The Unbreakable Miss Lovely: How the Church of Scientology tried to destroy Paulette Cooper

by Tony Ortega

As 1977 began, Hubbard turned his focus to a process he was developing to combat drug abuse. He called it the Purification Rundown, and he came up with it after researching LSD addiction by talking to two drug users. Hubbard claimed that he’d made a great discovery, a combination of sauna use and niacin intake that he thought might win him a Nobel Prize.

At one point in the play, Paulette has her exasperated, unnamed lawyer say, “Great. A jury’s really going to like a kinky 30-year-old woman who puts down a church, isn’t married, isn’t a virgin, doesn’t live at home with her parents, produces books instead of children, smokes pot, and travels all over the world alone.”