Synanon
This profile of Chuck Dederich (a), founder of Synanon (a), is really good. It's kinda hard to excerpt, as it's a slow build. I'll just leave you with the lede:
Can a false god deliver real miracles? Take the case of Charles E. Dederich, better known as Chuck. A more unlikely figure of divinity would be hard to imagine. Born in Toledo, Ohio, in 1913, Dederich’s early years were spent staggering through the American wilderness in a drunken haze. He flunked out of Notre Dame, was fired from his job at Gulf Oil, married and divorced twice, lost touch with his children, and slipped into what he termed “a holocaust of boredom.” By the mid-1950s, he was a wino stumbling along the beach in Santa Monica, California, without friends or family to help him.
h/t Gwern, more specifically his newsletter (which you can subscribe to here).