OneTaste felt like an ‘orgasm cult’ — this is how I escaped

One summer’s evening in 2003, my partner Bill and I attended a workshop at a house just south of San Francisco. The event was designed to help you tap into your true, instinctive sexual desire.

It was there that I first saw her, sitting on the couch with her long legs crossed. Her name was Nicole Daedone and I was utterly mesmerised. She exuded confidence and charisma without having to say anything. Everyone wanted to please her.

A year later, Nicole would launch OneTaste, a sexuality business focused on teaching Deliberate Orgasm, also called a “DO date”. This is when one person (usually a woman) lies down with her pants off. Another person (usually a man) strokes the most sensitive spot on her genitals with his index finger.

In a move of canny marketing, Nicole changed the name from “DO date” to “orgasmic meditation”. Et voilà! What was historically a sexual technique was turned into a “spiritual practice”, the perfect way to attract droves of seekers in the San Francisco Bay Area. Tech bros, academics, therapists, creatives and entrepreneurs were soon drawn in.

The group opened “houses’ — communes for its most devoted followers — in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Paris. New members could attend workshops with increasing price points, depending on how “qualified” they wanted to become.

OneTaste grew to be a multimillion-dollar business with star appeal, garnering praise from the likes of Gwyneth Paltrow and Khloé Kardashian. Nicole’s Ted talk, Orgasm: The Cure for Hunger in the Western Woman, went viral and has now been viewed 2.3 million times. And the company was covered widely in the press due to its focus on female pleasure.

This month allegations about a darker side of OneTaste will be explored in a New York courtroom. Nicole, 57, has been indicted by the FBI and will face a federal trial on charges of forced labour conspiracy.

According to the indictment, OneTaste is accused of “subjecting volunteers and employees to economic, sexual, emotional and psychological abuse, surveillance, indoctrination, and intimidation”. One aspect of its “forced labour scheme” was allegedly recruiting and grooming members “to engage in sexual acts with OneTaste’s current and prospective investors, clients, employees and beneficiaries, for the financial benefit of OneTaste”. Nicole and her former colleague Rachel Cherwitz, also indicted, have consistently denied all the allegations.

So how did a wildly popular wellness company become better known as the “orgasm cult”? And how could its charismatic leader, if found guilty, end up spending 20 years in jail?

I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, in a middle-class household.
Like many women, I’d spent decades accommodating others and dissociating from my desires. I took it upon myself to be a good girl, never a burden. I graduated magna cum laude from university, married a man with whom I felt zero chemistry and worked as a banker.

At 33, living in San Francisco, I started the Hakomi method, a form of mindfulness-centred psychotherapy. It gave me a glimpse of what life looked like away from what I “should” be doing. I left my marriage and leapt into a world of sensuality and sex.

At one “pleasure course” I met Bill, a man who set my pheromones on fire. He became my research partner and, later, my husband.

Together we met Nicole. She soon made it clear she wanted to build her own group to bring her brand of orgasm into the world. To make it happen, she and a few of her early followers moved into a house owned by one of her devotees. This would become OneTaste.

It quickly developed a structure. Workshops to learn about the practice were the entry point, then, depending upon appetite, participants moved through the rings towards the centre. Those on the outer rings had the least access to Nicole and paid the least money. You could spiral in closer to Nicole by paying more in either devotion or dollars.

In February 2004, we went to one of her workshops.
Nicole’s speciality was making people speak their desires, with no fear or inhibition. She would focus on one person, asking the same question over and over: “What do you want?” This would go on until Nicole had determined they had spoken the truest answer, their most desired desire.

She scanned the room and her attention landed on me. “What do you want?” she asked. I felt like a bug under a microscope. I reeled off a list of desires. “I want to have more fun … I want to feel more fulfilled … I want to find my passion … I want to have more sex … I want to be part of a community …”

“What else?” she asked.

“To spend more time in nature … to feel more intimacy … to have a life partner …”

Finally, I got to one where I thought, “Do I dare say this out loud?” With a deep breath, I said excitedly, “I want to have a baby!” I had never spoken about, or even consciously acknowledged, my desire to be a mother. It felt good.

“What else?” Nicole asked. I was at the bottom of my well of desires. Nothing else came to mind. But I felt I could sense what she wanted me to say.

Nicole intensified her gaze. “I know there’s more. I can feel it,” she said. A black hole opened in my gut. Did I actually want to say this? No. It felt wrong for me. But I wanted to be part of Nicole’s “in” group. I gave in.

“I want to have a demo,” I said.

A demo was when a woman would lie naked on a table, for one hour and in front of an audience, being stroked as she achieved peaks and valleys of arousal. According to Nicole, this was a rite of passage and a great achievement.

“Did you feel that?” she said, looking around the room. “We’re there. We hit bottom.”

Looking back, I see this as being how Nicole manipulated people. She said something was true if it matched what she wanted to hear, until you believed it was true too. Everyone saw her as a magician, but to me she came to look like a master conductor; someone who could coerce people into giving her the answers she wanted.

A cult is a toxic mimic of a community and this, along with my yearning for purpose, was how I became ensnared. Nicole soon said she saw potential in me to be her second-in-command. In order to do so, Bill and I had to move into the communal house. We did. And to prepare for my demo, we had to sign up for a course that cost $15,000. We did.

Like many in the inner circle of about 20, I didn’t have a job. Instead, I volunteered endless hours to bring Nicole’s dreams to fruition and have regular “DO dates”, which kept me feeling manic, high and disconnected.

Countless times I saw her influence others, insisting everyone surrender to her, though she didn’t explain what that meant. I wasn’t able to see how she was influencing me too. Instead, I told myself: “I’m not like the others who act like Nicole’s servants.”

At one point, Samantha [not her real name] wanted to leave the community. She was really upset, telling Bill and I that she didn’t trust Nicole and that this wasn’t the right place for her. At the next community meeting, Samantha told her how she felt. Nicole started to cry. “I can’t believe you’re going to leave me,” she sobbed. “I can’t believe you’re just going to abandon me like that.” Samantha, panicked and remorseful, immediately changed her mind. “No, no, no. Nicole, I would never leave you. I won’t leave you. OK, I’m going to stay,” I remember her saying.

After everyone left the room, Nicole’s tears dried up instantly. Then she turned to me and Bill and said: “That didn’t go the way you thought it was going to go, did it?”

Under her guidance, I honed my seduction skills.

I learnt to put my full attention on someone and then convince them to do whatever would win me the most approval from Nicole: getting them to pay for the next more “advanced” workshop; bringing friends to a games night; moving into one of the communal houses. OneTaste became increasingly popular in the San Francisco Bay Area, drawing in men looking for some action and women who wanted to explore their sexuality in a way that prioritised their own desire.

While I sunk more deeply into the community, Bill distanced himself. After attending a week-long meditation retreat, he woke up to how he had disconnected from himself and needed to leave OneTaste. As a result, Nicole acted as if he didn’t exist and her followers treated him the same. Meanwhile, I was pulled even closer in by them.

One Saturday night, the kitchen at OneTaste was a mess after an event. I watched as Nicole didn’t lift a finger to help. Suddenly, rage blazed through me. The next morning, I went to a meditation class at the OneTaste centre. I barely looked at her, expressing my anger with icy silence. Nicole suggested we hold a practice session for my demo, with her as the do-er. Nicole was persuasive. I resisted. She persisted. I conceded. The higher I got with the ecstasy of the practice, the more disassociated I felt. The session ended. I felt depleted, andas if Nicole had won.

As the weeks passed, I felt pulled in opposing directions. To figure out what I wanted, I went away by myself for a night to a hotel up the coast. The next day, I excitedly called Nicole. “I want it all!” I told her. “I want my relationship with Bill and I want to continue partnering with you at OneTaste. Bill and I will move out of the house, but I’ll still come every day to the centre. It’ll be great!”

There was silence. “Oh, honey, I don’t know if you’re going to make it out of this one,” she said. I hung up, bewildered. I knew exactly what I wanted but Nicole was portraying my clarity as confusion. It felt as if she wanted me to think I was lost.

After a few days of inner turmoil, there was an intro evening for new members. I sat in the place of honour: on the couch with Nicole. She called Patricia [not her real name] to be part of a demonstration and the woman obediently lay on the massage table. Suddenly my perspective shifted. I saw her, half-naked, lying with her legs open. Another woman, Nicole, had her hands on Patricia’s genitals, performing the act for the people (mostly men) there gawping, not believing their luck.

The spell was broken.

If Nicole had called my name, I would have obediently jumped up and spread my legs. Shocked, enraged and ashamed, I realised I had become her servant, just like the others.

I left OneTaste in September 2004 with a damaged sense of self, and it took me years to fully recover from my relationship with Nicole. The self-forgiveness came in stages. I recognised the ingrained pattern of looking outside myself for approval and direction. I also confronted betrayal — the betrayal I felt from having trusted Nicole and, even more profoundly, the betrayal of self.

I received a full refund of $15,000, having never completed the demo. My relationship with Bill revived. We married in 2007 and the following year our son was born. Now, in my fifties and having been married for 17 years, I have an understanding of intimacy away from manipulation and have uncovered a whole new realm of sexual expression and fulfilment, using a new practice about which I am writing a book.

Other friends who left OneTaste felt shattered into pieces and required teams of psychologists, therapists and healers to return to a semblance of who they were. And the harm continues. In early 2023, an anguished acquaintance disclosed that his son had been under Nicole’s influence for the past decade and still lives in Mendocino, California, in her commune, which she calls “The Land” and where she is awaiting trial.

Reading the FBI report on OneTaste, as well as other members’ accounts of what they say happened to them, was distressing. I brought many people into Nicole’s sphere. If you are one of those people, I am profoundly sorry.

Today, after years of healing through self-acceptance, away from the vortex of Nicole’s world, I have found true empowerment.

A OneTaste spokesperson said: “Ms Daedone and OneTaste firmly dispute Ms Auerbach’s depiction and the perspective she presents, which appears to be meticulously designed for dramatic effect. While such narratives may fuel sensationalised media portrayals, including the Netflix production, which was rooted in inaccuracies and misrepresentations that have no bearing on our organisation, our confidence in the integrity of our stance matches the apparent confidence the prosecutors have with Ms Auerbach’s narrative.”