The Story of Narconon
The Story of Narconon
The Origins of the Narconon® Programme
On August 2, 1965, William Benitez, an inmate at Arizona State Prison jumped down from his double bunk in the old cellblock where he was housed and made the following notation on his wall calendar: “Decision to set up Narcotic Foundation.” He also circled the 18th of the same month, his target date to approach prison officials to request permission to set up a drug rehabilitation programme inside the prison walls.
Officials denied permission for the following six months. Mr. Benitez’s request to start a programme consisting of twenty convicted drug addicts caused concern to officials who feared such a programme might pose a security problem (such programmes were rare in prisons during that decade). Officials had little reason to believe that the request of a habitual drug addict and repeatedly convicted felon would result in the worlds biggest rehabilitation programme.
Mr. Benitez persisted and finally assured officials the programme was needed and would not pose a threat to the safe and orderly operation of the prison. After being allowed to start the programme on a trial basis, he founded the NARCONON programme (NARCOtics-NONe) on February 19, 1966.
Today, the Narconon programme has spread from that one programme in Arizona State Prison to include community programmes in many states and countries such as Denmark, Italy, Holland, Germany, France, Sweden, Spain, Canada, Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Colombia, Switzerland, New Zealand, South Africa, Ghana, the United Kingdom, Australia, Indonesia, Taiwan, Argentina and Brazil.
Until he died from a sudden illness in 1999, Mr. Benitez was a Hearing Officer with the Arizona Department of Corrections, the same system which once kept him under lock and key. Below, he tells his own story:
“I started smoking pot in 1947, when I was thirteen. Then I went on to injecting opium and other drugs when I was about fifteen. I started to get into trouble and was arrested for various crimes, so I decided to join the Marines to see if I could get away from drugs. Instead, I ended up getting arrested on drug charges during the Korean conflict, received a military court martial and was discharged as undesirable.
In the following years, I kept trying to stay away from drugs. Sometimes I could stay clean for a short while, then I would go right back on the needle again. I carried the monkey for about eighteen years, and it cost me thirteen calendar years of being locked up. In addition to doing time in the Marines, I did a Federal prison term and also was convicted three times in Arizona state courts.
On my last trip to prison, I pled guilty on December 22, 1964 to possession of narcotics. Because I was being sentenced as a habitual offender, the sentence called for a mandatory fifteen years, and up to life. I remember speaking to one court official and telling him how I was still going to leave drugs alone and maybe even start a drug programme. I remember his words so well: “The best thing to do with guys like you, after the first time, is take you behind a building and do you and everyone else a favour and put you out of your misery.”
My attorney arranged for me to go before the judge just before Christmas, feeling that the spirit of the holiday might be in my favour. It may have worked. I made my plea to the judge telling him of all the attempts I had made over the years to stop using drugs, such as joining the Marines, committing myself to hospitals for psychiatric care and therapy on several occasions, isolating myself in mining towns in a personal attempt to kick the habit, and even how two marriages had not helped me straighten up. I told him that in spite of all those failures, I was still going to make it and was going to find a solution to my problem, that I had not yet quit. He must have believed there was still a spark of hope for me. He sentenced me to the mandatory fifteen years, but instead of running it to life, he made the term fifteen to sixteen years.
After arriving at prison, a friend of mine gave me some reading material to keep me occupied while I was in the Orientation Cellblock pending transfer to general population. Among the material was an old, tattered book, Fundamentals of Thought, by L. Ron Hubbard. I had heard of his writings when I previously served a ten-year sentence at Arizona State Prison, but had never read them. I had always been an avid reader of books dealing with human behaviour. Yet, this small book impressed me more than anything else I had ever read before. I read it over and over and then purchased additional books by Mr. Hubbard and studied them very carefully during the following year, even into the late hours of the night in my cell.
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