One Man's Dream Became an Unexpected Reality
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The Narconon® program has been an international drug and alcohol rehabilitation center for over 40 years. It has provided successful drug treatment, drug prevention/education, and ongoing community support. The origin of the Narconon program happens to be a story of amazing human achievement, dedication, and compassion toward ones fellow man.
William Benitez was born January 6, 1934. Unfortunately, like most drug addicts, Will started using drugs at a young age. When he was just thirteen years old he started using marijuana, and within a matter of years he was introduced to Heroin. It would be Heroin that would later cause his life to spiral down and go absolutely nowhere. |
Throughout most of Benitez’s life he was a hard-core heroin addict and convicted felon. His drug addiction was causing him to lose sight of who he was and where he came from. He had made multiple attempts at getting clean; however, he did not see any success. It was not until he was sentenced again to the Arizona State Prison where things started to come together for Will. He was lost, without hope, and everybody he knew had given up on him.
The day of processing at the Arizona State Prison would be a day that would stick with Will, and would later help fuel his drive to beat his addiction. The following is what happened that day:
He walked towards the prison guard, ashamed at his failures yet again to stay off drugs, despite looking for answers for quite some time without finding success. Will said to the guard, “I’m not proud to be here again. You know I’ve tried, and tried to find the answers. I’ve been reading about this but I can’t seem to stay clean. I need help, can you help me.”
The guard looked at Will and said, “You know the best thing you can do, the best thing you can do for yourself, for your wife, for your kids, and for this society. I’ll let you have my gun, go behind that building and shoot yourself. Because Will, that is really what would be best for yourself, your family and the rest of us.”
Desperate and without hope, William was looking for help, and when he asked for help to a person of authority, only more hopelessness was given to him.
The Narconon program was founded in 1966, and William Benitez started this program within the prison walls of the Arizona State Prison. He came across a book called The Fundamentals of Thought written by L. Ron Hubbard. When Will read this book, he was amazed at the fact that it did not label a person, nor put them down. Its primary focus was to increase the individual’s abilities to overcome their problems. “What impressed me most about Mr. Hubbard’s works was that they concentrated not only on identifying abilities, but also on methods (practical exercises) by which to develop them. I realized that drug addiction was nothing more than a disability, that begins when a person ceases to use abilities essential to constructive survival.” Commented Benitez.
After reading that book, Mr. Benitez made the decision to set up a Narcotic Foundation inside the prison. He set a target date to take his idea to the guards and request permission to establish a drug rehabilitation program within the prison. At first the prison officials were not granting permission; however, Benitez persisted and eventually acquired all the support from the prison administration. He was fortunate to start a trial program consisting of 20 inmates and himself. Mr. Benitez went on to say: “I demonstrated to officials that any person, inmate or otherwise, could benefit from Narconon because its attention was on increasing abilities, that we had an ethics mechanism built into the program, and that the responsibility and involvement required of a member could soon dissuade anyone not serious about improvement…The program met its expectations so well that seven months after the beginning of Narconon, I was asked to start another program for young offenders housed in the annex outside the prison walls.”
With such amazing success happening within the prison walls, it was only a matter of time before Will would soon be taking his creation to the rest of the world. By October of 1967 William Benitez would be released from prison, and he would later move to California. It was in California that he would establish the first residential Narconon program. With the continued and ongoing support, of the staff, volunteers, and L. Ron Hubbard, Will was able to establish this fully functional treatment center.
In April of 1968 William Benitez delivered what could have been one of Narconon’s first recorded drug education lectures. He addressed the high school students in attendance at the Scottsdale High School located in Arizona. Will talked to these kids about drug addiction and what it was. He also talked about his own experiences and how the Narconon program came about. Mr. Benitez said to the audience: “After 19 years of trying, probed and picked at by psychiatrists and psychologists, everybody was evaluating me, telling me what my problems were…I noticed that all of us addicts in prison were in the same boat. We didn’t know what the problem was. I thought back over the years of all the junkies I had shot up with, and remembered their most treasured conversation, ‘One of these days I’m going to quit.’ I had found the means and was going to share it with them.” Will gave a very insightful and educational look into drug addiction, he was able to give real life examples and talk to the kids as someone who didn’t just read this information from a book, but actually lived it.
When he talked about the Narconon program, he pointed out a very interesting factor in overcoming drug addiction. Will said to the audience: “Before a person can pull out of narcotics or any difficulty, the only way he can get out of the pits – would be that he become more able, he has to have greater ability. He is the only one who can resolve his problem, because he is the one who created it.”
The Narconon program was continuing to be successful within the prison and also outside the prison walls, in fact an Arizona State Prison staff report, signed August 13, 1972, stated that 75% of the Arizona Narconon program students were still drug and crime free after one year. Another case study was done on the Narconon juvenile program, which was presented to the Western Attorneys General Conference in 2005. This study found that 63.5% of the youth lived totally crime and drug free for two years following the program.
By 1981 the Narconon program was growing on a international level, the Narconon centers were being run by their own staff. It was at this time in Will’s life that he moved back to Arizona. The same institution that kept him locked up for so many years would soon hire him. William Benitez took a job with the Arizona Department of Corrections. He became the Hearing Officer for the Corrections Director at Central Headquarters in inmate complaints. Will Benitez had achieved extraordinary things, and was always proud of what Narconon had accomplished. He later said: “Sure, I started Narconon, but its success and expansion are due to the dedication of so many staff and volunteers throughout the world who have laboured to make the program’s benefits available to everyone in need. Staff and volunteers’ compensation is in knowing they are providing society and its children a better environment in which to live. My thanks go to them.”
Today, Narconon Trois-Rivières is proud to be part of a network that has grown to 150 centers in over 40 different countries, and which is continuing to expand, helping to save the lives of people battling drug or alcohol addiction across the globe. William Benitez passed away of natural causes in 1999, leaving behind a legacy that is being carried forward by dedicated people worldwide.
