Reaping a Sad Harvest: History of the United States Narcotic Farm

[Expat98]

Reaping a Sad Harvest: A "Narcotic Farm" That Tried to Grow Recovery

A federal prison in Kentucky was a temporary home for thousands, including Sonny Rollins, Peter Lorre and William S. Burroughs as well as a lab for addiction treatments such as LSD

By Charles Q. Choi, Scientific American
October 24, 2008

From 1935 to 1975, just about everyone busted for drugs in the U.S. was sent to the United States Narcotic Farm outside Lexington, Ky. Equal parts federal prison, treatment center, research laboratory and farm, this controversial institution was designed not only to rehabilitate addicts, but to discover a cure for drug addiction.

Now a new documentary, The Narcotic Farm, reveals the lost world of this institution, based on rare film footage, numerous documents, dozens of interviews of former staff, inmates and volunteer patients, and more than 2,000 photographs unearthed from archives across the country. Premiering October 26 on public television in Philadelphia and Salisbury, Md., the film will appear on public television stations across the country throughout November. A book accompanying the documentary includes rare and previously unpublished pictures of "Narco," as the institution was called locally, a selection of which can be seen in this slide show.

According to the book, the institution became a premier center for research into drug addiction and treatment, advancing everything from the use of methadone to treat heroin withdrawal to drugs that blocked the action of opiates. Along the way, Narco was frequented by legendary jazz musicians such as Chet Baker and Sonny Rollins, as well as actor Peter Lorre and beat generation writer William S. Burroughs, who recounted his experience in his first novel, Junkie.

The documentary also chronicles how the Farm was shut down when Congress discovered that researchers there were using patients as human guinea pigs in CIA-funded experiments into LSD. Drug research on federal prisoners is now illegal.

Still, the filmmakers note accomplishments at the institution remain milestones in addiction science and treatment. Its most important contribution might be how it transformed the way society views addicts—"as people suffering from a chronic, relapsing disorder that affects public health," says book co-author Nancy Campbell, an associate professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., who studies the history of drug addiction research.



REHABILITATION NATION:
Tens of thousands of men and women were sent to the United States Narcotic Farm for rehabilitation over the course of 40 years from every walk of life--from ministers and doctors to hustlers and farmers.





HIGHS AND LOWS:
A laboratory inside the Narcotic Farm. The Addiction Research Center at Narco was devoted to answering some of the most fundamental questions about addiction, such as what accounted for high rates of relapse or why some drug users became addicted whereas others did not.

Controversially, Narco tested the effects and addiction potential of new drugs on humans. Over the four decades of Narco's existence, patients volunteered for experiments involving every abused drug known, including heroin, morphine, cocaine, alcohol, barbiturates, marijuana, sleeping pills, tranquilizers, LSD, mescaline and psilocybin.





DRUG EXPERIMENTATION:
The Darrow photopolygraph measured a patient's mental and physical reaction to slang references to drugs. In this test a researcher in an adjoining room shows the addict words such as "dope" and "informer". The patient's facial reactions, pulse, blood pressure, breathing and galvanic skin response (a change in the skin's electrical conductivity due to stress) were monitored. Doctors listened to the patients' verbal responses via the microphone.

Such experiments were part of early attempts to understand the psychological factors in drug addiction and relapse. According to the book, they were often conducted on inmates under the influence of narcotics.





DRUG HEADS:
The apparatus in the middle of the picture was designed to test the mental reactions of those under the influence of morphine. For instance, the experimenter read certain words at the patient to see how fast they responded by pushing a button that turned on the lights. According to the book, the way cells react to opiates such as a heroin and morphine were discovered at the Addiction Research Center.





THE GREAT EQUALIZER:
Although two thirds of Narco's population consisted of convicts arrested for drugs, the other third were volunteers who checked themselves in for treatment. Volunteers could leave at any time, whereas inmates could not--but all patients wore the same clothes, worked the same jobs, ate the same food (according to the book, author William S. Burroughs said it was excellent) and lived together behind bars.





HABITUAL INNOVATION:
A picture of syringes confiscated during an admission. Note the one on the right disguised as a fountain pen. As the book notes, arriving volunteers often carried drug paraphernalia.





REVOLVING DOOR:
The original caption for this photo, which appeared in a 1951 New York World-Telegram & Sun series on the Narcotic Farm, read: "This desperate narcotics addict, caught like his fellows in the revolving door of law enforcement, will probably go back to his habit when he is free."

As the book notes, one of the most important contributions Narco to our knowledge of drugs was the view of addicts "as people suffering from a chronic, relapsing disorder that affects public health," says book co-author Nancy Campbell, an associate professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., who studies the history of scientific research on drug addiction. Researchers there also shed light on how environmental cues could trigger relapse.





HOOKED ON AESTHETICS:
The central interior tower of the Narcotic Farm, built in an Art Deco style, was designed to stand as a "temple" of rehabilitation.





CAPTIVE TALENT:
The original caption for this photo, which appeared in a 1951 New York World-Telegram & Sun, read: "The brighter side of Narco--a jam session by patients who formed their own orchestra." Drugs sent many jazz musicians to the Narcotic Farm, who often performed for fellow inmates, staff and residents of nearby Lexington, Ky.

In the book, former patient Stan Novick recalls: "You could go to a show and see some of the great, great jazz musicians of our time. They became legends. But at the time they were just more drug addicts."





WHOLESOME LIVING:
The Narcotic Farm was set on 1,000 acres (400 hectares) of farmland. To the right of the photo are barns and silos. As the book notes: at Narco's peak, its award-winning dairy herd numbered more than 90 cows. Central courtyards were outfitted with tennis courts, and the larger rear courtyards were equipped with softball fields--such work and recreation was promoted as therapeutic.





GROWING RECOVERY:
Patients here work in the spring kale harvest. They also milked cows, harvested corn, beans and tomatoes as well as butchered pigs. The hope was that the newfound work ethic patients developed during farm labor would help sustain abstinence from drugs.





PSYCHEDELIC SELLOUT:
The scandal that ultimately ended addiction research at Narco involved the CIA and LSD. For years, the Addiction Research Center secretly accepted millions of dollars from the CIA as part of a covert program known as MK-ULTRA. The agency had funded LSD research due to interest in the hallucinogenic drug as an interrogation and mind-control tool.

The complex that formerly housed the United States Narcotic Farm is now a medical center that provides health care to federal prisoners with chronic physical illnesses.

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http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=...-recovery-farm

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good one

[Expat98]

Here is a 1938 article from TIME magazine about the U.S. Narcotic farm:

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Drug Addicts

Monday, Nov. 14, 1938
TIME Magazine

Dope fiends are commonly pictured lying stupefied in Chinese doss houses. Few persons know that in 1924 one out of every thousand U. S. citizens was addicted to narcotics, that in 14 years Federal prohibition of narcotics has reduced the figure by an estimated 80%.

The U. S. is the only country in the world which takes public responsibility for its drug addicts. Last fortnight Surgeon General Thomas Parran officially opened the second U. S. narcotic farm, a group of handsome Spanish-mission style buildings erected on 1,400 acres of lonely clay plateau four miles southeast of Fort Worth, Texas. Several days later Dr. Michael James Pescor of the Public Health Service issued a report on the activities of the original farm, which sprawls over 1,050 acres of rolling blue grass country near Lexington, Ky.

The Lexington Hospital, opened in May 1935, is managed by Dr. Walter Lewis Treadway, accommodates 1,000 patients. Most of them are prisoners and parolees who have been sentenced to the farm. But there is a limited number of voluntary patients who are chosen directly by the Surgeon General. Rehabilitation is mainly psychological, based on the principle of "sympathetic treatment," for practically all elaborate physical "cures" are either useless or positively harmful. Only method which has given good results is a rapid reduction over four to ten days of the amount of narcotics the addict is accustomed to take (known to addicts as the "iron-cure"). Restlessness is overcome by several ten-minute warm baths a day. This treatment reduces the addict's excruciating withdrawal pains. Patients in Lexington engage in various occupations on the farm, are allowed a considerable amount of freedom around the grounds.

Practically the same type of treatment will be tried in Fort Worth, which will be directed by Dr. William Frederick Ossenfort and accommodate 1,000 men. But in spite of modern treatment and exhaustive psychological analyses, few addicts ever recover. Other interesting facts released by the Public Health Service:

Most addicts start using drugs in their late twenties, but addiction may occur at any age. Physicians frankly admit they are stumped by the cause of addiction, generally attribute it to a desire for excitement. Relatively few persons have become addicted through use of medicines for relief of pain.

Morphine is the favorite drug of addicts. Next in popularity are opium-smoking ("rolling the log") and heroin. Cocaine is not so widely used as formerly.

Drug addiction does not lead to perpetration of violent crimes. Said Dr. Lawrence Kolb, top man in the field: "Both heroin and morphine in large doses change drunken, fighting psychopaths into sober, cowardly, nonaggressive idlers. . . ." High cost of bootleg drugs, however, practically forces addicts of small incomes to resort to sneak thievery ("rooting on the derrick").

Although most of them are incurable, less than 20% of addicts admitted to the Lexington Hospital had a really intense craving for narcotics. Reason: bootleg narcotics are not only expensive, but highly adulterated ("cut").

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http://www.time.com/time/magazine/ar...772060,00.html

[Expat98]

Another article. BTW, there's also a new book about it published in October 2008 titled, The Narcotic Farm: The Rise and Fall of America's First Prison for Drug Addicts.

Also, more photos here.

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U.S. Narcotic Farm

For nearly four decades, from the 1930s to the '70s, Lexington was a center for drug research and treatment. It drew addicts talented and desperate, obscure and celebrated, and provided free treatment and more: job training, sports, dental help, music lessons, even manicures. Research done there, much of it conducted with volunteer human subjects, yielded insights into drug addiction that still resonate today.

Jazz greats Chet Baker and Elvin Jones took the Lexington Cure. So did William S. Burroughs and his son, both of whom wrote about it. The father described the grueling detox but opined that the food was excellent. The son wrote about the place's isolation, and the joys of landing an easy job on-site.

A 1930s big government project emblematic of the New Deal, Narco was a joint venture of the Public Health Service and the Bureau of Prisons. The notion that thorny problems are best solved by a centralized bureaucracy is a concept that has seen happier days, but Narco's founders were sure that government, fueled by money and manpower, could change a nation's social landscape — from Lexington and a facility in Fort Worth Texas, that opened in 1938.



Lexington's countryside setting was important because this was a project that idealized rural life, built on a belief that if you turned up hopelessly addicted and worked in the sun, learned wholesome values, got dental care and played golf, maybe you could leave drugs behind. The nation, in the throes of the Depression, was flush with ambition if not cash, and drug addiction was seen as more of a bad habit than a brain-based physiological craving. But the odds of success with treatment at Narco were, it turned out, abysmally bad — as low as 7 percent, according to a 1962 survey.

"She rose proudly. She had spires and Roman cornices and Greek ramparts and punk American Depression symbols of electricity that coursed about the pregnant dirtybrown marble belly, and She pronounced the smug disunity of her period with disordered extensions and low, latched-on excrescences, and windows, windows, thousandsandthousands of windows that hadn't been washed in decades, and stared like the cataract eyes of a square caterpillar onto the peacefully curving road that led into the black socket of her navel." — from The Farm by Clarence Cooper Jr., written in 1966

The Lexington Cure drew pop culture portrayals like a July picnic draws flies, but its depiction in the press changed over the decades, from unabashed heroic poses in the 1930s to the lurid tabloid coverage of the '50s. Photos from 1951 feature a patient undergoing withdrawal in the "shooting gallery," male patients lined up for a shot of morphine during detoxification. The caption on a photo of a barefoot teenage girl, face buried in her hands, reads: "Sweating it out after the withdrawal phase, a 17-year-old sits despondently on her bed, fighting the craving. Out of curiosity because others in her crowd took it, she smoked marijuana at 13 for a bang, then took heroin 'for a lift.'"

Heroin's popularity in the era's jazz circles, and the musicians' subsequent trips to Lexington, provided Narco with one of its greatest claims to fame: the Narco jazz band. But no audio of the band — including its 1964 performance on Johnny Carson's late-night television talk show — still exists. The band has a nickname: "the greatest band you never heard." The level of talent that passed through Narco was staggering: from jazz musicians to writers to those whose talents vanished beneath their unconquered addictions.

The Narco Farm was a prison, but it also offered free drug treatment to almost anyone who asked. Once on site, it was difficult to tell who was considered a criminal and who had simply lost their way to heroin — a drug once touted in the same ad with Bayer aspirin as a cure for coughs. All sorts of people checked in to Narco, but patient demographics shifted over the decades. When Narco first opened, its population skewed toward older, white addicts. But in the 1940s, more young addicts and African-Americans? were admitted. The Lexington Herald reported in 1955 that most Narco residents were addicted to heroin and the average patient was young and likely to be of African-American? or Latino descent.

Starting in 1968, those who qualified could serve six months of civil commitment for drug treatment instead of jail. Lexington became the toast of the civil commitment program.

But by 1972, the idea of a small treatment community that had evolved out of the behemoth Narco had become poisonous. The Lexington Herald reported in the early 1970s allegations that at Matrix House, one of the small communities, "some of the patients were stripped of their clothing and their pubic hair burned off, that some of the male patients' genitals were placed in ice water for long periods of time." Nude rituals and bomb-making were also alleged. By 1973, though, even the center's former boosters had turned against it. Dr. Harold Conrad, chief of the addiction research center at Narco, dismissed the place as being remote and no longer nationally unique.

In 1974, Narco was closed as a therapeutic center. On Dec. 31, 1976, the last human research subject there was transferred out. In 1984, its addiction research operations were moved to Baltimore. The prison became a Federal Correctional Institution, and then in 1991, changed its name to the Federal Medical Center. Hundreds of acres became Lexington's Masterson Station Park.

Now, 73 years after the complex opened, the drive up the hill is still as long as William Burroughs Jr. described it, and the architecture is still an exemplar of the United States governmental-behemoth style — a Biltmore built of good intentions. But it's now in the Lexington suburbs, not in the American countryside.

Even with cyclone fencing that lines the front façade, it still looks like a castle on the hill.

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http://www.asylumprojects.org/tiki-i...Narcotics+Farm