From http://www.faqs.org/faqs/scientology/users/catechism/part2/

Scientology Policy of Disconnection

A Scientologist can have trouble making spiritual progress in his auditing or training if he is connected to someone who is suppressive or who is antagonistic to Scientology or its tenets. He will get better from Scientology, but then may lose his gains because he is being invalidated by the antagonistic person. In order to resolve this, he either handles the other person's antagonism with true data about the Church, or as a last resort when all attempts to handle have failed, he disconnects from the person.

I had left the church before I died. This is what I told the Boston Herald in a phone interview in 1998.

"It (Scientology) isn't the best practice. It didn't help me at all."

About the Study Tech--

"Study Tech? My personal opinion of the Study Tech is that it's a worthless formulation, a very mechanical thing."

The Purification Rundown--

"It's all ridiculous. You run, you go in a sauna, It's all very pseudoscientific."

When he died, those around Philip said;

``He was having a really hard time dealing with it, (his father's recent death) and with how his family reacted to it. He had drifted apart from his family since his father's death.'' Lauren McLeod

He rarely talked about quitting the Church of Scientology, where his mother remained a prominent church official, the friends said.

While family and lifelong friends remained in the church, Gale set out on his own. ``He saw through Scientology, or saw past it. And he didn't understand why others didn't see past it,'' former co-worker Brian Ladner said. ``But even though he left Scientology, who knows whether it left him?'' ``He found himself caught between two worlds and terribly alone in the center,'' an obituary said. Gale was going through an ``existential depression,'' Brian Ladner said in a telephone interview from California. ``Leaving Scientology was a traumatic experience. He was brought up thinking it was the only way.''

Scientologists are taught that if they abandon the church they will soon kill themselves or have a serious illness or accident, said Flo Conway, a New York-based researcher and author on the mental effects of training and rituals in new religious groups.``There is a tremendous amount of suggestion that if you leave Scientology, you will commit suicide,'' said Conway, who considers Scientology a destructive religious group.