Thanks for your detailed response.

I wrote: Also, the point that once you get out of the cult you are free for good (whereas once you break a physical addiction people often go back) is not a clear-cut difference. Again, take gambling - once you break a gambling addiction, it is very easy to go back, just like to alcohol or drugs.

You wrote: Mike, I don't understand your point here.

My point was more in the para immediately following the one you quoted:

And while most ex-premies do not go back and become premies again, they often are on the look-out for the next guru or method of enlightenment - sometimes in such a compulsive way that again 'addiction' is a good description.

So while an ex-premie will hardly ever want to return to being a premie, I think there can well be that disposition to find another guru or spiritual path.

This is part of a wider discussion about why we, as individuals, got suckered in, when most people who heard about M in the way we did just sniffed 'cult' and never gave it a second thought. I think there is some disposition, or desire for something on our part, that made us susceptible to a guru who promised us enlightenment if we surrendered everything to him.

And whatever that thing was in us that made us susceptible, can still be alive when we leave M.

However, this is getting a bit far from your main point, and the topic of this thread. I think 'cult' and 'addiction' are two good bullet-point words which summarise well M and premies relation to him. Of course they are simplistic, but if you had to put everything about M and premies in two words, what two words would be a better fit?

They are to the point, dynamic, easy to understand, gives the outsider a flavor of what it is all about, premies hate them, and they are as accurate as any two words can be. That's pretty good!