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Sects Addicts [extract]

Company Magazine, October 1996

Watch out for the thought police

Scientology is another magnet for big Hollywood celebrities. Created by the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard and based on dianetics (the 'science of thought'), it's been adopted as the key to life by big-name celebrities, from Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman to John Travolta, Juliette Lewis, Kirstie Alley and Lisa Marie Presley.

It modus operandi is to encourage people to a Scientology Centre where they spend hours answering questions about themselves. For a celebrity, it must feel as though they've died and gone to Interview Heaven.

Lisa Marie Presley even did something called 'bull baiting', which involved Scientologists screaming abuse at her for hours so she could learn to 'control her emotions'. Not long afterwards, she married Michael Jackson.

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