The Background of the Narconon Program

The Narconon Drug Rehab program was developed by William Benitez. Benitez was impressed by the writings of L. Ron Hubbard, and he felt that focusing and identifying abilities rather that disabilities would assist individuals in overcoming drug addiction.

The program has a strong educational orientation, focusing on teaching kills necessary to maintain a drug free life. The drug dependency individuals are referred to as students in this program. Additional techniques address the impact of drugs and alcohol on the students, the program uses sauna and vitamins an minerals to assist in withdrawal and detoxification. The narconon founders developed a well-defined logical sequence of steps or modules that are used by participants and staff members to provide education and recovery from addiction treatment, that is called the narconon program.

The Narconon Program

The narconon program is not a “medical model” of drug rehab. It does not rely on the belief that substance dependence is a “disease of the brain”. The program is based on the acceptance that addiction is a biochemical process, in which the body has been poisoned by substance abuse. It also perceives addiction as not a disease that needs to be treated with more drugs that act as substitutes or alternative drugs. The narconon program focus’s on behavioral approaches, the education, and providing of skills to assist an individual through daily life problems and disorders without depending on drugs or alcohol.

The educational approach of the narconon program believes that the students of the addiction treatment program, will be able to accept individual responsibility for their personal behavior, learn from that behavior, adapt that behavior into better life choices, and overcome their substance abuse problems.

Narconon Rehabilitation

The implementation of the narconon program is done in residential treatment centers. The program is an in-patient drug rehab treatment program, in which students stay at the facility for the duration of the addiction treatment.

As a preliminary step in treatment the individual participate in a detoxification treatment program. The narconon programs uses the new life detoxification treatment. The detoxification program includes, exercise, sauna, and vitamin / mineral supplementation to assist in the detoxification and management of withdrawal symptoms. This process is highly supervised by trained medical and addiction treatment specialists.

After detoxification the narconon program enters the students in a series of intensive courses used to provide life skill training, and to assist students in finding personal values and strategies to maintain a drug free life. Each student passes through the courses at their own pace, the courses build into each other and the student will only progress into the next class when they have mastered the material and concepts in their current class.

Based on the educational model, the narconon program uses eight modules or courses. Each course in delivered in a standardized format, supervisors are used to monitor the self-paced students, and move the student to the next course when the student has demonstrated competence. Each student’s progress is documented.

Once the students have completed and graduated from the program they return to the community. The narconon program also provides after care services, that maintains contact with students and assists them with the student’s individual plan for re-entry into society. The after care program is in place to assist and support the student in general society.