New Book: Snow Blind: A Brief Career in the Cocaine Trade by Robert Sabbag

I recently finished reading My Billion Year Contract: Memoir of a Former Scientologist by Nancy Many. Many fell into Scientology as a confused college student and worked her way up to some pretty high-level positions within the Church of Scientology. Then, thanks in large part to the "counseling" she was receiving from Scientology, she had a psychotic breakdown and eventually left the church. Here's what I learned about Scientology:

• There appear to be two overriding goals of Scientology: (1) to mentally abuse its members; and (2) to make shitloads of money, presumably to finance lawsuits against it, most of which relate to its mental abuse of its members.
• The amount of money they charge for their "auditing" and other "counseling" services is insane. Imagine if the Catholic Church charged you $30,000 every time you went to confession – and then wrote everything down and kept it in a file on you forever.
• L. Ron Hubbard had a God complex. He viewed himself as on the same level as Jesus, Mohammad, and Buddha. He was also apparently a giant asshole.
• The crux of Scientology is that everything is your fault. If you get cancer, it's your fault and you're shunned. If you get t-boned by a semi that runs a red light and you get paralyzed as a result, it's your fault and you're shunned. If someone randomly holds you up at gunpoint and shoots you in the face, it's your fault and you're shunned.
• If someone who works for the Church of Scientology isn't doing a good enough job (or even if someone under that person isn't doing a good enough job), he or she can get sent to something called the Rehabilitation Project Force, which is essentially a prison chain gang. RPF members must sleep in shoddily constructed barracks, do manual labor, wear a certain colored jumpsuit at all times, and cannot speak to any other non-RPF Scientologists (including spouses). The author was sent to the RPF when she was 5+ months pregnant. She had to live in a parking garage. You can get out of the RPF if you are considered "rehabilitated" by Scientology's auditors/counselors. There was one guy who was in the RPF for seven years.
• If you leave Scientology, no one in Scientology is allowed to ever speak to you again (including family members who are still in Scientology).
• It sounds like most of the celebrity Scientologists are kept in the dark about what actually goes on. (The author should know, as she used to run Scientology's LA Celebrity Centre.) Instead, Scientology uses celebrities as its puppets in order to get more members (and, consequently, more money). I wonder how many people would become Scientologists if they knew about the kind of humiliation Scientology purposefully inflicts on its members and workers.
• Scientology is evil and will stop at nothing to destroy all in its path.

My biggest beef with the book was that there was very little (almost nothing) about the beliefs of Scientology (i.e., the aliens, volcanoes, etc.). (For an excellent, in-depth article about Scientology, including its beliefs, check out this article from Rolling Stone from a few years back.) Also, the editing was poor (i.e., there were periods next to commas, some sentences started with lower-case letters, and some quotation marks inside periods). Nonetheless, I would definitely recommend it for anyone who is interested in learning why never to become a Scientologist.

I have now started reading Snow Blind: A Brief Career in the Cocaine Trade by Robert Sabbag. It came recommended by Gregerson, to whom it came recommended by his friend Tom Bissell, who is an award-winning author. The book is about the beginning of the cocaine trade in the U.S., particularly between New York and Bogota. I've seen the Showtime documentary Cocaine Cowboys, which is about the beginnings of the cocaine trade, focusing on Miami. It's all very fascinating to me, so I'm sure this will be an interesting read.

Books read in 2011:
Life by Keith Richards
Delta Blues: The Life and Times of the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music by Ted Gioia
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
The Devil We Know: Dealing With the New Iranian Superpower by Robert Baer
Riders on the Storm: My Life with Jim Morrison and The Doors by John Densmore
The Butcher: Anatomy of a Mafia Psychopath by Philip Carlo
Runaway Dream: Born to Run and Bruce Springsteen's American Vision by Louis P. Masur
Clapton by Eric Clapton
Fargo Rock City by Chuck Klosterman

My Billion Year Contract: Memoir of a Former Scientologist by Nancy Many