Treating Cultism as an Addiction

This article was substantially updated and enhanced 07-02-2020. 

Having substantial experiential, educational and (at least secondary) research backgrounds in substance and process addiction theory and treatment since 1985, as well as cult dynamics since 2010, I have lately come to the notions of...

1. Cult Membership as an Addiction Process... and a Process Addiction, and...
2. exploring the treatment of recovery from cult indoctrination with a model closely resembling those used for the treatment of other substance and behavioral addictions.

I first asked the rhetorical question, "Can People truly Recover from Cult Indoctrination and Manipulation? " several months ago. I hypothesized an affirmative answer, but have since come to see the operational difficulties in the new era of...

1. massive stress on a mental health system pushed to its limits with the upshots of increasingly widespread third- and fourth-generation substance abuse now reaching crisis proportions, and...
2. ever-more-sophisticated technologies being employed by all forms of "thought reform" and "mind control" cults ranging from those based upon formerly "traditional" (and emotionally benign) religious sects (e.g. Theravda Buddhism, Yogic Hinduism) to the new human potential and East-meets-West hookups so often spawned on the Korean peninsula.

My as yet only partially formed thesis is that successful prophylaxis and treatment may depend upon utilization of the mass media to...

1. not only educate the general population to the dangers faced by a culture weaned on conditioned, instructed, socialized and normalized belief largely to the exclusion of teaching empirical observation as a psycho-operational norm, but to...
2. utilize the teaching of empirical observation skills (like "mindfulness") to replace (or, at least displace) the normalization to instructed and socialized belief that makes it possible for cults to "take over" the limited mental operations of minds unfamiliar with "scientific method," "mindfulness," "empirical observation," "critical thinking," etc.

BUT (and for some this will be a very big but), I am also aware that such wholesale conversion of a culture from the predominance of concrete operational processing built on over-simple, stereotypic belief in "black & white" to the predominance of formal operational processing built on observing phenomena in gradations of "full color" comes with its own risks. Such conversion is a process, not an event, and we have seen the upshots of failing to understand that in such cataclysms as the Reign of Terror that followed the French Revolution of the late 18th century.

The sudden introduction of widespread awareness into a culture heretofore dozing in a belief-bound consensus trance is risky business.

Thus, the questions as my mind has framed them thus far (perhaps there's a better way; I don't know) are...

1. Do the dynamics of cult involvement at the fourth through eighth levels of the observed 10-Level Pyramid Model & Psychodynamics of Cult Organization square with those of other forms of addiction, and specifically with the classical and operant conditioning models that include "reward," "reinforcement," "punishment" and "extinction" as demonstrated in primary research into behavioral addictions like gambling, shopping, over-eating (where addiction is not to food, but to distraction and resulting dissociation), over-exercise, over-work, and obsessive sex and romance fixations?
2. If the dynamics of cult involvement at those levels do square with those of other behavioral addictions, can they be treated with the methods known to work well with those other behavioral addictions?
3. Given the bedrock of cognitive reconstruction of belief systems by cult technologies, can one count upon the use of cognitive-behavioral re-reconstruction back to former belief systems (as proposed by Abgrall, Atack, Hassan, Ross, Tobias & Lalich, Zeiman and others) to "deprogram" cult "addicts?" Or...
4. Given the widespread failure of such as described at item 3 above (both in terms of later recidivism and failure to separate the cult member from the present cult fixation), are those who would successfully treat cult "addicts" compelled to utilize a combination of...

. . . . . a) mindfulness-based cognitive therapies (e.g. those listed in section 7b of this reddit post) to question not only beliefs but belief itself as a basis for effective function in life,...
. . . . . b) exposure therapies like those used for the treatment of physical, psychological, emotional and sexual abuse resulting in Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (e.g. those listed in section 7c of this reddit post), and...
. . . . . c) the same sort of group dynamics (e.g.: 12 Step and other peer-modeling / peer-imitating, scaffolding and DBT-style skills building systems) that have proven to be effective in the treatment of both substance and behavioral addictions?

I appreciate that the discussion and "work-through" here may take years, of course. But my sense is that someone has to point out that we are currently running around in a box of common cultural convictions that are not solving the problem. Personally, I favor Jiddu Krishnamurti's, Alan Watts's, Joel Kramer's, Arthur Deikman's and Charles Tart's methods (see them on A Meditation Book List at the link below) of both seeing the box for what it is and climbing out of it, though there may be others. Understanding & Recovering from the Consensus Trance can -- I have found -- be very empowering in that regard.

In whatever event, the cults of the new millennium have seized on digitized technologies that have greatly enhanced their capacities to sink their blood-sucking teeth into the mental flesh of their unsuspecting victims. And those who would deal with that may need to catch up to the proven methods of extracting those teeth from the mental flesh of those with other forms of addiction.

See also 

Cult Membership as a Behavioral Addiction like Gambling & Over-Exercise (Redux)

The True Believer, Spencer’s Model, the Addiction Model & the Paradox of Openmindedness (in not-moses's reply to the original post on that Reddit thread)

References are available in A Basic Cult Library, A Meditation Book List and A Basic Addiction References List

Links to Articles on Cult Dynamics