The Airborne Toxic Event's Mikel Jollett - My Childhood in Synanon - Trust Me: Cults, Extreme Belief, and Manipulation

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
If you have your own story of being in a
cult or a high control group, or if you've had
an experience with manipulation or abuse of power you'd like
to share, leave us a message on our hotline number
at five one three nine hundred two nine five five, or.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
She had us an email at trust Me pod at
gmail dot com.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
Trust Me, trust Me.

Speaker 4 (00:18):
I'm like a swat person.

Speaker 3 (00:20):
I've never lived to you, and we never have a live.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
If you think that one person has all the answers,
don't Welcome to trust Me. The podcast about cult, extreme
belief and the abuse of power from two rockstars we've
actually experienced it. I am Lowellblanc and.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
I'm Megan Elizabeth.

Speaker 5 (00:37):
If only we were real rock stars today.

Speaker 1 (00:39):
Our guest is Michel Jolt, singer of The Airborne Toxic
Event and author of New York Times best selling memoir
Hollywood Park. Mcal is going to tell us about living
in the drug rehab cult Synanon as a child in
the nineteen seventies. We'll talk about how the cult was
highly regarded in its early days, but how it also
separated families, had a dangerous level of control over its followers' lives,
and escalated into my over time, one incident of which

(01:02):
he witnessed.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
We'll also get into how his mom came and took
him away from the call out of the blue, how
she was basically a stranger since he'd been living in
the cult's orphanage, and what it was like being dirt
poor after they got out, plus addiction, how is narcissistic
a millial relationship has impacted his adult relationships and the
moment he knew he needed to change.

Speaker 5 (01:22):
This episode is so good.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
You guys, you're gonna hear me fangirling out a little
bit and that's fine.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:27):
No, you're in the cult of his Twitter. You love
him on twit.

Speaker 5 (01:32):
I've looked at my retweets over the years.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
It's a lot of political retweets, and it's like he
just like continuously pops up.

Speaker 5 (01:39):
Though it's been a while, it's been a while.

Speaker 1 (01:40):
Trigger warning, guys, there are some descriptions of violence in
this episode and.

Speaker 5 (01:44):
Also just a lot of sad kids stuff, so so
be prepared for that.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
And before we dive in to this wonderful conversation, Megan,
can you tell me what your cultiest thing is?

Speaker 2 (01:53):
This week?

Speaker 4 (01:54):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:54):
I sure can well? Number one. I love this episode
and it brought up something interesting for me. It's a
little delicate, so I'm just gonna try to really choose
my words carefully. But if I offend you, feel free
to just send me a mean email or something, any
listeners and tell me how I'm wrong, because I'm open
to being wrong. Basically, Mikeel's book deals a lot with

(02:18):
people who are getting sober, and I have also gone
through that journey of getting sober, and I think I
bring it up a little bit in the episode of
Just my Own Hindrances with a program that helped me
get sober and definitely changed my life, saved my life,
but has cultish tendencies, and I don't know where to

(02:41):
land with that.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think the fact that it
saved your life speaks volumes. That's like no small thing. No,
that's true of many people I know, my brother included.
My brother is an addict. I don't know if I've
ever talked about him on here, but he's been addicted
to everything and just gone to the absolute, absolute depths
of the things, of the places that you can go

(03:03):
with an addiction. And I think that two things can
be true at the same time, which is that it
can be so helpful and it can save lives and
it can be wonderful, and then some people take it
a little too seriously and you know, use the jargon
too much, and yeah, maybe get a little bit too
stringent with some of the My personal a personal disagreement
that I will have is the policy that you can't

(03:24):
do any drugs, including mushrooms.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
Yeah, that one gets to me a little bit. I
guess I kind of understand that maybe there's some people
who really can't do that, otherwise they'll spiral back down
and then it's like maybe the strongest have to support
the weakest, and you're all in it together and all
of that. But that is one really big part of
my life.

Speaker 5 (03:45):
So like like psychedelics, Yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Mean I believe that they are one of the ways
that I've also healed. So it's right complicated, and I
would never want to discourage anyone from going. So I
did say something that was to the effect of, like,
it's kind of culty, and I just didn't want anyone
to not go if they need it. I think I
think it's a great place to be with just a
little bit of exactly what you said, like, this isn't

(04:11):
fully overtaking my brain. I still have yeah, other friends
and other interests.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
Ultimately, and I think we've said this before, but the
reason that I think it's ultimately pretty much benign is
because there isn't any central leadership.

Speaker 5 (04:24):
Exactly, and if there were, if there was.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
Like one person leading every meeting, like then that could
become potentially problematic. But like because there isn't really control
over people's lives exactly, and it's that it's like, well,
this isn't that positive thing if it can help people
to you know, not die.

Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yeah, I think it's just if you're prone to superstition,
which I am, it gets very complicated when it's like
you have to do these thirteen things a day or
you're not gonna get your recovery or your dreams to
come to or whatever.

Speaker 1 (04:58):
Do you find a connection between that kind of thing
and like your OCD stuff, absolutely, like you feel like
you have to do all of this does exactly the
right way, and.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
It's so it's it completely triggers that part of my
OCD and that part of my personality that wants to
do everything right and wants to and then starts feeling
so overwhelmed by it. I'm like, fuck it, I can't
do this. So, yeah, it's just a layered, layered conversation
that I wanted to say something about because I strongly
encourage anyone to go who needs to go.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Yeah, Jack is my boyfriend is also a particular kind
of recovering addict, and he feels similarly and that there's
like there's a lot of good there, there's a lot
of ways that can help people, but also there's some
like there is some rigidity that happens. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
I think what really brought it home for me was
there's this woman, her name is Holly. She wrote a
book called like Quit Like a Woman. I think they
actually brought it up in Sex and the City. Somebody
gave it to Miranda. But people in these meetings were
so angry at her, and shares were like, the stupid
bit who's saying, like, you don't have to go to
a program to get sober. I was like, but she

(06:09):
did get sober. And we say at the beginning of
our meets, like, we haven't found a better solution, but
if somebody has, that's great for them. So why are
we so angry with her? I don't I feel like
she should be celebrated.

Speaker 5 (06:22):
That's all great?

Speaker 2 (06:24):
Yeah, yeah, thanks, that's my response. What about you, what's
your cultiest thing this week?

Speaker 1 (06:32):
My cultiest thing is that I haven't talked about this before. Right,
so we all know who Jordan Peterson is. I have
some guests lined up, or at least one guest lined up,
who's going to talk to us more about Jordan Peterson,
because I'm fascinated by him.

Speaker 5 (06:44):
For anyone who.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
Doesn't know who he is, he's a member of the
so called Intellectual Dark Web or the IDW, and it's
comprised of guys like him and Ben Shapiro and Sam
Harris was a part of it, although he denounced He
like announced his resignation because he thought it was getting
too crazy. I mean, not that there's literally a membership,
but he was like, I don't really want to be

(07:05):
a part of this anymore.

Speaker 3 (07:06):
So.

Speaker 1 (07:06):
Jordan Peterson, for anyone who doesn't know, he's basically wrote
this book, Twelve Rules for Life, and it's like a
really basic book, like self help book for men on
like how to be a good man, live in the
right kind of life.

Speaker 5 (07:21):
And it's like stand up straight.

Speaker 2 (07:23):
It's like chicken soup for the soul.

Speaker 5 (07:25):
Yeah, it's like in the morning.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
But then if you dive a little deeper into some
of the stuff he says. He talks a lot about lobsters,
He's said some really problematic things about women, no, and
trans people, and has some it's like on the surface,
he can he's helped a lot of guys feel like
they have some direction in their lives, which I think
is really valuable. And then also like, if you fwallow

(07:52):
too deep down the Jordan Peterson hole, suddenly you're aligned
with a lot of non critically thinking people who are
just really loud and have some hateful ideas.

Speaker 5 (08:04):
People sort of have.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
Never who've never really consumed Jordan Peterson material and just
hear his name are.

Speaker 5 (08:08):
Like, fuck that guy. He's a fucking fill in the blank.
He's the worst of the worst. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but
and the worst.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
And I'm like, no, there are things that I know
people who've really benefited from some of the things he said.
I just think that that is a bad hole to
fall down anyway.

Speaker 5 (08:29):
So one of the funnier things.

Speaker 1 (08:30):
About him is that he decided to go on an
all meat diet.

Speaker 5 (08:34):
Do you know about this, Yes, I do.

Speaker 2 (08:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (08:36):
So he decided to go.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
On an all meat diet because it was purported to
be this like cure all diet, and the person who
was promoting this diet to him was his daughter, Mikayla
Peterson and Mikayla's Instagram, I fell down that rabbit hole
and I am terrified. So she is creating her own

(09:00):
own little cult because she's like the stereotypical conservative like
hot blonde who tells it like it is and is
willing to speak out against liberals. And it's like, sure, guys,
cancel culture is not constructive. I agree that it can
be bad.

Speaker 5 (09:20):
But also you're saying a who lot of other stuff
there that's not good. But anyway, so she's she's like out.

Speaker 1 (09:29):
There telling everyone that the all meat diet healed her.
She's out there telling people basically like spouting some scientology
esque like anti med stuff. She talks about how, like
her antidepressants had she had what do you call it, oh, withdrawal.
So she was talking about how she had SSRI withdrawal
for two and a half years and the only thing

(09:53):
that cured her was eating nothing but meat. So listen, guys,
antidepressants says her eyes. Yes, there is a withdrawl period
and I've been through it and it fucking sucks, and
I don't you know, I recommend going very slowly.

Speaker 5 (10:08):
But two and a.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
Half years Nah, at that point, you're just like obsessing
and whatever. Like maybe the meat diet works for her,
but like she is making it sound like this is
the cure all. It's gonna fix everything if you just
listen to her and do what she says. And then
she's interviewing all of these like very ideology driven people

(10:31):
while she and her dad also say they're anti ideology.
It's really really fascinating these people. But these are the
quote free thinkers that we have right now. And I'm like,
I just talked about this on another podcast, the even
More News podcast, But I think we really need some
role models right now in this period of time of
people who are like, yeah, no, we shouldn't try to
destroy other people, but also let's try to be balanced

(10:55):
and not hateful and the things that we think and
not well.

Speaker 2 (10:59):
I think I think that just brings it back to
what we've learned on this podcast. I mean, both of
our things today it's kind of comes back to balance,
you know, right. You find things that work and then
you take what you need and you cannot fully align
with someone else's shit because you're an individual, right.

Speaker 5 (11:20):
Jordan Peterson, And this is what I say all the time.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
But Jordan Peterson, he's a psychologist in Toronto. That's cool,
But like when you listen to him on Joe Rogan
and he's basically like saying that we shouldn't do anything
about climate change because he's like spewing some word salad.

Speaker 5 (11:37):
Like guys that is not.

Speaker 1 (11:38):
An expert on that subject, right, Look to experts, Look
to multiple experts, not just one expert on a topic
that you're interested in. These guys are not the answer.
They don't fucking know what they're talking about. Right, Sorry,
I'm getting riled up. I'm very interested in getting to
know some of these like personas and like understanding what
their appeal is to then combat it and like try.

(12:01):
I really just wish somebody that had that sort of everyman, relatable,
balanced kind of vibe would come forth to be a
role model for these poor sad men who is not a.

Speaker 5 (12:14):
Piece of shit.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
All right, that's right, wonderful.

Speaker 5 (12:19):
Okay, now that.

Speaker 1 (12:20):
We've should talked half of the things that people like.

Speaker 2 (12:27):
I was just thinking that. I was like, is anyone
still listening?

Speaker 1 (12:34):
Shaw, we dive in with Yeah, with Miquel.

Speaker 5 (12:37):
Okay, let's do it great, here we go.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
Welcome Mchuel, Joe La to the show.

Speaker 5 (12:51):
I'm so excited to have you today. We are we
are not just being Okay, So you are a musician.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
Airborne Toxic Event is your band the Airborne Talk Event.
And I have been listening to your songs sometime around
midnight for the last decade and crying to it every
so often. Also, the author of Hollywood Park, your memoir
that you published was at twenty twenty. Yeah, just the
other day it came out, and now Megan's been crying

(13:18):
to it. So you're just making us cry left and
right here man, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:22):
Sorry about that. When friends is tell me they're going
to read my book always like it's really.

Speaker 2 (13:26):
Sad, but there's a lot of hope too. Let's start
with the beginning.

Speaker 3 (13:31):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (13:31):
But also first I would just like to shout out
that I've been following you on Twitter for a long time.

Speaker 5 (13:35):
I'm a big fan man.

Speaker 3 (13:36):
Okay, Oh, thank you. Yeah, you don't really get anything
for that, Like Twitter, I feel like there should be points,
you know, like chips, like a cage at a casino,
and you certain number of retweets, you can like go
to a cage. I got a lot of reweets, Can
I get some? I feel like you should get at
the noodle bar just.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
For signing on. That's how confusing Twitter is to me.
Every time I sign on, I feel like I should
get a present.

Speaker 3 (13:57):
Thank you andless amounts of abuse that the going to
give you.

Speaker 5 (14:01):
That's a very bad place, but it's horrible.

Speaker 3 (14:03):
It's like wake up in the morning and let's see
what the worst people in the world think. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
but every morning geobles.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
Every morning I tell myself, I'm not going to look
at it because it's going to make my day bad.
But then I do it anyway. But your tweets don't
make my daybad, So that's nice. Oh well, you are
here talking to us today because your family was in
and you were in as a result.

Speaker 5 (14:25):
The group's sen and On.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
We have not done a Senonon episode yet, which is
actually shocking. Can you just give a basic description.

Speaker 5 (14:31):
Of what this group was.

Speaker 3 (14:32):
Yeah, so Synon was a drug rehabilitation. What's started as
a drug rehabilitation facility in the sixties, might have been
the late fifties. It was started by a guy named
Chuck Dieterrick who was very charismatic alcoholic. For anybody who's
in AA or anything, like, there's certain people that are
just great speakers, Like a good AA share is a
good story you know, like they know how to land
a joke. They understand storytelling. So he was this very

(14:55):
charismatic AA speaker and he decided he wanted to try
and help drug addicts get clean, which was sort of
like the next level I was like boss level of
you know, rehab. So he kind of he opened the
storefront in Santa Monica and started having dope fiends move in,
which was of course, like the opioid epidemic of the
day was was heroin, and they kind of lived together

(15:16):
in this loose knit sort of society group for a
long time. And for a long time that's kind of
all it was, was just this place in Santa Monica.
People went to get clean from heroin and it got
a good reputation for doing so. Eventually, you know, power corrupts,
absolute power cerups absolutely, you know, it started to go
to his head. I think to Chuck's had the insularness
of the community and the things that they had just

(15:38):
sort of done as traditions started becoming grained in this
kind of cult like way, and it's expanded as well.
What we're called lifestylers moved in. That was my mom.
My dad was what was called a dope fiend. There
was like dope fiends and lifestylers. Also, lifestyles could also
be called squares, and so dope fiends were the hardcore
addicts who went there to get clean. And then sometime

(16:00):
in the sixties, all these like utopian dreamers started to
move in and they wanted to like change the world,
and they were like a lot of intellectuals and artists
and Sinnadaan had a pretty good reputation for getting people clean.
I think Bob Dylan and his song about Lenny Bruce,
I think I had mentioned Synanon. The way he talks
about Synanon is like, well, you never quite made it

(16:21):
to cinna On. It never quite made it to that
level that might. I mean, it was sort of considered.
It was kind of cool, like a lot of jazz
musicians and famous intellectuals and actors and people would go
to this place in Santa Monica, and they would do
that what was called the game, which was sort of
like if an AA meeting had screaming, sort of.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
It's like an AA meeting meets acting class kind of.

Speaker 3 (16:42):
It's just it was insane. It was kind of like shocked.
They yeah, it's like you had just shocked the drug
addict out of their defenses. But then what happening is
all these lifestylers started doing it, and the Square started
doing it, and then became an intellectual movement, and you know,
hardcore intellectual movement and cult. Not that far hard right,
you guys, I'm sure well aware. So then it became

(17:03):
a cult and they started doing really weird things, the
worst of which, which I thought, which was that they
separated children from their parents and put them in this
place they called the School, which was very poorly named,
very orwellian to call it the school because it was
an orphanage, I mean, just nobody knew who their parents were.
They took them away and that's where you lived for years.
They broke up couples, they broke up marriages, they bought

(17:25):
a lot of guns. They threatened the lives of a
lot of people, they beat up a lot of people.
They were charged with attempted murder, tax fraud, all the
things that cults do. If there was a spectrum of cults,
you know, they got to the edge of violence. They
never quite made it. There was never like a Waco
type moment of like now we're going to go and
everyone's gonna die, mean a bunch of bullets or a

(17:46):
big line of kool aid and poison it. But it
kind of got right to the edge.

Speaker 2 (17:49):
It feels like it could have gone there.

Speaker 1 (17:51):
There was violence, right, it just wasn't straight murder or suicide.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
Right, That's right. It was. It was violent, but it
was just a lot of people getting beat up for leaving.
And what I think I dealt with a lot in
the book was there was a lot of emotional violence
and just sort of what they did to people. But
the book, you know, the book isn't really about sin
and on. The book just kind of starts and cinema. Yeah,
And to some extent, a lot of what it does

(18:15):
is because I kind of we left when I was
still quite young, and a lot of the book is
kind of unpacking the mystery of this place where I
was born. And then a lot of other things as well,
and so there are people who know a lot more
about Synanon than I do. I'm just a guy who
wrote a book about my life that happened to start
at sin and On and then studied it here and there.
But there are definitely people who know more than me.

Speaker 1 (18:36):
Well, that's I think that was a very very good
description because of the world that we live in. In
our podcast, I assume that everyone kind of knows that.
Nobody thinks that they're joining and cold, and everyone thinks
that they're joining a really positive movement. But I've been
going on other people's podcasts lately where they're like.

Speaker 5 (18:51):
But why would you join that? And I'm like, oh, like,
people still don't really know this. So it's like just to.

Speaker 1 (18:57):
Clarify, like people were successfully getting clean through this program
right like it was successful.

Speaker 3 (19:02):
I mean up until the moment when it started to
become very culty, and I think there's a few decisions
that made it very culty. You know, these things are
a spectrum, but it really did save a lot of lives.
And my dad, to the day he died, would say
saying On saved his life, and he also said it
was great. He would say it was a great place
to live. And you know that was like that it
wasn't so great for the kids, right right, I'm not

(19:23):
going to talk about that, but he would say it
was a great place to live. They had a really
good band, everyone danced, everyone was clean.

Speaker 2 (19:29):
Yeah, a lot of coffee in the community.

Speaker 3 (19:33):
It was cool. It was like it was it was
like the cool thing. It was hip. It was like
it was like it was like a club almost for
like intellectual beat mix.

Speaker 2 (19:41):
So okay, So your dad was an addict and then
your mom was a Berkeley graduate. She was an intellectual
correct a square?

Speaker 3 (19:50):
Is that? Okay?

Speaker 2 (19:51):
And so she wanted to change the world. That was
her reason for.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
I mean, I think that's what she told people. And
I think probably what it was was she was the
last person that didn't have a lot of roots in
her own family. You know. It's also something I get
into in the book and you know, the here comes
sin and on and it's like, oh, I can just
devote my life to these people who are telling me
there's a solution, right. I think you know, cults like
extreme religions and things, you know, prey upon this kind

(20:17):
of I don't know, lack of more. You know, people
who aren't quite as moored to their own families or
their own societies, and people are a little bit kind
of between the cracks, which, of course addicts famously fall
into that group.

Speaker 1 (20:28):
Right, Yeah, so your dad actually needs help getting cleaning
your mom is kind of like searching for identity.

Speaker 3 (20:33):
And yeah, I think that's right.

Speaker 1 (20:35):
Yeah, it's so beautifully written, and I feel like I
connect with some of the themes so much just from
my own childhood.

Speaker 5 (20:41):
What are some of the earliest things that you remember
from this?

Speaker 1 (20:43):
I mean you leve very young, obviously, but like you
were able to remember enough to write beautiful passages about it.

Speaker 5 (20:48):
So can you talk to us about that?

Speaker 3 (20:51):
Yeah, I mean I remember the school. I remember the
we slept in this room with all these other They
weren't quite cots and they weren't quite beds. They kind
of look like coffins. Actually, I'm sure they didn't see
it that way, but you know, they all had these
matching plaid blankets. I mean, like I said, I was
very young when I left, so I have like two
or three memories of Synanon Beyond. Like I remember when

(21:12):
we left, I remember waking up and my mom was there.
And you know, so you have to understand that we
lived in the orphanage and we didn't really know what
a mom was. We knew there was this woman and
her name was mom, and we knew we were supposed
to She wanted us to call her mom, and other
people didn't want us to call her mom because they
were really vested and the idea that Synanon had that

(21:33):
everybody in Synanon was your parent, and you know, all
the adults were your mom and dad. So the name mom,
you know, as sort of the way we think about
it in modern society, didn't mean the same thing to us.
It was just this sad woman that would come visit
and cry, and then we wouldn't see her for weeks,
and then she'd come visit for a few hours and cry,
and then we wouldn't see it for weeks. And it
kind of went on like that for a long time.

(21:55):
So she showed up one day and was like, we
have to leave. And it was strange because there was
this real sense of, you know, I'm unpacking this now
with like my adult brain, but like I'm looking back,
like there was this sense of like are we are?
We allowed to leave, like we're breaking the rules by leaving,
Like is she allowed to take us? I don't think
that's right? Like that was the feeling, right, like I
think she's we got to go ask.

Speaker 1 (22:16):
Someone, Like in the middle of the night, was that
it was early morning morning?

Speaker 2 (22:21):
You were right, they were chasing you, like you weren't
supposed to leave technically, right.

Speaker 3 (22:26):
Yeah, no, that's exactly right. But also there was just
like this this really deep rooted sense that we didn't
know what a family was. You know, in Cinta, you
didn't have Christmas, you didn't celebrate birthdays, you didn't there
was just a cult and so, you know, and and
then the people who were around sometimes that were pretty good,
like I had I had a very good caretaker, Swim
and Bonnie, who eventually ended up being very important in

(22:49):
my life and was very important in my life at
that point as well. But a lot of people didn't
have that. And so you just have these kids that
had just been alone in this place for years, didn't
remember what their parents looked like, didn't remember uh, didn't
know what it meant to be have a mom or
a dad. They'd get sick, there was they wouldn't you know,
have anyone to cry to. It was a fucking orphanage
in what was the structure of the day like it

(23:11):
was different for there was the upper school in the
lower school. The upper school se the older kids, the
lower school was for the younger kids. It was a
day care center. I think you know that that part
of it. They they spent some time. It's funny. There's
like myths that they tell about themselves. And I'm sure
you've dealt with this a lot, Hight. There's a group
think and like a script that everybody follows, and that
script's enforced like a canon, right, and then if you

(23:33):
violate the canon, then you're cast off as a heretic,
so you have to repeat the cannon. And the cannon
about Synerona was, oh, it has a great school. I
heard that so much growing up from my folks and
from friends, my friends, you know, Sinata. They had a
great school, and no one stopped to be like school,
that's a weird word to choose school.

Speaker 5 (23:48):
Was there any education happening?

Speaker 3 (23:50):
Yeah, there was some. I don't think there was that
much because I had heard this a lot, and then
I started when I was writing the book, I queried
some people about It's like, okay, so tell me about
the school. So how'd you guys decide to curriculum? Did
you start with like the state mandated curriculum? And then
and they're like, oh no, we just you know, we
we figured out like you had to teach reading. I
was like, oh, so you have different grade level requirements
and there was essay, right, and you made sure that
it was followed with the grades were I mean no, no,

(24:12):
we just there was like some writing and then we'd
learned and it was like there was nothing. And then
you're like, okay, so who took care of the little kids? Oh?
You know, we had really good staff. It was a
good school because they would just say the thing and
then you go it just goes back to the beginning.
Right they trained? Were they was there a background check?
Were they fingerprinted? Did you make sure none of these
people were fucking child molesters? Because some of them were?
And oh no, oh no, we didn't need to do that.

(24:35):
I mean it was sitting on and you're like and
then that's where that's sort of the cult starts sick
coming when you're like, oh that was it was really
irresponsible and I don't think they meant to do us
any harm our folks. They weren't bad people or anything,
and particularly like, I don't blame even you know, I
don't blame I have a difficult relationship with my mother,
but I don't blame her for that. They were just

(24:57):
they didn't think about it. And I think a lot
of the parents had mixed feelings about it as well.

Speaker 1 (25:01):
I can imagine I can imagine that would have been
very difficult for many of the parents.

Speaker 5 (25:05):
Absolutely like, yeah.

Speaker 3 (25:07):
But it was a cult called STU fucked up things, right.

Speaker 5 (25:10):
They certainly do.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
Yeah, And in this case some of the things that
would happen with the group, so all the women all
had to shave their heads.

Speaker 5 (25:18):
At a certain point, the leader Chuck Dietrich, so his.

Speaker 1 (25:22):
Wife died and then after that he was basically like,
no more love for anyone, and yeah, made everyone get divorced.

Speaker 3 (25:29):
Yeah, that was called uh. Yeah, they broke up all
the partners, changing partners, they called it. And there was
like this system and people got matched up with different
people and some people left, like a lot of people left.
Married couple said you know, screw this, We're not doing this.
And then a bunch of people said, Okay, and they
just kind of went along with it. And then the
really heartbreaking stories were the ones that people where one
partner said, let's go, I love you, this place was great,

(25:53):
but and the other person.

Speaker 2 (25:54):
That know, M I want to get my new partner
and move on.

Speaker 5 (25:58):
Right, There's so many similarities.

Speaker 1 (26:00):
I mean, it's it's completely different, but there are similarities
to the FLDS, and that the kids kind of don't
really have one parent. It's like multiple people parenting all
of the kids. And then like marriages stop when the
leader can't get married. If the leader can't fuck no
one can, and people get getting reassigned to you know, whoever,
whoever he decides or whatever. There's there are just parallels

(26:21):
among all these groups, no matter how different they are.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
Yeah. Yeah, interesting side not Synonam was like half black,
And one thing even the most harsh Synonym critic would
say is that there really wasn't a lot of racism.
I mean, I'm sure there was somewhere, and you know,
we're all white, so what do we know about racism?
But I think all of my black friends from Synonym
would also say of my generation that we've had long
talks about it and it was almost a shock when

(26:43):
they left Synanon that the rest of society was so
much more. Really, it really was, so despite all the
bad things about Sinna, and you could say at least
that one thing, and there was tons of mixed couples,
and like I didn't even know what racism was. It
was explained to me and I was like, that doesn't
sound right. Like someone was like, oh, there's these stereotypes
about differ in groups and they think this, this and this,
and I was like, that's stupid. That doesn't even make sense.

(27:04):
Just like we were just taught.

Speaker 5 (27:05):
But isn't that interesting that you're in a cult?

Speaker 2 (27:08):
Like that's how my family is. It's like the cult
is so much more important than the color of people.
I think it's an interesting byproduct. Yeah, I just think
that they're choosing this one main thing over.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
All other there's still an in group and an our group.

Speaker 5 (27:24):
Yeah different, Yeah, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:26):
Maybe I think that was part of it. I really
do think also that Sinnadon just attracted a type of
person who didn't care for that kind of thinking. It
was the dope fiends in the intellectuals and the hippies
and the you know, it was all these people that
were like, no, fuck all that. Like, if we're going
to leave one thing behind, it's that. And that was
part of the appeal to place, Like we toked it.
You're saying, like where it's like, why did people move in?

(27:47):
That was one of the main appeals. What if we
really can start a society without racism. That's a pretty
strong appeal, you know, that would attract me. I mean
that part of it was definitely a positive, a positive. Yeah,
I think you're right. People they join cults, they don't
know they're joining cults. And the people who join this
but that was part of what they joined. They were like, Oh,
here's this place where race is way less salient and

(28:08):
we're going to try to leave behind this legacy of
racism that we inherited.

Speaker 1 (28:12):
There's so many groups like that in the seventies. There
are just so many in the seventies. I feel like
we're in another era like that right now. For Marrid reasons,
People's temple same thing. We're creating a utopia where racism
isn't a thing, and you know, equality is what we value.
And that's like, yeah, I get the peel of that.

Speaker 5 (28:28):
That seems very valuable.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
Pus was a great band.

Speaker 5 (28:33):
Dancing anyone cat.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
Party every Saturday night.

Speaker 5 (28:37):
Nobody drinks but drug free, yeah.

Speaker 3 (28:40):
Free except for the caffeine and nicotine. This go.

Speaker 1 (28:45):
The way that you structure this book is really awesome
because it's from the perspective of you as a child,
like trying to understand what's happening, and like not having
a language for it and not really understanding some of
the words people are using. I just think about like me,
when I think about my own experience, I was older
than you were, but still like trying to construct the

(29:06):
memories and like figuring things out as I go. It's
like putting a puzzle together. Was what was that experience
of like generally just like writing this book and figuring
it all out.

Speaker 3 (29:15):
Tony Morrison has this wonderful idea from Beloved where she
talks about rememory and she has this notion that memories
themselves live in places, and she of course talks about
it in this, you know, Tony Morrison esque, beautiful way.
But the way I would think about it is that
it's like if you ever go to your childhood home
and suddenly you remember like tons of stuff. Let's say

(29:38):
you haven't been there in like a decade, you remember
so many things that you had forgotten, just completely forgotten about,
and not just stories or ideas, but feelings, feelings about
the world and about yourself and what it means to
be yourself and what it means to be in the world,
and what it means to be yourself in the world,
and you know, all of these sorts of things. They
live in places. It was a really powerful idea for
me to kind of catch on to that, and so

(29:59):
before with the book, I just went to a lot
of the places. While I was doing research for the book.
I spent like six months researching before I started the book,
and I would sit down at a place and just
write down everything I remember or use a tape recorder
and just absolutely everything I could think of and the
details and the feeling and the notions and all the

(30:20):
different things I was having about it and sort of
try to construct or empty out what was in my head.
And then i'd go home, I'd take it, I'd write
it out and then set it aside, and these would
be like, you know, somewhere between thirty to forty pages
per place. Oh wow, and they were just like wow, wow.
It was really helpful. Because then when I went back

(30:42):
to write the book and I was thinking about things
like all the writerly concerns about character and about metaphor
and about language and transitions and irony and all these
things that you're doing. Voice was a big one for me.
I didn't have to reconstruct as many details and sort
of ideas around the places I was because I had
already done a lot of the footwork, so that was

(31:02):
just there, and I can think about other things and
think about each scene. It allowed me to think about
each scene at different levels at different times, so I
didn't have to feel like I had to think about
everything that was going on all at once, and so
I wanted the book to sort of each scene in
the book to work on a few different levels.

Speaker 5 (31:18):
It was, Yeah, it's it's really impressive. Have you read
Carl Canal's.

Speaker 3 (31:22):
Guard, Oh my struggle. I can't get down with like,
like middle class white men just being upset about their lives.
I just I can't get down with it out care like.
I have so many friends that have read those books,
and I read like half of one, and I just
I didn't get it. So I'm sure it's great. I'm
sure he's a good writer. A lot of my best
friends are white men. It's just like I just I

(31:45):
was just like, I don't care, dude, some people like
I wanted something bad to actually happen to him, so
I would like be.

Speaker 1 (31:51):
Engaged laughing so hard, right, he is the end of
the book is is actually the end of the first
book is the most compelling part because something bad does happen,
but does yeah, and it's he But anyway, the reason
I asked was just because the I.

Speaker 3 (32:05):
Don't need to take the piss by the way, I'm
sure he's a great writer. I like, I'm I'm not
in any way. I don't feel it's right to really
diss another writers thing. That's not what I'm saying. I'm
just saying, like my my instinctual response to when I
sat down to read.

Speaker 1 (32:17):
It, totally fair, totally fair. But know the way he
like the detail of the memories that he's writing about,
I was just so so impressive, And I feel like
I get a similar feeling from yours, where I'm like,
how do you remember that?

Speaker 2 (32:31):
Like one of the memories comes right after this where
you you guys are hiding at someone's house and he like,
people show up to basically attack him. And you remember
it in the craziest detail.

Speaker 5 (32:43):
Can you attack whom attack?

Speaker 2 (32:46):
Attack the man they're staying with?

Speaker 5 (32:48):
Yeah, can you tell us about that?

Speaker 3 (32:49):
So we had had a friend of my mother's who
came to stay with us, and he had a daughter
that was in Synaon as well, and a wife ex wife,
I'm not sure whether they were divorced, shed or not
at that point, and she would go back and forth

(33:10):
between living with us and living with their mom and
syn and on. It was a big court case because
a bunch of people who had left were suing so
that Sin and On this couldn't happen, and Sin and
I couldn't have their children. And so he had been
given some some threats. I didn't know this till later,
but I found out later he'd been threatened a bunch
of times, and they were basically like back off, like

(33:33):
or something really bad it's going to happen to you.
And this is after we left. So we left just
to catch you up. Like we left, We ne a
dime to our names. You know, my mom had been
in there for ten years. My dad was still in
for a few more months. I think they got divorced
before I was born, and we just left my in
my grand my grandfather's car. My mom still had a

(33:53):
shaved head. We went to you know, my grandparents' house
to stay for a few weeks. That was literally it
because my mom and my grandmother didn't get along because
my grandmother was a pretty raging drug and so we
moved to East Oakland. We lived on food stamps. We
drink you know, canned soup out of little firofoam cups,

(34:15):
and slept. We would build our big My mom was
trying to try to make it into a thing where,
you know, it was nice that we had furniture we
could make out of clothes because it meant we could
you know, make them in a different shape, and isn't
that fun. So we slept in our jackets and we'd
you know, go to the food bank and wait in
line and get the government cheese and Goodwill for clothes.
All our clothes were you know, good will clothes. And

(34:38):
my mom she wasn't great about like keeping us super clean.
I think we looked pretty ragged at the time and
just but we were just very poor. I mean, you know,
it's not it's noone's fault. But that's just where the
situation we were in. So my mom's friend shows up
and says, well, when don't we you know, pull resources
and we can get a house together and we can
get out of East Oakland because Eastakland was very, uh,

(35:00):
it was a pretty dangerous neighborhood where we lived. Somebody
broken into the apartment, and I think the one possession
we had was like this plastic record player and some
you know, some of my earliest memories were just like
we would sit there, there was nothing to do, and
so we would just put on the record player and
listen to it for hours, just laying on these jackets.

Speaker 5 (35:16):
And do you think that's where your love of music began?

Speaker 3 (35:19):
Yeah? Maybe. And then when we came home one day
and someone had broken in and they stole the record
it was like the only few weeks. I mean, they
probably were bummed when they broke in. There was like
there's just a bunch of jackets.

Speaker 2 (35:32):
They were like, somebody steal this shoe table.

Speaker 3 (35:35):
Yeah, the styrofoamed us with leftover chicken soup. It was.
It was. It was a pretty rough time. And so
so we got a house in Berkeley and there was
this sense like we're gonna move to Berkeley and everything's
gonna be okay. We're gonna live with Phil and we're
gonna all get along and it's gonna be great. Uh.
And and he was a really gentleman. It's a really
nice guy. And you gotta understand, weren't used to being

(35:55):
around men. I mean, we were just two boys, my
brother and I he was three years older, who had
just been in this school for all these years, this
orphanage raised by handed off essentially a group of women.
Most of the caretakers were women, we call them demonstrators,
and so men were always a little like well, I mean,
our dad would come to visit, which, of course we
worshiped him. We worshiped our dad because swashbuckling, masculine pirate. Ah,

(36:20):
that was my dad. Just charming and great guy and
warm and funny, and you know, rode a Harley motorcycle.
And we all we knew all his stories from when
he was a professional criminal and all the time he'd
done in prison and when he busted out of a
Mexican prison and when he escaped the cops, all this stuff.
He was like a fucking but also just kind of absent,

(36:40):
and so we're these two boys and we're just fascinated
by men because we don't we don't ever see men,
and somewhere in our minds were like, someday we'll be
one of these. And I think also when you have
a single mother and your boy, you get a sense
of just how rare men are. Maybe a good man
or something, the idea that you want a good man,
you got to have a good man. He needs to

(37:02):
be a good man. Is he being a good man
to you? Or is he going to help raise the kids?
Is he going to be a father figure. And our mom,
who was slightly mentally ill, of course, just would talk
about all this stuff very openly. When you need a
father figure, you need to Phil can be your father figure.
She would say stuff like that to us. So we're
just in this confusing world and all this is going on.
So we moved into this house in Berkeley, and he is.

(37:24):
He's a really nice man. He's really gentle, he's really warm,
and he and I don't think they were dating, by
the way, I think they actually were his friends. When
I interviewed him for the book, he was, you know,
he was pretty oudamant on that point. I think he
had a crush on her, but really warm. He was
like an anti nuclear activist guy, and he was working
on trying to shut down a nuclear reactor in the area,

(37:45):
and you know, play little games and the neighbor. One time,
I remember thought he was my dad, and you know,
he came out and pretended to be my dad and
didn't because he knew I felt sort of embarrassed about
not having a dad and stuff. He was a good guy.
He really was a nice man. So we're home one
day and he says he's going to go to the store,
and he comes back from the store and he has

(38:07):
this VW bus and he gets out of his VW
bus because like any good hipie, you have to have
the VW bus, of course, And he gets out and
he's got these groceries, and I'm on the porch, and
I should say we weren't generally allowed outside because we
knew that the Sinnamon goons were trying to get people.
We'd heard the stories. One guy came home and his

(38:28):
dog was hanging from the tree. People who tried to
leave they were called split teas or more often than not,
these fucking split teeth because you were like lower lower
than you know, beings on the planet because you dared
to leave the society, you know. And they would beat
people up on the way out the door. They would
stop him on the highway and beat him up. They
would go to different people's houses. They put a rattlesnake

(38:50):
famously in someone's mailbox, his lawyer and then Paul mor Ants,
and he put his hand in it got bit and
he almost died. He was in a coma. So we
knew about all these stories. And and so we were
never allowed to play outside. And so the three of us,
Phil's daughter and my brother and I would we had
this garage that we played in and we'd listen to
the kids on the street. M hmm. Sorry. So we

(39:18):
we play our games and do all the stuff we did,
but you know, we always wanted to go outside and play.
So this is one of the few days we actually
were Summaris or another allowed outside. So I'm on the porch.
Phil comes home these uh, these two men come up
behind him and they're holding these I don't know. They
were like rods. They weren't quite baseball bats. They were

(39:38):
like maybe pipes, I'm not sure. They were like black
and kind of maybe this big like a police baton
or something, and he kind of looks at me and smiles,
and then at first I thought they and they had
these like flesh covered nylons over their faces, and at
first I thought it was like, is someone playing a prank?
Is something like? What? Why are these guys coming? Is
this maybe the friends of his is like Paula. But

(40:01):
it's like you hear about this thing. This is so fast.
Everything happened so quickly, and so he just like come
up and they they start beating him, and he starts
screaming and he fell on the ground. I think a
shoe fell off or something, and you can just hear
him screaming on the street. And I remember I go
to hide behind a like a call him, and I

(40:23):
was watching, and I remember our eyes met, and I
always remember that because he had this look on his face,
and it's what's weird. When I interviewed him for the book,
I hadn't talked to him in thirty years, and he
remembers that moment too. He was like, I remember being
on the ground and looking up and seeing your face.
M sorry, and he said that he said, this is

(40:50):
what he said to me. In the interview, was I
remember thinking, this is a this is something that someone
in his age shouldn't know about. Oh, he's still thinking
about you, right, Oh man, So all this is happening
to me, he's thinking about a kid like this is
what I mean. So eventually a neighbor comes out starts
screaming at him, there's all these kids. Oh I should

(41:10):
I should add. So my brother's across the street playing
with some kids, and the guys sort of builds unconscious
bleeding on the driveway. Uh. And they say, and I'm
hiding at this point, and they say, where's McCallan tony
because they were coming to get us, wow, which is,

(41:31):
of course what we've been told for months was going
to happen, but we didn't really believe it. So he
asked they addressed us to the kids, and and they
all look at each other. And because nobody knows who
we are, because we're always just locked in that garage. Uh.
And Uh, my brother, when I interviewed him about all
this stuff, you know, he said, he just froze and

(41:51):
he didn't know what to do. Uh. And he thought,
for sure, Okay, they're gonna come get us. But then
since nobody knew who we were. They just you know,
they left, and I think, you know, there's a sense
that police were going to come or something. And then
an ambulance came, and you know, I remember my brother
screaming and my mom came out and she was screaming
on the porch, and and then he went to the

(42:12):
hospital and he was it was in a coma for
a month, yeah, encephalitis. He almost died as well. And
then we moved and then we left to Oregon. My
mom had gotten a job at the mental hospital and Salem, Oregon.
So we packed up all our stuff and we left.
And there was like a moment there where it was
like there's such a feeling of defeat. I remember just

(42:35):
we were driving up the coast and it was raining
that day. It always rains in Oregon, but it was
raining that day, and it was like the sense that
we had just lost the Sennon was in shambles and
we had all this violence and we were broken, you know.
I mean that hung over the whole time I was
in Oregon. We were there for five years, just the
sense that we went there to hide because California was

(42:58):
just too crazy and tool and we had to hide
on the other side of the mountains, in this far
away place where it always rained.

Speaker 5 (43:05):
And how old were you when you left?

Speaker 2 (43:08):
That's a nightmare.

Speaker 4 (43:10):
That is so much for a kid, that literally being chased.
That's like what I was scared of every night in bed.
But it wasn't real. Knowing that it's real is I mean,
that's a nightmare.

Speaker 5 (43:21):
And seeing it happen. I mean that it must have
been so traumatic.

Speaker 3 (43:25):
It's awful. But what's funny is that nobody ever said that.
Like I think now, having been through like therapy and
being adult who's read a lot of books about it,
I'd be like, yeah, shit. But at the time, no
one ever, no one ever asked us about it. No
one ever asked me about it. We never saw a therapist,
We never no one even said how was your experience

(43:46):
with all this? We're always treated as these accessories. We
were like these ancillary things to our parents' experience, and
particularly to my mom's experience, which is one of the
things I write about in the books. She had this
way of just sort of seeing the world to this
very war lens. She was like severely depressed, and I
came to sort of learn that there were some other
things going on sort of with her mental state, but

(44:07):
that you know, there was no one ever asked, no
one ever mentioned it. It was just kind of and
and what happened was actually, over time we stopped talking
about it altogether, and she would then create a new
version of events where I wasn't even home.

Speaker 2 (44:22):
When this beating took place. She'd be like, you weren't there.

Speaker 3 (44:25):
Wow.

Speaker 6 (44:26):
You would say those exact words wow, And I think
it's you know, I later learned that this was part
of this sort of mental disorder that she had, but
that you know, it's like the truth was too much
or something, so she just would invent a new reality.

Speaker 3 (44:39):
And she did this in a lot of different contexts
in her life. But you know, obviously for me, that
was not a very easy one to just be told,
you know that, particularly at that age, because it was
very confusing. It was like somewhere in your mind, you're like, Okay,
this is real. I went through it, I lived it,
I felt it, it happened, and then you have a
parent telling you it's not and you literally don't. It
sort of teaches you to to compartmentalize your life, right

(45:03):
or to not trust the parent, or to trust the parent,
not trust yourself, or to sort of live between these
different polls depending on the day or the situation, which
is what I did.

Speaker 2 (45:11):
I could not relate more to that same.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
Yeah, I mean in a different way. Obviously, my mom
is My mom's amazing, and you know, she's come she's
been through so much, so so much, and come out
the other end and helps people. But I very much
relate to the idea that like, this isn't really something
we're supposed to talk about. This isn't really something that
happened to me, And that's not her fault so much
as just a product of like not talking about it

(45:35):
and not being a family that really knew anything about
therapy at that time, or that wasn't something that we valued.
So it was kind of just like, Okay, we'll just
put that away and just continue on and yeah, only
now am I like, Oh, yeah, I guess, I guess I.

Speaker 5 (45:49):
Was affected by that.

Speaker 2 (45:52):
I think just like having parents that believe something so
strongly and I didn't at all, even as a child,
and just being like I'm obviously missing something. You guys
just tell me what to think and say and do,
because I don't get it, and that's something that's really
hard to work on even now. Like I just I
gave a part of my brain away because I just

(46:15):
felt like I was I.

Speaker 3 (46:16):
Think that's right. I think it's exactly it. And so
it's you were sort of taught that though it was like,
you know, I don't know your situation. In my situation,
I would say we were sort of preyed upon in
a way, which, by the way, I don't think they
did on purpose. No, Yeah, my mother is not a
malicious person. I don't think she ever meant to hurt us.
I really don't know. I just think she was abused
as a kid and neglected and grew up a certain

(46:39):
way and then had these horrible things happened to her
in her life because of some poor decisions that she made,
and then we were just there.

Speaker 2 (46:45):
It's just such when they're not the narcissistic parent, you know,
like they're just the one who got and so you're
protective of them, but you also were hurt by it,
and so.

Speaker 3 (46:53):
It's just this like, oh, because.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
You're so protective of your mom. She's such a wonderful person.
My mom's an angel.

Speaker 5 (46:59):
But it's like confusing, it's confusing.

Speaker 3 (47:01):
Yeah, you have to just throw I find that it's
important to draw really thick boundaries and like here's and
and for me, you know, the boundaries sort of lengthened
over the years. Actually they've gotten further and further as
I could become sort of more I don't know, protective
of my mental state, because one of the things I
learned was that my mental state didn't matter. Right, we're

(47:21):
sort of getting into this other area of talking about
parents with narcissism, which that was the other sort of
thing I pieced together over time that my mom had
either borderline or narcissistic personality disorder. There's enough both.

Speaker 5 (47:33):
Really fun to deal with.

Speaker 2 (47:34):
Yeah, yeah, really yeah, And there's a lot.

Speaker 3 (47:36):
Of overlap between those two, particularly with women who tend
to be more borderline men tend to be more narcisssic personally.
But then there's a lot it's just cluster b it's
all kind of a ser You decide the world is
too confusing and weird, and so you and usually people
are pretty smart, and so you build a self protective
world that is like this big fantasy. And the thing

(47:57):
about the narcissist myth isn't that you know, you're just
and selfish and all that. It's that you look into
the water and see only yourself, and narcissists look into
the world and they see only themselves. They only see
this world that they've constructed around themselves, because actual human
emotion is actually a little baffling for them. They don't
quite understand empathy, they don't quite understand someone else's sadness.
They don't quite understand and so they just think they

(48:19):
can outsmart everyone by creating this like structure and responses
and this thick web, and of course the horrible parents.

Speaker 5 (48:28):
Yeah, yeah, that's that's what I gather.

Speaker 3 (48:31):
I don't think my mom, for example, meant to do harm,
but I think that's also not the point, right. It
doesn't matter, right, It doesn't matter if she meant to
do harm. It matters that we were harmed, right, And
it also doesn't matter whether I blame her or not,
Like sometimes I blame her sometimes that's also the wrong question.
You know, Forgiveness isn't really the quiet. I feel like

(48:52):
a society we're very obsessed with forgiveness, like the idea
that the act of forgiving makes you this kind of
transcendent human. Oh, you've forgiven. Wow, okay, so life is
good now because you've been able to forgive, And it's like,
it's horseshit. That's not how we live carry around trauma,
We carry around anger, We carry around the ability to
be triggered by people who abused us. It's not even

(49:14):
something they or we control, because ibuse already happened and
all the machineries in there, so we have that. You
can say I forgive you, it doesn't mean that they
can't hurt you still by reigniting that same trauma and
bringing it back to the fore again and again and again. Also,
you can say, do I blame them? I don't know.
It doesn't really matter because it doesn't matter if it's
their fault or not. It is we obsess over whether

(49:36):
people have forgiven, should be forgiven or not. And really
it's the question, isn't that both forgiveness and blame are
the wrong questions? Here's the only question. How do I
live with this now? Are with this now? How do
I become a person in the world that can handle
this heavy burden of this trauma that I inherited or
that I have, And how can I have successful relationships

(49:56):
and be a good partner in my case, be a
good husband, or be a good father to my children.
And you know these are the important questions. And forgiveness
and blame. Okay, sure, that's like academic Almost more important
question is how do I now be the person I
want to be? Every time someone says have you forgiven?
I feel that's the question you really should be asking.
How are you relating now to the people in your world?

(50:18):
And have you been able to figure out how to
be the person you want to be?

Speaker 2 (50:22):
Have you?

Speaker 3 (50:24):
Sometimes? Yeah? Depends when you catch me. I try. I'm
trying to. It's sort of what the book wrestles with
in the last chapter. The last like three four chapters
are about therapy and about trying to grow and very
very slowly over many years five years I think twice
a week, five years on the couch talking about mom

(50:49):
other things among other topics.

Speaker 2 (50:52):
Are there any other topics?

Speaker 3 (50:54):
Yeah? That's right? Wow, And that's learning that the sort
of the engine of reflection is extremely important on slowly
learning that half the battle is just being far enough
away to look at it and then looking at it
and then starting to make decisions. And I would say
I'm a happier and different person than I was, and

(51:15):
that there was a moment in my life at about
thirty five where I was like, I need to change,
like this is not And in my life from the
outside was going pretty well. I had a successful band,
and had already been a columnist and like all things considered,
and had published stories and been a successful journal and
so from all these exterior things, but my relationships were
fucking mess and I was a mess of a boyfriend.

(51:36):
I had a girlfriend say, you always say you want
to be a husband and father. Well, guess what, dipshit,
You're not going to become a good husband and father
until you learn and be a good fucking boyfriend. That's
a lot of truth.

Speaker 2 (51:49):
Well the truth of her breakfast bab.

Speaker 1 (51:51):
Yeah, got respect, honest.

Speaker 2 (51:54):
What do you think is a healthy relationship with healing
and AA and all of those things.

Speaker 3 (52:01):
So I've seen AA do work wonders in people's lives,
or at least be a really solid place. My stepdad
got mostly sober for a while in AA, and I
grew up going to a camp outs and going to
alan on meetings with my mom, which if you want
to be a writer, you can do a lot worse
than sitting around listening drunks talk about the kids heard
in the stories, the times they flip the truck over. Yeah,

(52:24):
Like if this is great Chris for the mill, if
you're like, oh, I'm too young to know all this stuff.
This is this going to change me in some way? Yes, yes,
it'll make you a better writer and also grow up
too fast and it's gonna do a lot of things,
but it will help the writer. So I just heard endless.
By the time I was eight, I'd heard a thousand
my life is ending because of drug stories and that

(52:46):
was my father's story, and that was my stepfather's story.
And I've been to Alatine. I was going to Alatine
when I was like eight years old and I was
just and they were like, have you given your life
over to the higher And You're like, I don't know.
I just want like a bagel and there's I heard
there was bagels, like after the meeting, and my mom's
at the Alani meeting, so I came here because there's

(53:06):
bagels or they're bagels, yeah, you know. And they're like,
are you practicing the Eleventh Step? And I'm like, it's
like so young to be dealing with these like super
mutual topics, you know what I mean. Yeah, And then
my brother got clean and then has stayed clean fourteen
years sober now due to the program. So I've seen

(53:28):
it do some some real good. I really wanted to
bring the program to life as I understood as a
child in the book. It was like really important to
me because I haven't read not a lot of books.
I think Mary Carr deals with some stuff in her
second and third book about the program, but the culture
of AA, I find it was just a big part
of our lives, and so I wanted to bring to life,

(53:50):
particularly these campouts, these moments when we were like little
kids and we'd have these it would be like twenty
families would go camp out and then you'd sit around
this huge fire and you'd listen to forty want to
tell their stories. And it was great. It was awesome.
It was like I missed those times. They were great storytellers,
and it was a warm it was a warm little moment.

(54:10):
And compared to sen and on, and compared to my
second step dad who wasn't in the program and U
was an abusive prick, and then my first step dad
who ended up dying, Like all these things were way
harder than the program, And for me it was like, oh,
I got to listen to these guys tell great stories.
I'm probably too young to hear them, but that's probably
why I want to hear them. And afterwards you get
a bagel.

Speaker 1 (54:27):
Right, Yeah, cool, I mean, I it's always that fine line, right,
because I feel like this is totally not based on
anything academic that I've read, but my understanding of a
that is that a big one of the primary things
that's at play is just community and having people to

(54:47):
answer to and people to talk to when you're struggling,
and so much of healing is about that, is about
finding a community, and community, as we know, can so
quickly turn sour and so quickly group dynamics come into
play and suddenly there's a group thinking, Suddenly there's jargon,
and suddenly there's a hierarchy, and like, yeah, navigating that
I think is just one of the trickiest things of

(55:09):
being alive because.

Speaker 5 (55:10):
We need that community, We need that Yeah.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
Just it felt a little bit like your mom was
like intellectually dealing with stuff, but just not in the moment.
You know, She's like, you're crying, and she's like, I'm
gonna go read a book on child psychology, and you're like,
can you just talk to me? And I feel like
that exists in that world a little bit. So I
think it exists a little bit. And just there's a

(55:33):
point in the book where you say, it's like, people,
if you build the ladder to the moon, you're not
going to ask how you built it. You're just going
to go to the moon. And I feel a little
bit like, you know, nobody knows what's working what's not working,
but you just have to do it all and you
have to follow it and if you don't, you're a
dumb bitch. And it's like I can't do that because
I've already was in a call. I just can't do it.

(55:53):
So then it's like, well then you'll never be recovered.
You're losing out. And then I'm just like I'm not
I can't do that anymore.

Speaker 3 (55:58):
Right.

Speaker 1 (55:59):
That's to black and white too, yeah, and that that
version of black and white thinking can be very helpful
and totally harmless for a lot of people.

Speaker 5 (56:07):
But I understand why.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
It would kind of Yeah, yeah, hit the triggers.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
It's a little deep.

Speaker 3 (56:13):
Yeah, that's your experience. Then hearing those words.

Speaker 2 (56:15):
Is probably like, yeah, no, I can't can't do it.

Speaker 3 (56:18):
Yeah, I understand that. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (56:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
Well the good news is there are like eleven other
things that supposedly work have a higher success rate than.

Speaker 2 (56:26):
There's so many things. I mean, I think your book
also on it. I'm on the right now. No, I'm
just gonna say the book is also kind of like
it like men and women, you know, like I'm with
the men now, I'm with the women now, and what's
different about those two things? And there's just so many

(56:47):
things that come into play. What do you mean, like
he like he's at some parts with his mom and
the women. And it's also like it seems like men
are a different country, a different universe. Oh interesting, you know,
And so it's just so many different fields of cultiness
we're coming together in your life that it's very fascinating.

Speaker 3 (57:10):
But the men women thing. By the time we were
in Oregon before she met my first stepdad, she would
go on dates sometimes and there was always there was
so much riding on it and you just knew it
and like why I'd like ride hard for single moms
like I to this and I have a difficult relationship
with my mom because she was anarcsist and she was
abusive in her way. Setting that aside, like I don't

(57:33):
I don't know anyone who was raised by a single
mom who doesn't ride hard for single moms, where you're
just like, she's gone through a lot. There's a lot,
and you better be nice to her. Like that's the feeling,
Like even now if I had like a friend that's like, oh,
I'm going on this date and she's a mom and
because you sense that, and then there's this weird sort

(57:53):
of like hall of mirrors where it's like, wait, I'm
going to be one of those, And then it's like
the immediate next question is, well, which am I going
to be? Am I gonna be one of the good ones? Well,
I'm being told every day my dad was one of
the bad ones, because we were told constantly that my
dad left us for a tramp, which I later understood
to mean my dad got divorced from a woman. He
was a depressive narcissist right and did so very politely

(58:16):
and wanted split custody and was a very involved father
as soon as you could be like it was just live.
It just wasn't true, and so I was being told
my dad was one of the bad ones. And of
course then we wanted to be like our dad. So
in our heads we were like, well, we're going to
be the bad ones. But then at the same time,
we felt protective of her in this one way because
we sort of knew how much it meant to her.

(58:38):
And we wanted the things that men could offer. We
wanted to feel safe in a society where men are
bigger than women and who could break into our house
any given night. We wanted another income, and we wanted
someone who could fix the sinker, like these are things
we didn't have either, and we didn't And there's this
feeling like you're the man of the house at like seven,
and people will say that to you, well, aren't you

(59:00):
man in the house now, and it's like you say yes,
but you're I mean, you're a fucking scared, shitless kid,
And so you feel this. There's just all of these
issues around it where you're and then so you can't
help but carry them with you as you get older
and you become someone who's going to go on dates
and you start to like, well, am I am I
being a good man. Am I a bad man? Am

(59:20):
I being the right kind of man? And I spent
a lot of years spending I thought probably too much
about those questions when I might have maybe a better
question would have been did I have fun on that
date right right? That I like this person so much
that I would want to go out again or whatever? Like?
And instead I would spend all this time thinking about
these other questions and I and and some of that

(59:41):
was good and some of it was not good. But
mostly as a writer, again, it's a lot of Christopher Mill.
You know, there's worse things that can happen to you
if you want to be a writer, then having a
single mother, because you're just you're dealing with the drama
but every day and you're up close with this this
heavily weighty, weighty situations.

Speaker 1 (59:59):
Going back in time, tiny bit like your mom when
she picked you up, you didn't know her, and suddenly
you had to kind of be like, oh, yes, okay, mother,
yes this is my family, Like.

Speaker 5 (01:00:11):
What what was that like?

Speaker 3 (01:00:13):
It was It was definitely jarring. It was like play acting.
It was sort of like, oh your mom, okay, all right,
so what does that mean? And then you start and
she would tell us very specifically what it meant and
how we were supposed to listen to her. And she
was the person who took care of us, and you know,
like a good intellectual, she'd probably read a book about

(01:00:34):
it and would you know, saying the things from the book.
And then meanwhile, like a terrible parent, no, just very
little empathy and very little protection. And we didn't have
food half the time, and we didn't have heat in
the house a lot of the time. And she would
gone a lot at meetings to get better, but then

(01:00:55):
we'd just be home alone a lot, like a lot.
So that sort of intellectualizing of what a mother is
took me a long time to really just sort of
like personally understanding. And you know, the woman Bonnie who
took care of me and that in the cult was
like my deity person. We had this like really strong bond.

(01:01:15):
She actually ended up with my dad years later and
became happy incredible force for good in my life because
she was extremely warm, and she was extremely caring and
doting and supportive and just a light in the world
and just you know, and it wasn't and I was

(01:01:36):
always told that's not a mom by my own mom.
A mom is what I am, And of course now
like fucking bullshit, that's a mother's love and I you know,
and I see it now with my wife and how
she is with our children, and you know, it makes me,
like I think my brother, I had a maybe almost
an antagonistic sense of what a mother is. A mother's

(01:01:58):
this person that controls you and tells you what to
tell what to tell other people about what a mother is.
That's what it was, yeah, right, And then you know,
being you know, raised by Bonnie later and then of
course witnessing up close my wife with our children, you know,
you see the power of what a mother can be.

Speaker 1 (01:02:17):
I mean you said you struggled with relationships till you
had sort of a breakthrough when you were in your
mid thirties. But did you find that it was difficult
to connect with women because of this?

Speaker 3 (01:02:25):
Really? Oh, I think I had trouble being honest about
who I was and not in like this malicious sense,
like I had long term girlfriends almost exclusively. I think
my friends thought of me as a serial monogamist. I
think I was called that a lot. But I always
had one foot out the door. I was always terrified

(01:02:47):
of actually saying what I thought. I felt like there
was a script I had to follow. I was unfaithful
to some exes, just like a laundry list of and
but like would always come on a break, Oh we
were on a break or whatever. Just kind of a
shitty boyfriend. I mean, you can talk about it, like
if we were in a psychologist chair, I would sort
of probably, I can tell you, like, what are the

(01:03:08):
reasons in the trump? But I was just like not
good at it, and I wasn't. But what I was
struggling with, I think at the time was all the
owners of trauma and an inability to kind of not
wear a mask at all times and trying to like
create an impression. But I was really good at creating
an impression. So I think the hard part I had

(01:03:30):
was not creating an impression. The hard part for me
was actually saying how I felt and what I wanted
and committing in a real in a real way. And
it took a lot of years to sort of unlearn
and reflect and change. I mean, then there were long
and uncomfortable years. And that's one of the things I

(01:03:51):
write about in the book. I was trying something today
for something for the paperback release, and I was talking
about like how like some of the memoirs you read,
and it's just like I went through all this trauma
and there's just like three hundred pages about mountains of
trauma and then there's like one paragraph and now everything's
great and you're like, my.

Speaker 7 (01:04:07):
Ass, Yeah, And I wanted to write about like the
very slow, arduous, uncomfortable process of looking at myself and
not actually particularly liking what I saw and trying.

Speaker 3 (01:04:20):
Because I had thirty five, I'd had this breakdown. We
were on tour in Europe and I had just break
down on Amsterdam. I had like a weed brownie, do
it right, and I got really high, but so I
didn't get high immediately, and so I was like, oh,
this isn't working.

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
So I had another classic tale, the classic tale that
was all this time.

Speaker 3 (01:04:39):
So I went to the hotel room and I had
a total breakdown. I saw myself as this like awful
person who was dishonest with the woman I was dating
at the time and also just dishonest with myself and
just doing all this crappy shit, and it was this
horrible and it was really harsh. It was like ten
hours of this wow but there was a real sort
of nugget of truth that I wanted. It was a

(01:05:02):
really sort of childish wish at the bottom of it,
which was I just wanted my closest space around my
heart to be love. I wanted it to be the
thing that brought closest to me was something that I
actually found very very precious and found and that would
be the thing that I led into my life. And
I realized I couldn't do that. I couldn't make that

(01:05:24):
choice because I was so interested in like, Okay, I'm
going to date this girl. Okay, it's not working because
I fucked it up probably or I chose the wrong one,
or you know, one of many different things and make
another shitty choice, and then eventually that's just all there is.
And I was like no, And I knew, ID always
knew I'd wanted children, and so I just was like, dude,

(01:05:45):
you got to change. Like I had to talk with myself.
I was like, man, this is this is just going
to be your life unless you figure out how to change.
And some of it was like the rock band thing.
You know, it's like you're on the road, you're married
to the road. There's this like petic idea that like
rock and roll is.

Speaker 5 (01:06:01):
Going to save you.

Speaker 3 (01:06:03):
Hear that line, rock and roll save this fucking show.
It doesn't save you. It's just a night you put
on a good show. You got to go home with
yourself and go to bed that night and figure out
who you are the next day. And it's romantic, but
it's not really true.

Speaker 5 (01:06:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:06:17):
So I got home from that tour and I found
a shrink through a friend, and I went to his
office and he said, well, so why are you here?
And I said, I always remember this. I said, I
want to be able to fall in love.

Speaker 2 (01:06:33):
M m mm hmm oh.

Speaker 3 (01:06:37):
And so he was like, well, let's start there five
years later with a lot of work.

Speaker 2 (01:06:46):
And it's interesting, like when in the book you what
were you going to say?

Speaker 5 (01:06:49):
No? Nothing, Are you sure? I'm just going to given.

Speaker 1 (01:06:52):
Props for doing the hard So a few people do.

Speaker 2 (01:06:54):
It, especially many. It's true in the book you talk
a lot about like men touching you in your heart
just kind of opening, or like you feeling this expanding
in your chest, which really made me cry a lot
because it's how my boyfriend makes me feel a little
I don't know, but anyway.

Speaker 3 (01:07:11):
It's just cool that you like got.

Speaker 2 (01:07:13):
That from yourself and then were able to meet someone.

Speaker 3 (01:07:18):
I think some of it was finding some peace in
my own head and putting to rest some of the
grief and the trauma that I carried around. I didn't
even know it was carrying around, and like things I
hadn't even thought about for years. I was like, oh, yeah,
like I totally died, shit, how do I feel about that?
And then like crying for a week's strength, like, oh,
because I feel pretty strongly about it. Never acknowledged it.

(01:07:39):
There was so much unacknowledged grief. Yeah, that was part
of it. Part of it was learning that I was enough,
Like I didn't like Some of this is like the
performance aspect of being a child of a narcissist. So
one of the things that happens when you're a child
of a narcissist is you feel your life's like a
performance because you need to perform for the narciss because
a narcist wants to know that you're attractive and successful,

(01:08:01):
and they can then you know, look at you as
being something that reflects well on them, and yeah, yeah,
this is like classic you know, narcissistic kind of parenting. Strategies,
and so you grew up feeling like your job is
to perform and to impress, and so you know, there's
no secret why a lot of people who have parents
like that become actors or become musicians and performers because

(01:08:23):
you perform all day long, right, become an excellent performer
because you've never had a day or life you didn't
perform all day. And so some of it was unpacking
that and trying to like, what does it mean to
not perform? What does it mean to actually just say
what you're thinking and stick with your feelings and be
with someone you want to be with and acknowledge that

(01:08:44):
you know you feel good at this moment, as opposed to, oh,
this person's got great status in some way or another,
or reflects well on me in some way or another,
or I should like this person, but to actually just
like check in and be like, how do I feel
right now?

Speaker 6 (01:08:58):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:08:58):
Really at peace and good and warm. Okay, let's let's
keep going with this person, and let's try to protect
that like the precious thing that it is.

Speaker 1 (01:09:06):
I was not raised by narcissists by any stretch, but
I definitely relate to that. And you ended up being
quite the overachiever. I mean, you've you've done so much.
You went to Stanford, right, a successful journalist, successful musician,
now successful writer.

Speaker 5 (01:09:20):
Yeah, you're super stupid dancer.

Speaker 3 (01:09:24):
Bonnie my mom, Bonnie, she always has this joke. She's like,
and you're so light on your feet and you're such
a great whenever someone complimentary, Yes, and I'm light on
my feet.

Speaker 2 (01:09:34):
I love Bonnie.

Speaker 3 (01:09:35):
I yeah, she's the best. I love Bonnie too. She's
still with us. She talked to her yesterday. We see
her every week a week, at least sometimes twice a week.
Tell her she's just a light in the world. She's
a wonderful, wonderful human being. And my brother and I
always say thank God for Bonnie. She always cheered us

(01:09:55):
like her own kids. I mean she started. I mean
she raised me since time I was six months old.
I guess if you want to count the time and
send it on her. But then she's been with my
dad since I was vibe. So we'd go visit in
the summers and then Christmas is uh, while we were
kids in Oregon, and then eventually we both moved to California,
and so she's been with us our whole lives and
she's she really is just a good, good, good human being.

Speaker 2 (01:10:17):
It's like a little soul mother and son relationship. They
were magnets.

Speaker 3 (01:10:22):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, she's she's really a good, a good person.
And also she would like love it if she was
like if she was here right now, she would she
would ask you all about your stories, and she'd have
a little moment with you and she'd want to know
more about you. And then she'd be like, well, how's
it going with that boyfriend of you?

Speaker 5 (01:10:39):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:10:39):
I love her?

Speaker 3 (01:10:40):
And what's going on with and you like exchange emails
and then she'd have you over for dinner and then
the next thing, you know, you'd be sending you know,
Christmas honk. Like trust me, she's like to see mothers
every She would mother a frying pan. If there's a
frying pan in the room, she'd be like, this frying pan.
You know, I feel like it's.

Speaker 5 (01:10:59):
That's how my mom is. My mom.

Speaker 1 (01:11:01):
Basically Mother's an entire town of polygamists right now, so
everybody goes to her for help.

Speaker 5 (01:11:06):
She's like a Bonnie. Thank God for Bonnie, for Bonnie's
and Christine's. Well, I was just going to ask what's next?

Speaker 3 (01:11:12):
What's next? So we have a tour. I live on
tour in a month. We're gone for like three months.
This year paperback comes out, working on a new record,
going to start work on another book this summer. I
don't know had a daughter since the book. By the
end of the book, you meet my son, and now

(01:11:33):
we have a daughter as well. And she's just the
cutest little thing.

Speaker 1 (01:11:39):
Hollywood, park is your book? Also selfishly? Has anyone optioned
this to be a movie?

Speaker 3 (01:11:46):
I don't think I'm allowed to talk about it, but
it's something.

Speaker 1 (01:11:50):
Yes, Okay, well listen, if people are pitching as directors,
just hit me up.

Speaker 5 (01:11:55):
It's all I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (01:11:56):
She don't have a director attached her hat, and it's
a oh good.

Speaker 1 (01:12:00):
I connect with the story so much. Just yeah, listen,
I'm a great director.

Speaker 5 (01:12:04):
Okay, you are, truly.

Speaker 2 (01:12:06):
Keep it in keep it in mind. I'll remind you.

Speaker 1 (01:12:08):
Okay, thank you so much. And where can people find
you online?

Speaker 3 (01:12:13):
My Twitter, I guess is my online place. It's just Twitter.
It's at mckel underscore LA or you can just googled
me or the m I K E l j O
l l E t T. But feel free to just
go on with your life.

Speaker 1 (01:12:28):
Great Twitter presence though, highly recommend. Okay, if you're into
political stuff, great, Okay, thank you so much for talking
to us.

Speaker 3 (01:12:35):
Dude.

Speaker 5 (01:12:35):
This has been awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:12:36):
This was great. Thank you so much for having me.
I really had a good time talking to you guys.

Speaker 5 (01:12:40):
Have a wonderful day.

Speaker 2 (01:12:41):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:12:42):
Yeah, you two, best of luck with the podcast and everything.

Speaker 5 (01:12:44):
Okay, thank you, thank you. Bye. All right, so good,
so good. We love him. So, Megan, what do you
think send it on? Would this be one of the
cults you would join?

Speaker 2 (01:12:56):
Well, sorry, I'm gonna hicc up.

Speaker 5 (01:13:00):
Please keep that.

Speaker 2 (01:13:04):
Okay. So, if I was addicted to heroin, I would
definitely definitely go to that place for sure. That's the
only option I think I would have at that point.
So I can totally see how people who are addicted
to drugs and trying to find a better life could
get sucked into going there. And the whole I'm forgetting

(01:13:26):
the leader's name, but his whole thing was like, dope,
things never change. You're never gonna be a good person, really,
so like let's raise your children as children of the
universe and you just kind of get out of the way,
which you know, that kind of thing really speaks to
my low self esteem in many ways, so I could
see myself getting real wrapped up.

Speaker 1 (01:13:46):
Yeah, I mean, well, it sounds like there was such
a cultural respect yeah for the group at the time,
and you know, especially without the Internet to like kind
of dig in deeper.

Speaker 5 (01:13:54):
How how do you not know?

Speaker 1 (01:13:55):
Like people are genuinely getting sober and singing their praises
and it's being mentioned and songs like, you know, I
totally see that for someone who struggles with addiction. I
can't say that it sounds.

Speaker 2 (01:14:09):
Like one that I would yet to heroin though. So
if you have that and you maybe you would have
maybe you would go right.

Speaker 1 (01:14:17):
Maybe if my like brother went and it was looking
for him and I was like, let's build an ideal society,
Like I could see that.

Speaker 2 (01:14:24):
Right, So you would be more Michel's mom who was
kind of there for the society.

Speaker 1 (01:14:29):
Yeah, yeah, actually because she was like attending protests and
like really trying to change the world.

Speaker 2 (01:14:34):
I wish that it wouldn't have turned bad.

Speaker 5 (01:14:37):
The words for the Ages man true of them all.

Speaker 2 (01:14:40):
Yeah. Well, thank you guys so much for listening. We
can't wait to see you next week. Until then remember
to follow your gut, watch out for red flags.

Speaker 5 (01:14:50):
And never ever trust me. Later, Bib

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The Airborne Toxic Event's Mikel Jollett - My Childhood in Synanon

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Airborne Toxic Event's Mikel Jollett - My Childhood in Synanon