Journal of Charisma Studies

Religion of Diet:

Mark Hughes and the Rise

of Corporate Spirituality

Taso G. Lagos   

Article contents are adopted from secondary sources and all views presented do not reflect the author’s own. All rights reserved. © 2021

Mark Reynolds Hughes was a highly successful American entrepreneur who single-handedly started the American nutrition and health company, Herbalife.  He was 24 at the time, and the product of an unstable upbringing and reform school.  He mastered the ability to sell, and he used its emphasis to build Herbalife into a powerful, multi-level marketing juggernaut that today has spread around the globe and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange.  Yet, behind the façade of success lays a troubled personality whose own personal habits (drug and alcohol abuse) contradicted the studiously nurtured image of health and wealth.  He died of drug and alcohol overdose at 44, leaving behind a more complex legacy than his success suggests.  Today Herbalife carries on his work, but this messiah-like figure seems forgotten.

§ § §

Nobody outsold Mark Hughes.  And few outwitted him.  He had a comeback for every grenade thrown at him.  Facing a congressional committee while his diet products company was investigated for improper health claims and diet experts showered him with darts, he stared at the senators straight-faced and retorted, “If they are such experts in weight loss, why are they so fat?!”^[1]

        The supreme evangelist of greed, success, wealth, and superficial happiness, Hughes professionally sold the rarified dream of privilege, status, glamor, and basket loads of money.  He touched the lives of millions, even as he bankrupted many along the way.  The company he founded, Herbalife Nutrition, an international brand, lists on the New York Stock Exchange and is either thought of as a multi-level marketing juggernaut or a pyramid scheme.  His financial success extends the particularly American tradition of visionary, rule-bending uber-entrepreneurs dotting the country’s history; personalities that either enliven or manipulate (or some combination of both) so long as the ethos they represent – success, wealth, social mobility – revs the minds and guts of many Americans desperate for income injection and the societal approval that goes with it.  Even though he led a controversial life, Hughes exemplifies the part of the American experience that places a premium on cheerful, militaristic determination, unabashed triumphalism, and relentless sales and marketing.

        Like many charismatics, his early life is lost in a fog of mystery, enigma, and contradiction.  Mark Hartman (his birthname), according to the Social Security Administration, was born on January 1, 1956.^[2]  He was either birthed into poverty, or a rising middle-class family with all the accoutrements of the aspirational life.^[3]  And there is either the hard-scrabble upbringing he ebulliently sold the public and breathlessly echoed by his company, or a more privileged life exposed by investigative journalism that didn’t fit the storybook humble origins.  The Mark Hughes Story was a charming, health-devoted tale glossed with a happy ending whose pedigree has long been lionized by certain conservative segments of American society.  Except his happy ending was a life cut short at 44 due to drug and alcohol overdose.

§ § §

Americans seems vulnerable to well-honed narratives of overcoming difficult circumstances and family tragedy – which are also the seedbeds of the charismatic personality.  Mark asserted he experienced his youth in “the gritty streets of a Latino neighborhood” in La Mirada, near Los Angeles.  In his Dickensian self-portrait, his father is missing, and instead he is raised by his maternal grandparents, Lawrence and Hazel Hughes, when not in the custody of his mother, Jo Ann Hughes, who he said suffered from obesity.  “My mom was always going out and trying some kind of funny fad diet as I was growing up,” he shared at one of the many Herbalife rallies he led that were part revival meeting, part marketing exhortation, and part confessional aimed at cementing the Herbalife ethos.^[4]  He “fused Elvis Presley, Reverend Billy Graham and Horatio Alger.”^[5]

        His mother likely hid a drug habit under the guise of being on a diet, yet somehow the young Mark internalized her plight, at least so far as the public face of Herbalife was concerned, and he vowed to “develop an organization that would put the kind of reliable information and safe, effective products his mother never had into the hands of millions.”^[6]  All because of Momma.  Due to her death, she could never contradict him and even those that tried, like Stuard Hartman, were simply shunned or marginalized.

        Los Angeles Times reporter, Matthew Heller, uncovered a picture different from the humble one Hughes publicly painted.  In his 2001 investigative piece on Hughes and Herbalife, Heller noted the young Mark did spend some years in La Mirada, but it was in a “new tract home in a neighborhood sprinkled with citrus groves and mostly populated by upwardly mobile white suburbanites.”^[7]  His mother died addicted to painkillers, not diet pills as Hughes claimed.

        Jo Ann Hughes and Stuard Hartman were Mark’s biological parents, yet in several sources, including Herbalife’s own website, Mark’s biological father is said to be Jack Reynolds, a plumber.  When Hartman offered to test his DNA to prove he was the real Dad, it was refused.

        There were two other boys in the family, Guy and Kirk.  Stuard Hartman owned an aircraft parts company that supplied the U.S. government, and provided a comfortable life for the family, including a new “custom-built ranch-style home” in Camarillo, a housekeeper, and fishing trips on the California coast in Hartman’s cruiser.^[8]  “‘They always had the best toys, the best stuff, the best clothes,’” claims a childhood friend.^[9]  Hartman denies his wife had a weight problem.  She popped the pain pills Darvon and Percodan to “prolong the high.”^[10]  Marital problems were visible to outsiders, and according to Heller, revolved around how much to discipline the three boys.

        In February 1970, Jo Ann filed to divorce Hartman.  By then, the “quiet” but “intense” Mark was drinking and doing drugs.  Jo Ann took the boys and moved in with her parents, where, Heller claims, she spent most days bedridden.  The divorce gave Stuard custody of Guy and Kirk, but Mark remained with his mom.  Five years later, Jo Ann died of an overdose.

§ § §

Mark took a path divergent from his family’s.  It led to a new name, a new lifestyle, and to being “one of the greatest of all modern American success stories.”^[11]  Hughes dropped out of the ninth grade, by his own admission, from delinquency.  No stranger to encounters with police officers, teenage Mark found himself at CEDU high school in Running Springs, California (its motto: “‘See yourself and do something about it.’”^[12]).  The school was associated with Synanon, described as an “anti-drug cult” group established in 1958.^[13]  Synanon inspired many “emotional growth boarding schools” like CEDU, all using a variety of brutal techniques involving isolation, humiliation, hard labor, and sleep deprivation.  Yet, these operations became entangled in accusations of physical and emotional abuse, even death in some rare cases, and were temporarily shut down only to resurrect themselves with new names and logos.  Second chances in America, even for those that break the laws – if not the bounds of ethics – always prevail.  Rather than a school in a bucolic setting, Mark in his Herbalife presentations preferred to call it a “‘drug rehabilitation center.’”^[14]

        Hughes found his element at CEDU, not in the harsh punishment meted out, but in selling raffle tickets to support the school’s meager finances.  He discovered his true purpose in life – sales – which was bound to happen in an economy whose very foundation rests upon marketing.  More than stumbling onto his true calling, the social capital that came with it – approval by the school’s administration – meant more to his battered psychic needs.  He shed his T-shirt and jeans for a suit and a compelling story that he sold to upscale communities in the Southland, including one visit to Beverly Hills that netted a check for $500 from then ex-governor Ronald Reagan.  

        Whether the story is true is impossible to verify; how the lanky teenager got through Reagan’s security detail is never included in the narrative, nor getting a private audience with the former governor.  Another story seems even more apocryphal.  Hughes visited a Beverly Hills attorney’s office, only for the lawyer to suddenly grab him by the collar and toss him out the door.  “‘I don’t see anyone without an appointment,’” he barked after him.  Unruffled, Hughes found a pay phone in the lobby of the building that housed the law office, called, and made an appointment with the lawyer, and made a sale.^[15] 

        The emphasis on appearance and storytelling was not lost on Hughes.  CEDU’s harsh rehabilitation methods were meant to break down resistant psyches and replace them with determination, a vision, and hard work to turn addicted lives around.  That the process resembled methods associated with totalitarian regimes was lost on Hughes; he regarded his time at CEDU as finally completing the transformation from Mark Hartman to Mark R. Hughes.  Herbalife became an extension of CEDU, if not a corporate version of it.  The up-by-the-bootstraps story he sold to his customers brought equal measures empathy and sales, but also satisfied a need for attention.

§ § §

Hughes was 19 and ready to apply the skills learned at CEDU to a money-making career.  When asked what the school had done for him, Hughes replied, “‘They help you realize your goals.  My big goal is I always wanted to be rich.’”^[16]  His first job leaving CEDU was in retail sales at a clothing store, but the $1,200 monthly check would not make him wealthy.^[17]  His next job landed him in the business sector that would consume him for the rest of his life: diet products.  He became a top salesman of the “Slender Now” diet at Seyforth Labs, a multi-level marketer in the Southland.  At Seyforth he met Richard Marconi, who later helped him launch Herbalife.  Marconi concocted the recipes for Seyforth’s products.  Marconi’s doctorate in nutrition was later found to be a mail-order Ph.D. from “Donsbach University School of Nutrition, a non-accredited correspondence school in Huntington Beach.”^[18]

        Seyforth’s collapse did not sidetrack Hughes for long; he’d seen his future, and it was in diet products sold via multi-level marketing.^[19]  He found sales work at what might be two separate versions of the same company – first known as Bestline Products and later Golden Youth – that offered diet products and exercise equipment.^[20]  Like Seyforth before it, this company relied on multi-level marketing.  Again, he was a sales star, but when the company went bankrupt, Hughes made a fateful decision to start his own corporation for diet products using multi-level marketing.  He would use herbs in the recipes, hence Herbalife.

        He contacted Dick Marconi from Seyforth to produce the weight loss recipes for the new company.  If he had any concerns about Marconi’s qualifications, he never expressed them.  This oversight brought Hughes and Herbalife serious controversies that blemished both.  According to the Los Angeles Times, Hughes and Marconi decided to create two separate companies, Herbalife to market and Marconi’s Golden Health to manufacture the product.  The year was 1979, and Hughes was 23 years old.  The next year in February, the future diet guru, now officially “Mark Reynolds Hughes,” released Herbalife.^[21]  In Marconi, Hughes had found a father figure that he had longed for, suggesting this meant more to him than any qualms, assuming he had any, about Marconi’s bogus academic credentials.^[22]  For the charismatic personality such psychological yearnings are real and cumbersome: an attempt to redress a failing or lack in one’s upbringing.

        Hughes and Marconi reached an agreement where Marconi would develop a series of products for Hughes, who would sell them through a new company called Herbalife.  Instead of splitting the company, they agreed that Hughes would run the marketing end while Marconi would be the exclusive supplier.  Marconi said the two made a strategic decision to split the business into a manufacturer and a marketing company.  The relationship worked well, until Hughes’s death brought tensions between the two companies to a head that severed the relationship.^[23]

        Hughes reached out to his own personal network to stock Herbalife, including characters steeped in MLM tactics and run-ins with the law.  These included Lawrence Thompson, formerly of Bestline and Golden Youth, who in 1973 had been fined $1.5 million for “violating California’s pyramid scheme laws,” and Larry Stephen Huff, involved in a MLM scheme charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission of “defrauding its distributors of $250 million.”^[24]  Hughes remained the smiling, friendly, charming, unreally coiffed front man to the operation, which suited his ego.  Hughes lost 16 pounds on his own concoction, and then made his grandmother a customer.  One month later and 25 pounds lighter, she not only became a true “apostle,” urging 25 of her friends to sample the product, but also to become distributors.^[25]

        The company he started was equal parts marketing, distribution, and evangelical operation, constantly needing new customers to sustain itself.  This is not merely expansionism, but survival; hence the accusations Herbalife is a disguised pyramid scheme.  A Dow Jones company can survive (even quite well) with its present customer base; in Herbalife’s case, a freeze on expansion means the lowest level of independent operators would have no incentive to continue without new “downline” beneath them to prop them up.  Herbalife’s products typically sell about three times similarly available retail ones, and the rewards only come when the independent operators move up the steps of the pyramid.  Only then can the dreamed rewards accrue.  According to one source, successful distributors may earn $250,000 per year, but “the average annual earnings among all Herbalife distributors has been estimated at $1,500.”^[26]  Only 10,000 of the several hundreds of thousands of distributors earn “‘serious money.’”^[27]

        Independent contractors receive no salary or benefits.^[28]  So long as there are new contractors joining the pyramid, the dream of riches remains alive.  That sustains the folks at the $1,500 level; bar new distributors, the scheme collapses.  Yet, it was not simply the money alone; dieting, previously considered a “personal matter,” now had found social acceptance and led its users to join a welcoming community.^[29]  Mark’s main contribution to the Americana experience was to make dieting not simply socially acceptable, but a way to create a new community of like-minded souls.  He made slimness a religion and an entry point into a new kind of healthy happiness.

        For the lucky few that climbed to the top of the pyramid, the riches were indeed plentiful.  The man who stood at the very top was Mark Hughes himself.  It was a fitting role for him; he exercised his brilliant sales abilities while backed up by institutional support (Herbalife) that fed his instincts for ever more attention and glory.  For the charismatic personality, it’s difficult to erase the past; the unstable upbringing and the damage it inflicted on Mark’s personality could not be wiped away, even with the growing success of Herbalife.  In retrospect, it seems that his alcohol or drug abuse habits did not entirely abate as he entered adulthood, but were carefully hidden to avoid the scandal that would wreck Herbalife’s carefully built, health-oriented purpose.  That’s the deceit; the conceit involved Mark’s never-satiated thirst for the glamorous life.  At no time did his own personal business practices have room for failure; to acknowledge those luckless distributors who banked on success with Herbalife but were stuck with a garage full of product that could not be sold or moved and had to be dumped after the expiration date passed.  For these unfortunate distributors, MLM chain tactics led them to financial ruin.  To Mark, they did not work hard enough, smart enough, strategically enough.  They are to blame.

§ § §

These are business tactics, but they also speak to a particular mentality that, within the confines of the national ethos, is quite American.  Amway products, Tupperware parties, even to some degree, religious proselytizing – all these have been part of the nation’s cultural fabric.  America produces the Mark Hughes type; it is bred into the nation’s DNA that hucksters can find wealth and prestige more easily than in other cultures.  But there’s a cold genius at work here, too, despite the obvious ease of dismissing the narcissistic hucksterism.  

        Like CEDU, Herbalife completely breaks with past behaviors, and in this case, eating habits.  The Herbalife regime upends normal eating patterns: It calls for digesting only one meal per day (consisting of only 1,000 calories^[30]) and filling in the remaining meals with protein powders and “a regimen of as many as 20 pills per day.”^[31]  The shock to the body could be severe, particularly without medical supervision.  It is a grand experiment with the self that is bound to have repercussions.

        Yet, these unattractive details are lost in the attraction of the narrative and in the catchy meme, the “Lose Weight Now – Ask Me How” buttons that acolytes wore as not only an emblem of the company’s belief system, but also as a social lubricant (to start dialogues with strangers).  The medical field would have much to say about the Herbalife way, but the business press jumped on the story with less scrutiny.  Hughes started Herbalife by selling products out of the trunk of his car.  Encyclopedia.com notes that his first month’s sales totaled $23,000, and $2 million dollars by the first year.^[32]  For Inc. Hughes was a “honey-tongued spellbinder;” for Forbes, a “firebrand preacher” who made MLM a potent movement.^[33]  “‘Mark Hughes knew his strength was inspiration and motivation,’” a Herbalife executive suggests.^[34]

        Few noticed the strategic genius behind the sudden success, specifically, Hughes’s early and brilliant use of what became known as the “infomercial,” appearing on the burgeoning cable networks that blossomed in the 1970s.  Borrowing from American revivalist traditions of the 18th and 19th centuries, Hughes mixed his diet proselytizing with testimonials from ordinary people exuding apparent sincerity and intensity.  There was also Herbalife Journal, the spokes-vehicle for the company that offered weight loss stories by customers for which the company paid $200 each.  These folks were paraded at Herbalife training seminars.  These disciples “look good,” but also “feel good too.  They had been fat.  Now they are thin.”^[35]  This was a new kind of religion, the kingdom within being a slimmer version of one’s self.

§ § §

Hughes had declared war on fat, and his growing empire was a testament to his early success.  But fat is a tough enemy to get rid of, particularly if it has advocates in the medical community.  Herbalife’s claims that its “plan can reduce weight, increase energy and cure maladies ranging from asthma to bee stings to venereal diseases” aroused doctors’ ire.^[36]  Suddenly Hughes came into the crosshairs of their attacks.  Complaints about “nausea, diarrhea, headaches, and constipation” brought the scrutiny of the Food and Drug Administration and concerns about the company’s sales pitches.^[37]  Any side effects Herbalife’s products may have caused, distributors were assured by the company that they were the side effects “of the body purging itself of toxins.”^[38] 

        Some of the medical benefits touted by Herbalife’s products bordered on quackery.  “The Herbal-Aloe drink… was said to help treat kidney, stomach, and bowel ‘ulcerations’; and Herbalife Formula #2 was said to be a treatment for 75 conditions ranging from age spots to bursitis to cancer, herpes, and impotence.”^[39]  “‘Because of the support group and revivalism aspects of the company,’” one physician attests, “there may be a placebo effect.’”^[40]  Others noted that Herbalife products contained ephedra, a “speedy substance that has been implicated in a wide range of cardiac arrhythmias.”^[41]

        According to Dr. Varro Tyler, at the time dean of the School of Pharmacy at Purdue University and a “consultant in the field of herbal medicines,” Herbalife weight loss products were “primarily laxatives and diuretics” and posed risks if taken “habitually without medical supervision.”^[42]  Tyler’s concerns were echoed by other health experts, who claimed Herbalife products not only “relied too heavily on laxatives and caffeine,” but were suspicious of the efficacy of the company’s products.^[43]  Alarms were raised by other governments, including Canada and the State of California.  In 1982, the FDA found that one Herbalife product had mandrake and poke root as ingredients, both “unsafe for human consumption.”^[44]  Mandrake, according to the FDA, “‘was once used by American Indians as a suicide drug.’”^[45]  Hughes often defended the company’s ingredients by touting their testing on staff, as if that fact alone warranted no further medical scrutiny.

        Rather than chopping Hughes down, the governmental actions brought out the pugilist in him; he found worthy targets to express pent-up anger for his unstable childhood.  These officials had blithely stepped into a rattlesnake nest and were not prepared for what followed.  Hughes went on the offensive, filing lawsuits of his own and charging his enemies as essentially being stooges or forces not happy by Herbalife’s stunning success.  “If people are skipping two meals a day and getting healthier, they’re hurting the food and medical industries,” Hughes related.  “There is no doubt we’re getting some pressure from out there.”^[46] 

        Behind the scenes, Hughes eliminated ingredients that troubled government and medical officials alike and stopped making unsubstantiated claims about the health benefits of the company’s products.  He played ball even as publicly he maintained his defending-the-fortress mentality that made for good headlines and roused his base of loyal distributors.  This strategy has been notably used by other charismatics in other fields, most notably and recently by Donald Trump and his conservative base.  Such defenses turn attacks into carefully calibrated “victimization” tales that aroused the anger of supporters.  Mark Hughes had become a cult.

        The governmental scrutiny and the negative public attention it garnered impacted sales.  The company that had witnessed spectacular growth, from $386,000 the first year to $423 million by year five (“an increase of more than 100,000 percent”) saw sales collapse, product returns, and distributors quit.^[47]  Annual sales plunged to $250 million.  Yet, in 1986, despite the troubles, the company went public and sought international markets to offset domestic losses, and between 1988 and 1990, launched operations in New Zealand, France, Spain, Germany, Israel, and Mexico.^[48]  Herbalife settled its lawsuit with California and the federal inquiries, as Heller notes, “came to nothing.”^[49]  He escaped unscathed from the scrutiny and expanded into new markets in the process.

§ § §

So it seemed.  For charismatics, there is always a darker side whose very existence puts the brighter one at risk.  If all in Mark’s life “had a big-buck, big-name pedigree,” the same could be said of his inner demons, who he studiously avoided, or rather did all in his power to shun.^[50]

        Kathryn Whiting was a college student and a former Miss Santa Monica when she first met Hughes at the beach.  “‘He sold himself to me,’” she says regretfully, “‘and I fell for it.’”^[51]  She dropped out of school, lived with Hughes, and shared in his diet-obsessed dream, even going as far as helping to finance his vision with the help of her parents.  As People reporter Peter Carlson recounts, they both attended sales meetings to learn about a weight loss product called Pro-Vita (according to Carlson, now defunct).  They bought Pro-Vita’s powders and had it analyzed, then presumably hired Marconi to create a similar line, but add herbs.  That was “‘Mark’s gimmick,’” – the herbs.^[52]  What became the Herbalife empire was really a rip-off of Pro-Vita.  

        If she were troubled by this copying, she kept it to herself.  More troublesome for Whiting was the disconnect between the public and private Hughes.  “‘He wanted to make money,’” she claims.  “‘He really didn’t care about helping people.  If the business hadn’t succeeded, he would have gone into real estate.’”^[53]  Despite the outward success, the glory that came with single-handedly creating a company did not bring Hughes contentment.  She put it succinctly in the People article: “‘Nothing was ever enough for him—money, clothes, cars.  He was obsessed with the money.  He’d sit up in the bed with papers and pens and calculators, working out interest rates and finances.  The sad thing is, it didn’t se,em to make him happy. It was as if somehow having all the money would make his childhood all right.  But I didn’t see that happening.’”^[54]

        By January 1984, Mark and Kathryn ended their marriage.  Whatever effort she and her family put into helping Mark get his start was airbrushed out of his life’s story and the company biography.  She had no role to play in the company’s founding, Hughes claims, adding she was just “‘an employee – my first secretary.’”^[55]  A second marriage, to another former beauty queen, ended in divorce a year later allegedly due to “substance-abuse” problems; later she died of an “alcohol-related illness.”^[56]  There would be two more wives, equally attractive (a requirement to marry him), with a son born from the third, Suzan Schroder.

        The former Miss Hawaiian Tropics, Schroder married Mark in September 1987, with the company on a roll.  Jack Reynolds attended the wedding and the Hughes grandparents introduced him to Mark as his biological father.  In a presentation, Hughes mentioned an upcoming trip to Hawaii (encouraged by Schroder) to get to know his “real” father.  It must have gone well since he was later named in his will and not Stuard Hartman.

        Both Schroder and Hughes showed a magnetic flair for publicity and actively supported a variety of charitable causes, garnering glamorous plaudits along the way as intended.  When son Alexander Reynolds Hughes was born, the parents purchased a $20 million “Tirolean castle” in Beverly Hills.  A “‘storybook home for a storybook couple,” a publication gushed.^[57]  But the storybook had pages not meant to be read.  Once Suzan raised the issue of Hartman at Thanksgiving, and Hughes got upset.  “‘When we got together,” notes brother Kirk Hartman, “the past wasn’t talked about.’”^[58] Stuard Hartman could be regarded as a “stepfather,” but never the real Dad.  If Heller is to be believed, Hughes blamed Hartman for his mother’s death.  

§ § §

Meanwhile, the charity functions continued, even as the third marriage disintegrated.  Hughes spent years maintaining an ebullient spirit against crushing opposition and a never-ending array of challenges.  He fought bravely on, “the bigger the problem, the bigger the paycheck,” he exhorted his followers, as if welcoming the problems.^[59]  The private view was less sanguine, more visible in his actions than words.  At around 11pm on November 30, 1996, Hughes was stopped for driving on the wrong side of the road.  The police report revealed a blood alcohol level three times the legal limit (0.22) and a planned visit to the “Bare Elegance strip club.”^[60]  In his Times piece, Heller cites a source that claims Hughes showed signs of alcoholism.  “‘It is such a high level that an ordinary person would not be able to stand up, much less drive.  You have to use a lot [of alcohol] to develop that level of tolerance,’” the source claimed.^[61]

        In April 1997, he copped a no contest plea, agreed to serve three years on probation, and his driver’s license was suspended, yet later in July Hughes was arrested again for drunk driving.  Neither case received much publicity, and he escaped repercussions.  Yet, company officials – if Heller’s sources are to be believed – realized his drinking, and possibly drug habits, had reached dangerous levels.  He was treated with the drug Antabuse by a Beverly Hills psychiatrist to reduce his craving for alcohol; the drug was considered by many to be “worthless.”^[62]  Hughes also received doxepin (a generic drug of the antidepressant Sinequan) “which can accelerate the effects of alcohol.”^[63] 

Of the various types of drinkers, Heller explains, “those who binge on alcohol or drugs” are ones that exhibit “psychiatric pathology.”^[64]  Mark’s “genetics, early substance abuse and a pathology of unresolved childhood issues and repressed feelings” made him susceptible to self-harm.^[65]  Particularly, the use of alcohol to pacify his feelings, rather than undergoing therapeutic change (much harder.)

        Mark’s arrests for drunk drinking were not lost on Marconi, who devised a plan to send Hughes to a low-key alcohol treatment facility in Switzerland.  He related the scheme to higher-ups in the Herbalife administration, but according to Marconi, the executives “couldn’t agree on the plan, perhaps because they didn’t trust each other to be alone with Hughes during such a sensitive period.”^[66]  It seemed sooner or later the word of Mark’s alcoholism would get out, a severe setback for a company whose very image was built on health, nutrition, and the cheerful life.  There was, Heller notes, intense “pressure on Hughes and his aides to maintain his healthy image.”^[67]

        Then, Hughes abruptly died.

        The 87th birthday celebration for Hazel Hughes took place at Mark and fourth wife Darcy Hughes’s Malibu house.  Hughes had imbibed a little white wine, smoked a cigar, and played on his drum set, but the coroner later found a more lethal toxicity in his system: the “‘alcohol-Deoxpin intoxication'' in which his high blood alcohol level (.21) mixed with a “‘toxic level’” of the antidepressant Doexpin (2.1 micrograms per milliliter) in a lethal way.^[68]  Darcy found him dead on his bed.  Attempts to revive him were unsuccessful, and thus on May 21, 2000, the world saw the last of Mark Reynolds Hughes.

        The company he founded today remains vibrant and seemingly successful.  There’s little of Hughes left on its website, but his image is that of the founding spirit rather than the charismatic personality.  He enters the pantheon of riotously successful American entrepreneurs cum evangelists that dot our landscape whose image recedes over time, but whose ethos carries forth in a wide river.  Mark Hughes had passed, but the company remained.  Now it was time to shun him.  For distributors, the slim life goes on.  To most distributors, one confesses, “Mark Hughes is just a name.  To the new generation, he’s just a dead CEO.”^[69]  ¤