Narconon History: Willy Benitez’s Story

Narconon Founder

William Benitez

Narconon was started in 1966 by a man who liked to be called Willy Benitez, an inmate in the Arizona State Penitentiary. Willy had done drugs on and off for years, but he never could seem to find a way in which to quit. He went in and out of the penitentiary for years of his life, the total being thirteen, before he was able to get off drugs completely. Willy started his drug career as many kids do, smoking pot.

Starting With Marijuana

Willy said that when he was thirteen he and his friends were on their way to a baseball game when an older kid approached them. He was like “Hey you guys want to fly like a bird?” It sounded kind of crazy to them and they did not really know what he was talking about. Then he posed the question in a way that they knew what he meant. He asked them if they wanted to smoke weed. All the other kids ran away to their baseball game presumably, but he kept Willy from running by saying he knew he was hip, he knew Willy wasn’t a chicken.

Well, Willy really looked up to the guy, and he didn’t want him to think he was chicken. The guy dressed nicely, kept his hair slicked back, kept his shoes shined and had a tone of girls following him around. The guy was also a few years older and seemed to really have his stuff together, or at least that’s how it seemed to thirteen year old Willy. So Willy smoked pot with him. He told himself he would only do it on weekends, or at parties or special occasions. He kept himself to that kind of routine for a few years. He wouldn’t smoke everyday, just every once in a while. He was kind of able to maintain his life that way, but soon he wasn’t satisfied with just pot.

Moving on to Harder Drugs

When Willy was about fifteen years old, he wasn’t getting the high that he was looking for from pot anymore. He wanted to do something stronger, something that would get him higher than weed. He tried shooting up heroin and other drugs with his friends when he was about fifteen. Soon after that, he started to get in trouble with the law for various crimes. When he was old enough, he decided to enroll in the marines in hopes it would help him to be able to get his act together and sober up. It didn’t really work and before long Willy got arrested during the Korean War for drug charges. He got court marshaled and received a dishonorable discharge.

After that he really would make efforts to stay away from drugs, and would do so for periods of time, but never for good. He really wanted to be clean by this time, but the drugs had a control over him he just couldn’t shake. He went in and out prison for many years, actually spending thirteen years of his life locked away, all because of drug related crimes.

Jail Time

On December 22, 1964 he pled guilty to what was to be his last charge of possession he would ever receive. The mandatory sentence for a repeat offender like Willy was fifteen years to life. Maybe because it was around Christmas or maybe it was the way Willy presented himself to the judge, but he got only the mandatory fifteen years as apposed to life, which was the least he was able to walk away with.

Finding the Solution

After arriving at the prison, a friend of Willy’s gave him some books to keep him occupied during his time. One of these was an old battered copy of Fundamentals of Thought written by L. Ron Hubbard.  Willy was quite impressed with the small book and read it over and over again. What he liked about it was the fact that it focused on human abilities and practical ways to increase these abilities. He purchased more books by Hubbard and read those as well. He studied these books daily into the late hours of the night for the next year. He found as he was able to increase his ability toward living life, he decreased his need for drugs. He said this about Hubbard’s books “What impressed me was that they concentrated not only identifying abilities, but also on methods (practical exercises) by which to develop them. I realized that drug addiction was nothing more than a ‘disability,’ resulting when a person ceases to use abilities essential to constructive survival. I found that if a person rehabilitated and applied certain abilities, that person could persevere toward goals set, confront life, isolate problems and resolve them, communicate with life, be responsible and set ethical standards, and function within the band of certainty. So effective was the technology I had learned, that I experienced a freedom long lost to me. The tall prison walls became only temporary barriers. I realized that my 6X8 foot cell was all I needed as a command post. Even back then I knew Narconon would reach international proportions, and even wrote an article on it in 1967, The Purpose of Narconon.

Narconon Beginnings

Willy then went about starting the first Narconon within the walls of the Arizona State Penitentiary. He put requests into the warden, which at first were denied, but he eventually got approval. The first group in the program had about twenty members in it and soon those numbers started to grow. Soon, inmates who were not addicted to drugs even requested to do the Narconon program. The administration at the prison at first denied their requests, saying they didn’t need to do Narconon because they were not drug addicts and it might disrupt the other people in the program. Willy explained that anyone could benefit from doing the Narconon program because it helped people work on increasing their abilities, which is a need not limited to drug addicts. The program did so well that soon Willy was asked to open another Narconon in the annex outside the prison walls for young offenders. Soon there were actually two Narconon Centers located at the Arizona State Penitentiary, a beginning that would, over time flourish into hundreds of Rehabilitation Centers and Narconon Parent Centers around the world.

Continued In chapter two of Narconon, Willy’s Story