HUSEV 34 | The Narcotic Farm | Jaclyn Benson, Rebecca Bodary, Carissa Dawson, Eric Rodriguez, Karyn Tadlock | | | 9/20/2013 |

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It was the height of the great depression and America was home to some of the most desperate drug addicts. Society was at a loss as to how to handle the problem. Prisoners addicted to drugs in the mainstream prisons were not being treated humanely by officials or other inmates because it was felt that they did not have the moral character to fit into the general population. There were no other real places developed yet to house and treat people with addictions. In 1935 in a prison in Lexington, Kentucky the first treatment facility began looking for ways to help its inmates and others that were addicted to drugs. For the next couple of decades The Narcotic Farm, as it was called, became the most famous and infamous place available for the study and treatment of drug abuse. Addicted convicts would be treated in this prison but so would men and women who volunteered to go there for the help that no one else wanted to give them. Lexington held up to 1500 people, of which about one third were volunteer inmates who went there for 6 months of free treatment. Until this time addicts had been under the corrections umbrella. At other prisons addicts had been treated brutally, beatings had been common when inmates had been left to “kick” their addictions alone in their cells. The Narcotic Farm was run by doctors.
Lexington was described as a “country club” with sports activities, music bands, honest work and activities which occupied their idle hands. It was a place where inmates were often treated better than anywhere else in their lives. The volunteers could leave whenever they wanted but it was against medical advice and minors could not leave without a parental signature.
Treatment began by gradually easing people off