For Ron's birthday Karen de la Carriere posted an account on Marty's site of a part of the extensive medical research which underpins the purification rundown. Strangely neglected by historians, it's one of the great triumphs of medical science in the twentieth century -- up there with the discovery of penicillin, the invention of the pacemaker, and the development of effective antipsychotic dr.. erm I mean the discovery that physical conditions can be cured by blowing off little alien critters.

This revelation of Ron's original research will enable wog scientists finally to understand the astonishing 75% success rate of Narconon, which has been established by a great body of transparent, peer-reviewed clinical research. What low toned wog scientists may never be able to fully comprehend is the great love shown by Ron for a disgusting druggie.

I'm sorry for Karen, whom I like and respect in many ways, but this piece doesn't make much sense.

1) A person doesn't get physical withdrawal from hallucinogenics, just psychological yearnings and psychological damage.

2) MDMA (extasy) was used as a party drug since the late seventies. It became popular in the party-circles in the early eighties.
L.Ron died in '84. Let's keep it wide. 1978 to 1984. 6 years = 6 x 365 = 2190 days. One needs at least one day between following doses of psychotropics, otherwise the effect will be gone after some days to weeks. The person has used 2912 doses of MDMA. To do that he would have needed at LEAST 2 x 2912 = 5848 days = over 16 years. 1984 - 16 = 1968. Nobody had ever heard of MDMA outside the medical community in 1968.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MDMA

3)Then we have the LSD. Known since 1938 in the laboratory, invented by Hofmann who discovered the psychedelic properties five years later by accidence. It was used in the counter-culture since 1963, under the influence of types like Aldous Huxley, Timothy Leary and Alfred Matthew HUBBARD (I don't know if he was related or if it's a pure coincidence. ) 'Rundown boy' took LSD for 4982 times. Let's stick to the one day between trips-rule. (With LSD, which is stronger, 2 days between trips is more realistic, but we try to keep as pro-purif as possible. That's 9984 days = over 27 years + the 16 MDMA years is 43 years. 84-43= 41. So he started using LSD before it was known it had psychedelic properties (in 1943, in Hofmann's lab) Fascinating.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSD#History

Though I think the resemblance in name is coincidental, for those who want to look into this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Matthew_Hubbard


4) STP hit the market in Haight-Ashbury's hippy-paradise in 1967, and was only available for a short time. Several months, a year at most. Still our user managed to take the stuff 3777 times. STP has an extremely longlasting and strong effect. You would REALLY need at least two days between doses. It's impossible to have taken 3777 doses in the short period it was produced and sold. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2,5-dimethoxy-4-methylamphetamine

5) Lets forget the magic mushrooms for now . Even without them this guy had to be, if he started at 16, 60 years old plus the years he spent with STP and mushrooms. I don't believe that somebody who spent all of his adult life on a trip or coming down from one, has the sense to count the times he took something in such exact numbers. Most users don't get any further then "uh, about hundred times, I guess". Most users would be raving lunatics after taking this amount of psychotropic drugs. If the story were possible, that is. Extreme LSD-users mentioned taking several hundreds of trips over a lifetime. Many thousands of trips? Not that I ever heard of or even read about.

The whole story makes no sense. Not historically, not pharmaceutically, not when it comes down to behavior of drug users. Lets say you and Ron were cheated by a drug-addict, Karen. Nothing to be ashamed of. Happens to the most experienced of professionals.

6) Then we have the Purif. This whole idea of retaining drugs, particularly LSD, MDMA and cocaine, in your fatty tissue is absurd. These substances dissolve in water, and leave the body through the urine. Cocaine is gone in two days, LSD is gone within hours after ingesting. The stuff is still working in the brain (that takes 8-12 hours) but it's impossible to find traces of it in blood or urine after about three hours. MDMA is somewhere in between.

Even if it were stapled in the fatty tissues, sauna would not be a solution. Sauna just makes you loose water and salts. No fat or fat-soluble substances.

The Cal-Mag and the vitamins are dangerously overdosed, specially for those with liver-, kidney-, heart- and nerve disease.
Though normal to mildly enlarged doses of B-vitamins can make the cramps in alcohol-, benzo- and opiate detox slightly less unbearable, there is no extra benefit in these ultra-high doses. For drugs like cocaine, marihuana and psychedelics where there are no muscle cramps, there is no benefit at all.
The vitamins used in the purif- and Narconon programs are ridiculously expensive, compared with generic vitamins.
In many European countries the use of the dosages advised for the purif are illegal, unless prescribed by a physician. And in many of those countries Osteopaths and Homeopaths are not recognized as such. It won't be easy to get an allopathic MD to prescribe this regime.

7) Good food, plenty of attention, physical exercise, a regular day-program, a purpose, sea wind and sunshine are good for everybody. Some of the dianetics exercises can help some people become stronger psychologically. But so can many other therapy-systems.
The rest of the Rundown makes no sense what-so-ever. It can even be dangerous. A lot of people died in Narconon treatment centers.

And yes, some did get better. But remember, research has proven that 25% of addicts (users of alcohol, opiates, methamphetamine, benzodiazepines, crack cocaine) stop, even without help, eventually. For people using psychedelics, marihuana, cocaine (I mean old-fashioned snorting coke, not crack) this percentage is even higher. The 75-80% curing rates Narconon gives are A LIE. No program scores that high. All of them reach around 25 to 35%, depending on the substance that was abused. Probably programs do help those people who would stop anyway reach their goal a little quicker. But not even that is sure.

Anyway; There is no scientific basis for the purif, the results are not worth the risk and the story doesn't make up.

Sorry Karen, I like you as a person but the one thing that pisses me off more than all other things in scientology is the crap being sold to drug-addicts and their desperate relatives. It's one big scam. Try reading some of the stuff AnonyMary and Intelligence posted on this board and on ESMB.



EDIT: Operatingwog, thanks for posting this!

Karen is an occasional poster here, and we welcome all opinions.

I hope she won't feel like this is being "called out", but more in the spirit of lively debate.

I hope so too. Lively debate was the idea.

I feel like I'm being handled.

Ol' ron sure knew how to just pull stuff from his butt on any given day.

To whit:
ALL ABOUT RADIATION
by
A NUCLEAR PHYSICIST
and A MEDICAL DOCTOR

No names, just claims.

It just doesn't add up does it? The information is historically and scientifically inaccurate and the purif is just plain dangerous. I would love to get an addictionologist's take on this nonsense.

Never mind the argument over the efficacy of Hubbard's so called tech, although I think that's important and should be dealt with in this thread. The reason I feel like I'm being handled here is in this part of Karen's piece, with my emphasis added.





I think what Karen saw and experienced was just a part of L. Ron Hubbard's act. I believe she was being manipulated by L. Ron Hubbard's behavior and was taken in by it. I'm not buying it.

Wieber, you don't think LRH cared about people ever? I would imagine there would have to have been some amount of caring.

Just so there's some balance in this thread (I never knew the man, obviously) but have heard enough stories about Ron to believe there had to be some sort of charisma there. I guess that's not the same as caring, but still. Even Hana Whitfield felt there were things to be admired. She said he had a passion for things, he was interested in a lot of things, and was inspiring. Again, that's not the same as caring, but I'm trying to keep an open mind.

As far as the purification working, I don't think so.

For the record, I don't believe in chiropracty, either. Back massage, maybe. "Staightening the spine" to fix anything that ails you? No. It's weird to me that it's just accepted as ok in this country now, and polite people don't call it hooey.

Edit: Huh, I just googled "chiropractic quackery" and found out the guy who invented it in 1895 (around the same time as Christian Science coincidentally) sounded a lot like Hubbard. This article says basically the same thing as what I figure is true. Newer chiropractors sometimes use modern techniques, which could help a patient. The old stuff, not so much.

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/rea ... t-quackery

In my opinion, based on what I've read and experienced, the charisma, charm and caring that L. Ron Hubbard and many people like him, display(ed) is all part of the manipulation phase of their exploitation of people. Hubbard was extremely good at it. He seemed like such a wonderful caring person, even to me, but I think it was all an act, and that the only person he ever cared about was L. Ron Hubbard.

L. Ron cared so much he charged $1,400 dollars for something anyone could do at their local gym for free.

He cared so much he added a vitamin regimen that permanently scars your liver.

Yeah, he cared alright.

Charisma, sure. Personality? Never doubted that. Wide scope of interest? Definitely. Lots of fascinating stories? O, yeah.

Most sociopaths are good story-tellers and very charismatic people. They are masters of manipulation because they give their targets the feeling of being special, being cared for, being loved. Meanwhile they rob you blind and put arsenic in your coffee to get at your life insurance. Or they start a religion.

A true caring person doesn't put people in the chain-locker of a ship for minor mistakes.

By the way, in many parts of Europe chiropractors are considered quacks as soon as they start treating anything outside the limited scope of back-problems.

eLwRONg cared enough about people to beat his wife, isolate his gay son, perform countless abortions, place small children in the chain-box(I forget what that is called), invent overboarding, create, implement, and refine disconnection. No this guy didnt like people, he liked their money.

I was trying to be delicate.

That's the thing, though. I liked Sekh's post because she has enough knowledge about the effects of drugs to be able to call someone on his or her b.s. It's one thing to attack someone for their opinions. However, when someone relates what they claim is a factual account, in defense of a controversial health remedy, that account is open for scrutiny.