The Narcotic Farm

About this book

"From its opening in 1935, the United States Narcotic Farm in Lexington, Kentucky, epitomized the nation's ambivalence about how to deal with drug addiction. On the one hand, it functioned as a compassionate and humane hospital, an 'asylum on the hill' on 1,000 acres of farmland where addicts could recover from their drug habits. On the other hand, it was an imposing federal prison built for the incarceration of drug addicts. 'Narco, ' as it was known, was a strange anomaly, a coed institution where federal convicts did time alongside volunteers who checked themselves in for rehabilitation. It became the world's epicenter for drug treatment and addiction research. For forty years it was the gathering place for this country's growing drug subculture, a rite of passage that initiated famous jazz musicians, drug-abusing MDs, street hustlers, and drugstore cowboys into the new fraternal order of the American junkie. The Narcotic Farm tells the story of the institution's noble rise and tumultuous fall, and includes rare and unpublished photographs, film stills, newspaper and magazine clippings, government documents, as well as recollections from the prisoners, doctors, and staff who lived and worked there."--Jacket.