interns became employees, employees would relapse and then return to being patients. More than a few former “clients,” as they were known, referred to Community Recovery as a kind of cult.

In February 2018 Bathum was convicted of rape and 30 other counts of sexual assault, sexual exploitation, and giving his patients crystal meth and heroin. He faces another trial for 46 counts of insurance fraud.

When I first wrote about Bathum in 2015 for L.A. Weekly, I considered him an outlier, a bad actor in an otherwise decent industry that has helped countless people, including me: I spent 30 days in a rehab in 2003 and seven months in a West L.A. sober-living home. But once the story ran, I received a flood of emails and phone calls with stories of other facilities engaged in misdeeds. Perhaps those misdeeds weren’t as bad or on the same scale as Bathum’s, but far too many people seemed to cite them. As retired insurance investigator Deb Herzog told me, “The way the system is set up now, it’s just a breeding ground for fraud.” Or as recovery historian William White wrote in 1998, “The failure to define and enforce clear ethical standards governing our business practices has long rendered the addiction treatment field a predator’s paradise.”

How long should addicts stay in inpatient care? What are the most effective treatment methods? Should patients be medicated? These questions have lingered since the beginnings of modern addiction treatment. Well into the 1950s, addicts were considered hopelessly incurable. If they were treated at all, it was by doctors in hospitals. More often than not, they were sent to jail.

Synanon changed all that.
https://exploringrealhistory.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-story-of-this-drug-rehab-turned.html