[IDon'tKnow]

DJ.
If I can weigh in on this. To do with control. You gave the example of putting a gun to peoples heads. Well if we were to take the example of a gun and replace it with a thousand years outer darkness (as well as the various other curses which could come upon you for rebellion) would that suffice. Sure in this case the gun is fake but if a person comes up to you and says give me all your money whether or not the gun is loaded or fake as long as it looks real you will feel threatened. Add into the mix teaching that suggest that even to pray as to whether or not to take his leading being a subtle form of dissent (In my view cutting believers off from the Lord), and his teaching on the tripartite man, and the self (anything within us suggesting that the he was wrong is of Satan. Everything in you which reacts negatively to his teaching's must be of the enemy (I would say that this is the most cultlike aspect)). Based upon this I would say that from Witness Lee's side that yes indeed he did control many.

However from the our side I would agree with you. We should have sought the Lord's leading regardless, We should have listened to Him inspite of what Witness or anyone else said. That was our responsibility and we must take it. We will not be able to say but Witness Lee forced me to. What I'm saying is that Witness Lee's should be held culpable for manipulating and controlling, Whereas we should be held culpable for allowing ourselves to be manipulated. Or to put it another way if we found ourselves to be doing something in the same vein as what Lee did we should be wary that we are trying to control the saints and repent of this. If we find we are being controlled like Lee did with many of the saints we should be aware that ultimately me are responsible for our own actions.

As to the matter of whether or not people are addicted to Witness Lee and his ministry. While this may be true of some I personally believe that if you were to look at most you would find it would be a combination of long time friendships, fear of 1000 years outer darkness, having the idea that there was nothing outside drummed into you, the idea that if you were to fallback that would cause others to, and the fact that if you spent 10+ years devoted to Lee's ministry leaving it could be considered on some levels to be tantamount to admitting that those 10+ years had been wasted. Somewhat like an investor throwing more and more money into a bad investment hoping against hope it will eventually turn a profit. (That said I guess that might be considered to be somewhat addictive (problem gambling)).

P.S.
For my part at the ending the reason why I left was because the thought of putting more of that stuff into me seemed so horrible that the thought being under it for 10, 20, 30 more years was just intolerable. There was absolutely no thought of getting just one last fix. Quite the opposite. Not saying that the entirety of his stuff is bad. Just that there is some extremely bad stuff mixed in there which for my part made me want to vomit.