COMMUNITY –
Jan. 9, 2022 – In its early days Synanon ran on a dime and depended on a ‘pay-it-forward’ model, where recovering addicts helped others through withdrawal pains and shepherded them into the flow of life. Soon it acquired adjacent residential properties to house the increasing numbers of addicts landing on its doorstep.
Members created social worlds to sustain recovery, including literacy and art classes, reading groups on Freudian psychoanalysis and Buddhist philosophy, and a nursery where residents cared for each other’s children. Weekly Saturday night parties attracted curious crowds, drawing Hollywood actors, noted intellectuals, politicians and average citizens, intrigued by what came to be known as “the miracle on the beach.”
Synanon was home to a thriving jazz scene and to an increasingly interracial community that embodied not only the diverse face of addiction in America, but also the potential to break down racial barriers. In 1963, a time when interracial marriage was still outlawed in some states, Dederich and Betty Coleman, a Black woman and former heroin addict, married, in part because they believed “it would be good for Synanon to have, right at the top of the pyramid, an integrated marriage.”The expectation was that others would follow, and they did.
