To Keep it You Have to Give it Away (Reel 3, 1970s)

I'm [music] so gladus. I'm so gladus. [music] I'm so glad. [music] Glory. Hallelujah. >> The Assembly of God is one of 13 denominations helping to support Pittsburgh Challenge, a live-in facility for drug addicts. During the regular church services, the congregation welcomes participation from challenge residents, many of whom admit the program is a last resort for addicts who have tried everything except the Lord and who are willing to make one last effort. >> Pittsburgh Challenge assistant director Kenneth Wilkerson talks about the program. This is basically a spiritual program where the fellows come in and learn uh of the Bible and daily chapel prayer uh guidance uh as in my life. I found that uh I tried many other cures and I came to Christ one day and found that this was the answer. And many of them uh ask a lot of questions about God are interested in even those who've never heard and they are interested in a program like this because many of them have tried everything else and many of them come out of curiosity. They say well uh it looks like it's worked for you and maybe it can work for me. six months ago in February when uh I was sitting in the county jail and not knowing uh where my life was going to go after getting out or if I ever did get out. I never thought I never even had the remotest idea that I would be standing here tonight or standing in among Christian people and giving my testimony of what has occurred in the past five years of my life. It has really uh been an eye openener to me and has really overwhelmed me to a certain extent to uh witness to the actions of the Holy Spirit and to the work of Jesus Christ. >> I cannot hide from God. However, if I would try, though mountains cover me, [music] I'll not [singing] escape his eye. I've wondered far [music] and near. And still [singing] his voice [music] I hear. I know that I [singing and music] can never hide from God. [music] We're glad to be on this corner tonight. Ladies and gentlemen, we're here to let you know that we're concerned about you, the community, and the problems here. And I hope something will be said tonight that will inspire you to be a better citizen and help the community whatsoever you can. We're here to do a job. So gather around and listen. I'm sure you'll be benefited from what you hear tonight and have a solo at this time. >> The Reverend Charles Upurer directs Hope for the Addict in Pittsburgh. A halfway house for the drug addict trying to find his way back into society. A resident can get help in completing his education, finding a job, and in [music] maintaining his rehabilitation with the help of the church. [music] [music and singing] in my heart [singing] that I'm here and I know [singing] he's mine and my heart [music] that's me Un. [music] I want you to know that there is hope for you. There's a future. Things are not as dark AS THEY SEEM. WE'RE CONCERNED ABOUT YOU. THAT'S WHY WE'RE HERE. GOD IS CONCERNED ABOUT YOU. THAT'S WHY we're here. There's other people IN THE COMMUNITY CONCERNED ABOUT YOU. AND I BELIEVE if you would listen, see those THAT ARE DOING POSITIVE THINGS IN YOUR COMMUNITY, those that are helping TO BUILD YOUR COMMUNITY UP. SEE, you wouldn't have to cop out from society. You wouldn't have to escape on drugs and not carnage. There is a future for you. THERE IS A WAY OUT. Before a drug addict can find a way out, he must voluntarily decide to make a commitment. A commitment toward rehabilitation as total as the one previously made to drugs. >> He must decide for himself if he can and will change his entire lifestyle. >> Christianity, but doing something. >> The founder of Cinon, Chuck Dedric, is an expert at changing lifestyles. I think there have to be tremendous changes in the whole environment, the whole uh changes in the relationship between people relationship between uh man, you know, uh what's inside his skin and what's outside have to be total changes in relationship. I uh I don't know how to cure a drug addict or something. I I don't know how to I don't know how to straighten out a a delinquent. Uh, I think that we have to we have to straighten out the whole thing, the whole group, the whole environment of which the the the delinquent or the kid or the or the drug addict or the drunk is a part. In Tamales Bay, north of San Francisco, a new city is rising. It's been called a commune, a rehabilitation center, an academy. It's all of these. It is an experiment in living. Cinon began 12 years ago in response to a problem of addiction. But Chuck Dietrich feels Cinanon's real business is teaching people to accept and develop themselves. Cinanon is a chance to live in a free new way, a total commitment to an environment designed to change people. I have have been in in the drug addiction business longer than anyone in the United States really. And I'm and I've been imminently successful. Imminently successful. There are literally thousands of people who do not use drugs as a result of what Cinnamon has been doing and what I've been doing with my time. Now I suppose that within another year or two there somebody is going to find some kind of a hook and find a way of making interesting the news that there that there are an an increasing number of people living in community without violence having a good time living creatively uh uh not enjoying the the problems with their children. The tradition of media coverage in this country and I don't know about all the country uh is is that you report tragedy and bad news all at Cinnon's good news and then how how much of a point can you make for good news? >> Cinon is a shock to those who hold traditional stereotypes of the drug addict as a dirty subhuman individual. Yet many residents admit they were just that before they discovered Cinan. They recount their stories willingly. >> I was using marijuana for about a year. I had got very messed up. I had trouble with girls, trouble trouble with everything. Every area of my life just seemed to collapse. I I had dropped out of college. I was unemployed. I was I was just unprepared for life. I I had no well I I had no survival tools. I had never really faced up to myself. I made excuses. I was a master at rationalizing. And then I got involved in playing the Cinanon game. >> In the beginning, I I I was thinking about it. The game serves mostly the function of draining off hostilities and enabling people to uh let down their defenses and get to know one another and yourself. >> When I think of things to say to people and or when something comes up in my mind, usually I'll say them, but you scare me because you intimidate me and I won't say anything to you. >> But over the period of time, Cinon game and Cinon has has taken on other dimensions. It's a it's a time to have fun. There's a lot of laughs in the game. It's it's a way to uh to let's say celebrate uh one's sorrows or happiness. It's a religious experience in a small sense. >> The game is an intense and candid examination of personal behavior and each person is required to explore and defend his own attitudes. One cannot live in Cinanon without playing the game and one cannot associate with Cinanon without playing the game. >> Communication between people I at least to the to the level that I like to have it >> is impossible without without this process. >> Mary I feel that you know there's nothing that I have to give and you know I always feel out of it when there's nothing that I have to give. I don't think that it's it's anything that people can do for you. And I wonder, you know, like what do you give to the family? >> Well, I I I'm just beginning to feel like a little more self-con, you know. >> Well, see, you won't speak up. You are too lazy to put yourself a little bit in harm's way. You really are here. And you you keep you do a quick flip with it. When you feel uncomfortable around someone, you do what I have a tendency to do sometimes. You flip it and it becomes their problem. >> You know, like Linda did a good thing for you because you're just like me. And people have to do it to me all the time. Like Al Bon, she put it right back on you. You see, you're so concerned with your feelings and where you're at at every second of the day that you don't have time to consider what anybody else wants or needs. And that's where you're at, Mary. >> I don't think, you know, I really I just think that you uh you better start taking some responsibility for the way you act. >> Well, I'm just going to have to start I'm just going to have to start I don't know. I'm just going to have to start acting as if and and you know talking in the meetings because I do feel I'm beginning to feel like I have something to give back to the family and I don't know I don't want to go back to New York. I mean like that's just bull that I run myself and I get up you know go home to mommy cuz I know you know I could never make it on the streets. just about every new >> um rehabilitation uh notion all of the uh rubbing up against the each other sensitivity nons all came out of syndon bus makes a regular run between San Francisco and LA and residents move freely between facilities ities. Rarely do they leave the Cinanon nest, however, and critics of the community say the craving for drugs may disappear, but residents become addicted to Cinanon. Members of Cinan are not troubled by criticism of this kind. However, Santa Monica, their Oceanside residents, accommodate several hundred people in a complex, sophisticated organization with many responsibilities and members believe many advantages. I think the hippie commune is a fantastic notion. Uh, as the founder of the first one, I think it's I think it's great except that being being trained an American businessman with corporation experience. I I set it up like uh like I would set up any other group with uh provisions so that people could eat and have medical care and good shelter and and fun and work to do and and so on. uh a um I think a hippie commune is great stuff except that I don't want to live in a condo where everybody's got the clap and and and there isn't enough to eat, medical care is no good and and people's teeth ache and and and and nobody smells very good. I will live that way. I I think you can have the best of of of of both worlds and I think we prove that in Cinanon. >> Cinanon is supported by contributions from sympathetic organizations and foundations from individuals and from companies who donate products and services. Cinanon has a team of hustlers, members whose job it is to hustle donations of food, clothing, building supplies, equipment of all kinds, anything needed to make the Cinanon enterprise go. Cinanon has its own service station, a fleet of buses and cars, a rubber plant which manufactures custom products for space age industries, a printing plant, apartment houses, an advertising specialist firm with the force of traveling salesmen, and perhaps the accomplishment of which they are most proud, a Cinanon school. Children are separated from their parents at Cinanon, an arrangement which members believe makes for stronger family ties. Well, I believe this school is particularly different from other kind of schools because it's incin and we have uh our own basic values that these kids uh from the very beginning learn to live by like no violence. There are no threats of violence and in no way do we ever allow uh any adult to threaten them with violence and they learn very quickly to trust the adults. We don't have a curriculum as such. they learn all the tools and learn to use the tools uh like uh reading, writing and arithmetic in a way which I think makes their lives far more exciting in their world. U my feeling is that the uh the curriculum we have here is is constructed to help them live. I think we're also significantly different because they live in community constantly 24 hours a day. Well, the relationship to their parents by and large uh I think uh deepens and becomes if you will one which is uh enriched because there is less demands on uh one mother and one father to sustain the emotional life of a of a child. My kids choose to see me when they when they want to see me. They invite me to dinner. They invite me to come into uh the place where they sleep. They have a real sense that I'm special to them and our relationship is is in some ways far more exciting than it was before before we moved into synagogue. But as you can see here, I have lots of other children and I represent something very important to them and they to me >> [bell] [music] >> Heat. Heat. [music] [music] >> [bell] >> I think that anything less than than doing something that changes that will change the world will have an effect on it is is uh is not much of a challenge for a human be I mean I I I believe that I think that I think that uh a person likes to make a mark wants to think that he has done something made a change