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William Benitez,
Founder of Narconon
 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
program inside the prison walls.
Officials denied permission for the following six
months. Mr. Benitez’s request to start a program
consisting of twenty convicted drug addicts caused
concern to officials who feared such a program might
pose a security problem (such programs 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 one of
the nation’s most successful rehabilitation programs for
substance abusers.
Mr. Benitez persisted and finally assured officials the
program was needed and would not pose a threat to the
safe and orderly operation of the prison. After being
allowed to start the program on a trial basis, he
founded the NARCONON program (NARCOtics-NONe) on
February 19, 1966.
Today, the Narconon program has spread from that one
program in Arizona State Prison to include community
programs 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, Indonesia, Taiwan, Argentina, Brazil and
of course Australia.
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 program. 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 favor 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 favor. 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
behavior. 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.
The material identified human abilities and
their development. I was amazed I had never run
across such workability within a multitude of other
works I had studied over the years. I’m not a
gullible person when it comes to accepting new or
different approaches or ideas. If they work, fine.
Otherwise, throw them out the window. They either
work or they don’t. I was tired of experimenting
with so many ideas and philosophies, many having
credence only because some “authority” had written
them.
What impressed me the most about [Hubbard’s]
materials was that they concentrated not only on
identifying abilities, but also on methods
(practical exercises) by which to develop them. I
realized that drug addiction was nothing more than a
“disability,” resulting when a person ceases to use
abilities essential to constructive survival.
I found that if a person rehabilitated and
applied certain abilities, that person could
persevere toward goals set, confront life, isolate
problems and resolve them, communicate with life, be
responsible and set ethical standards, and function
within the band of certainty.
I finally realized I had developed the essential
abilities needed to overcome my drug problem.
Feeling myself on safe ground, I knew I had to make
this technology available to other addicts in the
prison. I thought back over the years of all the
junkies I had shot up with, and remembered their
most treasured conversation, “One of these days I’m
going to quit.” I had found the means and was going
to share it with them. That’s when I made the
decision real by writing it down on my calendar page
in my cell.
So effective was the technology I had learned,
that I experienced a freedom long lost to me. The
tall prison walls became only temporary barriers. I
realized that my 6x8 foot cell was all that I needed
as a command post. Even back then, I knew Narconon
would reach international proportions, and even
wrote an article on it in 1967, “The Purpose of
Narconon.”
The program was sanctioned by the warden, and it
soon began to expand from its original twenty
members. I then started to get requests from
non-addict inmates who wanted to get into Narconon.
They told me they were impressed with what Narconon
students had told them about the program and what
the technology taught. I approached the
Administration for permission to include
non-addicts. At first it resisted, saying that
non-addict members didn’t need the services of
Narconon, and that they might disrupt the program.
I demonstrated to officials that any person,
inmate or otherwise, could benefit from Narconon
because its attention was on increasing abilities,
that we had an ethics mechanism built into the
program, and that the responsibility and involvement
required of a member would soon dissuade anyone not
serious about improvement. I convinced the prison
officials. The program met its expectations so well
that seven months after the beginning of Narconon, I
was asked to start another program for young
offenders housed in the annex outside the prison
walls.
I then wrote to Mr. Hubbard about Narconon. He
and his organizations supported our program by
donating books, tapes and course materials. We
received hundreds of letters from throughout the
world validating our efforts to make drug addiction
and criminal or illegal behavior a thing of the past
in our lives.
Shortly after founding the Narconon program, William
Benitez researched his court conviction and discovered
he had been tried under the wrong statute and was
sentenced in excess of that prescribed by law. Upon
return to court, Mr. Benitez was advised that he could
conceivably be re-sentenced to time served and be
released based on his eighteen months already served
because of the miscarriage of justice.
The Narconon program was only a few months old at that
time and Mr. Benitez believed the program would collapse
if he didn’t return to complete it. Rather than
petitioning for his immediate release, he requested a
smaller sentence which would allow him to fully
implement Narconon program development. The Court
re-sentenced him to four to six years, leaving him
sixteen months to serve. Mr. Benitez returned to prison
and developed the program to its full capacity. As he
states, “It was the best, but toughest decision I ever
made in my life. I would have loved to walk away from
that court a free man.”
The Narconon program subsequently came to the attention
of the public when reporters from the Arizona Daily Star
secured permission from the warden to interview the
inmate who requested to be returned to the walls. The
Star printed a two-part series on the Narconon program
in August 1966. TV Channel 10 News from Phoenix also
took its cameras to the prison to interview Mr. Benitez
and members of the Narconon program and to observe its
functions.
Mr. Benitez completed his prison term and was released
in October 1967. He moved to California to expand the
Narconon organization and to make it available to
persons in need. Mr. Hubbard and his organizations
supported the effort, resulting in worldwide expansion.
Years later, Mr. Benitez returned to Arizona and was
hired as Inmate Liaison by former Arizona Department of
Corrections Director, Ellis McDougall, in 1981. Until
his death in 1999, he served as a Hearing Officer on
inmate complaints for the Corrections Director at
Central Headquarters.
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" Drugs rob life
of
the sensations and joys which are the only
reason for living anyhow."
- L. Ron Hubbard |
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The Narconon program has from the beginning been founded
on key principles developed by author and humanitarian
L. Ron Hubbard. The keynote is that an individual is
responsible for his own condition and that anyone can
improve his condition if he is given a workable way to
do so. It is based on improved understanding of his
fundamental nature: that man is basically good and it is
pain, suffering, and loss that lead him astray.
In the early '60s, Mr. Hubbard was one of the first to
see the long-term consequences of the accelerating drug
culture. He responded warmly to William Benitez's
request for help with his fledgling Narconon program in
Arizona State Prison and continued to write up his
observations on the effects of drugs on the individual
person, his body, and the society as a whole.
The Narconon program from its inception promoted an
approach to rehabilitation without recourse to
alternative drugs. This early program did not, however,
deal directly with withdrawal symptoms and difficulties.
In 1973, after Mr. Hubbard had conducted further
research to aid Narconon staff to help others through
the difficulties of withdrawal discomfort safely and
with minimal discomfort, the Narconon program adopted
these procedures to include drug-free withdrawal, using
vitamins and mineral supplements along with special
techniques to ease the mental and physical symptoms.
Another truly
pioneering innovation researched by Mr. Hubbard was
adopted in 1978 known as the Narconon®
New Life Detoxification Program. This tissue-cleansing
regimen of specific vitamin/mineral therapy with
cardiovascular exercise, intensive sweating in low heat
saunas, adequate replacement of fluids and oils, has
become immensely valuable for reducing the long-term
physical and mental effects of drug residuals on people
who have taken drugs. Mr. Hubbard noted the scientific
evidence behind the accumulation of drug and other toxic
residuals in the human body. He postulated the influence
that these psychoactive toxins might have subliminally
and overtly on the mind and person and developed a safe,
healthy, and thorough method of cleansing the human body
of the actual drug residuals.
With this Narconon New Life Detoxification Program
students regularly report a remarkable increase in
clarity of thinking, peace of mind, and well being. It
also greatly reduces or eliminates cravings for drugs
that stem from hidden drug toxins.
More than three decades of
scientific studies
and follow-up have validated the theory and practice of
this remarkable procedure.
L. Ron Hubbard's innovations to the Narconon program
continued through the years, always designed to
facilitate a stable, drug-free life for individuals.
Grateful acknowledgement is made to L. Ron Hubbard
Library for permission to reproduce selections from the
copyrighted works of L. Ron Hubbard.
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