Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief(75)
7 None of the promised levels has ever been released.
[page]6
In Service to the Stars
In 1986, the same year that L. Ron Hubbard died, Paul Haggis appeared on the cover of the church’s Celebrity magazine, marking his entry into the pantheon of the Scientology elite. The photo shows Haggis sitting in a director’s chair, holding a coffee cup. He’s clean-shaven, with glasses, wearing a herringbone jacket with a pocket square in the breast pocket and pleated linen slacks, looking like a nerdy Hollywood executive with a lot of money to spend on clothes. The article took note of his rising influence in Hollywood. He had broken free of the cartoon ghetto after selling a script to The Love Boat, then ascended through the ranks of network television, writing movies of the week and children’s shows before settling into sitcoms. He worked on Diff’rent Strokes, Who’s the Boss? and One Day at a Time. He was now the executive producer of The Facts of Life, a top-rated Saturday night staple. Celebrity noted, “He is one of the few writers in Hollywood who has major credits in all genres: comedy, suspense, human drama, animation.”
In the article, Haggis said of Scientology, “What excited me about the technology was that you could actually handle life, and your problems, and not have them handle you.” He added, “I also liked the motto, ‘Scientology makes the able more able.’ ” He credited the church for improving his relationship with his wife, Diane. “Instead of fighting (we did a lot of that before Scientology philosophy) we now talk things out, listen to each other and apply Scientology technology to our problems.”
Haggis told the magazine that he had recently gone through the Purification Rundown, a program intended to eliminate body toxins that form a “biochemical barrier to spiritual well-being.” For an average of three weeks, participants undergo a lengthy daily regimen, spending up to eight hours a day in a sauna, interspersed with exercise, and taking massive doses of vitamins, especially niacin. In large amounts, niacin can cause liver damage, but it will also stimulate the skin to flush and create a tingling sensation. The church says that this is evidence of drugs and other toxins being purged from the body. Although many in the medical profession have been hostile to the Purification Rundown, citing it as a fraud and a scam, Hubbard thought he deserved a Nobel Prize for it.
In the Celebrity interview, Haggis admitted that he had been skeptical of the procedure before going through it—“My idea of doing good for my body was smoking low-tar cigarettes”—but the Purification Rundown, he said, “was WONDERFUL. I really did feel more alert and more aware and more at ease—I wasn’t running in six directions to get something done, or bouncing off the walls when something went wrong.” He mentioned the drugs that he had taken when he was young. “Getting rid of all those residual toxins and medicines and drugs really had an effect,” he said. “After completing the rundown I drank a diet cola and suddenly could really taste it: every single chemical!” He had recommended the Rundown to others, including his mother, when she was seriously ill, and had persuaded a young writer on his staff to take the course in order to wean herself from various medications. “She could tell Scientology worked by the example I set,” Haggis told the magazine. “That made me feel very good.”
The Purification Rundown is a fundamental feature of Scientology’s drug rehabilitation program, Narconon, which operates nearly two hundred residential centers around the world. Celebrity Scientologists conspicuously promote Narconon, citing the church’s claims that Narconon is “the most effective rehabilitation program there is.” Kirstie Alley, who served as the national spokesperson for Narconon for a number of years, describes herself as “the heart and soul of the project,” because it had helped break her dependency on cocaine. A year after 9/11, Tom Cruise set up a program for over a thousand rescue workers in New York to go through a similar procedure, which was paid for in part by using city money. Many participants reported positive results, saying that they had sweated a kind of black paste through their pores while in the sauna. The Borough of Manhattan gratefully declared March 13 (Hubbard’s birthday), 2004, as “Hubbard Detoxification Day.”
Kelly Preston has promoted Narconon in her native Hawaii. “Starting in the schools, we’ve delivered to over ten thousand different kids,” she said. Preston and Travolta’s sixteen-year-old son, Jett, who was autistic, died of a seizure in January 2009. His parents had taken him off of Depakote, an anti-seizure medication, saying it was ineffective. (The church claims that it does not oppose the use of such drugs when prescribed by a doctor; however, Hubbard himself denounced the use of anti-seizure medications.) Previously, Preston asserted on the Montel Williams Show that Jett suffered from Kawasaki syndrome, a rare disorder that she thought was brought on by his exposure to pesticides and household chemicals.
“With Jett, you started him on a program that I think is talked about in this book by L. Ron Hubbard,” Williams said, holding up Clear Body, Clear Mind, which outlines the principles of the Purification Rundown.
“Exactly,” Preston replied.1 She then talked about her own profound experience on the program. Novocaine from previous dental work began to surface. “I had my entire mouth get numb again for an hour and a half,” she said. Other drugs were purged as well, along with radiation exposure from the sun. “I had a bathing suit when I was seven years old—this is completely true. I had a bathing suit that I thought was so cool with holes in the side and a hole in the center,” she said. “And I got a sunburn in it. And twenty years later, I had this same sunburn come out in my skin, the entire sunburn.” Preston brought copies of Hubbard’s book for the entire studio audience.