In the late 60’s and into the 70’s we saw a strange phenomenon emerge! That was the rise of cults that promised freedom from addiction, community tranquility, cleansing of the soul, and contributing to the good of mankind. We saw people who had destroyed their lives on drugs and alcohol, divorce, domestic violence, childhood abuse, and crime. These troubled people were looking for non-conventional ways of recovery, and who was lying in wait to capitalize on these self –destructive types but the cult leaders ready to offer a bizarre alternative. People like Reverend Jim Jones, Reverend Moon of the Moonies, and the redoubtable Ashrams of the Hindu religion. The Branch Davidians come to mind, slaughtered by the FBI and ATF!

Has conventional treatments and medicine failed? There was AA and methadone treatment, there were out patient centers for drug addicts that simply changed one drug dependency for another, and, of course, for those troubled mothers addicted, homeless, or abused there was always the abortion as a quick and deadly fix especially for the fetus. But, did society really know how to handle the casualties of the drug, hippy, counter culture who had been instructed by Timothy Leary to tune out and drop out? We saw that generation of drug abusers and addicts simply transition into the Disco frenzy for more alcohol and cocaine abuse, late night dancing, and getting laid at the bar! My, how society adapts!

We all know what the fate of Reverend Jim Jones and his cult who became, an isolationist colony that used intimidation and abuse to control its cowering members! When a US Congressman made a trip to make an official visit along with local WFAA news anchor, Don Harris, they were shot to death by members of Jim Jones’s enforcers. 1000 members of the Jonestown of the People’s Temple were encouraged to drink Kool-Aid spiked with cyanide! The largest single slaughter of US civilians up to the 9-11 attacks in 2001.

So what happened to those who fell through the cracks knowing sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll had been the source of their self-destructive life styles! The institutionalized and ambivalent conventional treatment options really didn’t appeal to many such sufferers. These people were literally absorbed by the Moonies or World Unification Church offering a place to live, food, and meditation as a means of recovery and a sense of community, but it also became a place of mass hypnotic control we call cultism. These people traded free will and individual choice for gradual indoctrination that would overcome their sense of individuality.

The Hindus had their own answer in the way of Ashrams. These franchise type cult operations featured food, shelter, meditation for recovery, but also began mandatory work programs that in combination with meditation and daily chores took up 17 hours a day as the commune, monastery, whatever you wanted call it, conducted conventional business such as bakeries and restaurants fueled by cheap if not free labor. The willing recovery patient convinced to sacrifice all their time to serve the benevolent monastery that gave them a place to recovery at. Insiders and former members reported mind control, a calculated low protein diet to make the captives more docile, and compliant while embedding behavioral control upon there recovering members.

There was an excellent movie based upon a true story of how a member of one of these communal cults had to be rescued as he had become obviously hypnotized and brainwashed to his family members. The young man was so indoctrinated that when being allowed to make a trip into town he stopped at a Dairy Queen and bought a cheese burger and malt only to run to the bathroom and force himself to vomit in order to remove the evil food that violated his strict non-protein diet! A literal rescue operation had to be conducted in order to not only kidnap him from the cult who began deploying brutal forms of control over their members, but for weeks they had to use a deprogramming process to break down the brainwashing that had been instilled in him as he was stubborn and well rationalized in the beliefs of his overseers. Luckily, they succeeded, in some cases these people did not recover and would go back after being rescued.

I had direct experience with an Ashram in Denton, Texas while being a delivery driver for my father in his food distribution business. I would make deliveries to the Rudra Bakery kitchen. They specialized in healthy wholesome home cooked food and made their own bread. There I met people I talked to and found out about their culture. We discussed music, life style changes, and what had brought them there. It was all interesting and somewhat frightening. When I would first meet them when making a delivery I sensed their state of mind as though all of them were in an altered state of consciousness and they literally were! As though they were all on some kind of high which I knew was the meditation they practiced hours a day.

I met one dude who thought he had escaped insanity by being there and was totally at peace. We discussed music and I was really into Pink Floyd at the time. He remarked that they transmitted a form of insanity he could no longer aspire to, but said he was into a German band “Can”. Then there was Martha, if I hadn’t been married she and we might have ended up together. I cared about her and asked her if devoting all this time and effort to the Ashram was really distracting her from her purpose and if she were on her own she could make better decisions for her life. She thought about it as I could see she was conflicted. I encouraged her to acquire the will to break away if she thought she needed to. She was a very sweet person who might have been easily bowled over by leader of the Ashram.

https://youtu.be/LPjF4ZHuIko?si=JgkUT0kz7ruhY1mV

Eventually, a lot of these commune operations dried up once it was found that they were running multi-million dollar businesses and capitalizing on their captive workforces. Did they do any good? Perhaps for those who needed shelter and a remote manner of re-direction. Some of these people who were in a perilous position had no other alternative, but for them to be taken advantage of as part of a profiteering operation was wrong, they were being used opportunistically. As for poor Martha I met her a few years later and she had left the Ashram and thanked me for motivating her to do so. I was still married at the time but I did kiss her. I know, I’m a bad boy. I dropped her off at her place and she wished me good luck. I still remember kind people in my life.