OUR STORY

1981 - 1988

Saman was founded by Mauro Rostagno in 1981 in Lenzi in Trapani Province.Its name came from a word in Sanskrit language that means “song”, “harmony”.

(Click on the photo to see the photo gallery on Mauro)

The Saman Community was in this first period, as an alternative, laic and innovative experience, in the Italian panorama on addiction treatment.
One of the principles upon which Saman was initially based was the attention directed towards the single person along with an open approach to the therapeutic treatment. Unlike other Italian realities reclaimed the creation of a suitable, warm and aesthetically beautiful space, use of “sweet” therapies, meditation techniques, an eclectic approach regarding typical “instruments” used in the communities of that time typically punitive and based on guilt-feelings and on the systematic removal of his own drug addiction experience.

Rostagno wrote: “ This optic of Saman, directed to the recovery of those who need, makes us seem “eclectics” only for those who are enamoured with a “school” and despise the others; makes us seem “heretic” to those who are fanatic of a methodology and despise the others”. Among the connotations that distinguish Saman Community is included the possibility, denied yesterday and today in all its structures that work with addiction, to live sexuality during the therapeutic period and a systemic approach to the addiction symptom that focalized on the host and his family the intervention object. During its first years the community and its leader Rostagno enlarged the intervention range relating in an every time closer way to the territory that hosts him. Thus was born a television redaction idea where Rostagno was its top journalist but that, in the editorial activity performed by the community hosts, founds its own autonomous significance. Breaking the equilibrium of a plastered information that does not disturb the powerful Rostagno becomes, in his journalistic activity, a person particularly unwelcome for the legal and illegal power centres.

In 1988 Mauro Rostagno was assassinated by the hands still now unknown. The clue mostly believed from a 18 years time distance remains that of a trap with the mafia stamp.

1988 – 1994

The Saman community was directed by Francesco Cardella that, with the fundamental support of the Italian Socialist party, transforms the community in a center of power based more in the personal enrichment than with the attention and closeness to the hosts problematic. Saman becomes one of the biggest national organizations that works with addiction loosing however, the original stamp and limiting to a serial and repetitive therapeutic treatment.

Between 1994 and 1995 Cardella was arrested for having subtracted a huge sum of money from the association and ripped off the state for training courses never or only partially undertaken. It was sent an inspector from the Presidency Council to Saman to evaluate if there were the conditions for a compulsory administration. The trust given to some internal operators not committed with Cardella resulted in being a well returned trust.

1995 – 2006

The association was able, investing on its internal resources and involving external professionals, to find the strength to go out of an economic, financial and therapeutic crises. The systemic approach was re-launched entrusting the scientific direction to Luigi Cancrini while the therapeutic frame within which Saman intervention moves was partially recovered starting from Rostagno original concept. Today Saman has become again one of the biggest Italian realities leading with issues related to disquiet and addiction with a network of territorial projects and therapeutic communities present in 9 Italian regions. Employs more than 160 operators and receives and cures more than 500 persons per year. Politically committed on the dispute against the new laws on drugs, is determined to promote social policies that found on inclusion its own barycentre.