Center for American Places

"On a fall day in 1978, Los Angeles attorney Paul Morantz reached into his mailbox to collect his mail and was nearly killed. He was bitten by the four-foot-long rattlesnake that had been put there by members of a cultlike group called Synanon. Chuck Dederich-a former Alcoholics Anonymous member who coined the phrase "Today is the first day of the rest of your life"-established Synanon as an innovative drug rehabilitation center near the Santa Monica...