MARKETING? –
March 8, 2021 – When Margaret and John Millington’s son Simon was in the grips of an opioid addiction, his parents wanted to send him to a rehabilitation program. The only one available was called Narconon.
When he emerged at the end of three months he was better than they had ever seen, but he relapsed soon after and four years later died from an overdose, leaving his five-year-old daughter Maddie without a father. … Mrs Millington said “if there had been options, we wouldn’t have paid [for Simon] to go to Narconon”.
“It was the only option we had at the time. There were absolutely no government-funded rehabs around,” she said.
“We were happy to try anything to save his life, we just wanted to get Simon well.”
Narconon’s Yarra Ranges facility suspended operations in Victoria in 2019. Parks Victoria confirmed the group’s lease of its site, O’Shannassy Lodge, ended in June 2020. A new organisation under the Narcanon name was registered in March 2020, but a spokesperson from its parent organisation, the Association for Better Living and Education, said the future of the residential program and its current site was “uncertain”.
