I was listening to a Canadian radio stream for the visually impaired (because my BFF is legally blind) , and one of the books on tape they played was Going Clear by Lawrence Wright who interviewed former Scientologists, one of whom helped the COS recruit celebrities, it was riveting and I recommend it highly. Here's some others that look helpful :
[novelsandnonfiction.com]

Quackery...

I have a lady friend who was in it for years some time ago. Lost a marriage and 3 kids to it. Heavy pressure to fit in and when she left the husband kept the kids with the "church's' " help. Heavy brainwashing and control issues. You loose your sense of being a person.

From what I have seen of it, it is crazy and dangerous even more than most of them. They will control people with blackmail learned from those sessions/counseling that was mentioned.

okay, false alarm. (real life is SO inconvenient!) okay, i am misremembering. the second experience was with mormons. i have ONE experience with scientologists. i was about 18, and walking down the street in new york city. (i was in college in northern new jerseyf.) i had for some years been interested in what my iq was, for reasons i won't go into right now, and lo and behold, i was accosted by someone offering me an iq test! i couldn't resist. i went into a building and found myself in a large room with many people at desks talking tests, and i was soon doing so as well. after i took the test i was called into a small office and told, soberly, that the test had revealed that i was a genius but emotionally unstable (since when does an iq test tell you about emotional stability?) and that i needed to join the church of scientology right away.

i declined. young as i was, i was immediately aware that they HAD to tell me i was a genius (it happens to be true but i am sure they tell everyone that) so i would be flattered and interested, and they HAD to tell me i was emotionally unstable (also, as it happens, untrue at that time, but they REALLY had no way of knowing that) or i wouldn't NEED them.

that should tell you a WHOLE lot about scientology, whatever else it is and whatever else they do.

g