WHEEL ME OUT - The Narcotic Farm

The institution accepted federal prisoners and also volunteers who sought drug treatment. All lived together like convicts at the Narcotic Farm.
Photo by Arthur Rothstein, courtesy of the Kentucky Historical Society

Set on 1,000 acres of farmland in Lexington, Kentucky, The Narcotic Farm opened its doors in 1935 as the first publicly available drug treatment facility in the US. It was both a prison and voluntary drug treatment program, bringing together heroin-addicted jazz musicians, prostitutes, drugstore cowboys, Upper East Side housewives and drug-addicted felons all under one roof. At the same time, a discreet, CIA-funded laboratory was set up to experiment on the farm’s inhabitants with a range of pharmaceuticals and psychedelic drugs. William Burroughs wrote about it in Junky and Clarence Cooper JR’s stretch there is the subject of his cult novel The Farm.

For their book and documentary on 'Narco', JP Olsen and Luke Walden—along with co-author Nancy Campbell—talked to former inmates and guards, and unearthed archive footage and government documents to trace the rise and fall of a doomed experiment.

By Hannah Lack

How did you find out about The Narcotic Farm?

JP Olsen - I was doing research in methadone clinics around New York City and D.C. for another film and I ended up meeting former heroin addicts who were part of this jazz, hipster, dope fiend culture of the 40s and 50s - people who could tell stories about shooting up in the same room with Chet Baker. They all seemed to bring up The Narcotic Farm. To that group of people, having been there meant you were the real deal, sort of like going to Harvard, from the point of view of a junkie. Pretty much anyone who had a heroin problem they couldn’t kick in the 1940s and 50s went to The Narcotic Farm, so it was packed with jazz musicians because heroin was all over that scene at the time.

There were also some actors and entertainers - Peter Lorre was there, Ray Charles and Sammy Davis Jr. There were writers including Hubert Selby and most famously, William Burroughs. Burroughs’ son went there too and wrote about it in Kentucky Ham. Here was a place that was initially set up to literally end drug addiction for all of Mankind. That says a lot about the American mentality at the time, and also about the extraordinary lack of understanding about just how difficult drug addiction is to treat.

What experiments were they conducting at the farm?

Luke Walden - They were trying to figure out how drugs affect the body and the brain at every stage of drug abuse. They did everything from simple lab analyses of drugs to some pretty crazy human experiments. In some, inmates were kept high on morphine or barbiturates, sometimes for days, sometimes for months. Then they had to kick cold—which is legendarily awful—so the researchers could study that part of the cycle too.

The prisoners were constantly filling out questionnaires about how the drugs were affecting them. We had a lot of fun reading the hundreds of true/false tests with statements such as “I believe I could stay awake all night driving a car,” which would typically be answered “yes” by people on amphetamines. But we never could figure out what people were on if they answered “yes” to “the room seems larger than usual today,” so if anyone out there has any ideas about that, please let us know.

How did MC5’s Wayne Kramer get attached to the project?

JPO - I got in touch with Wayne because I read that he had done time at Lexington. We interviewed him and afterwards he asked who was doing the music for the film and we sort of said “ummm...” So he said, “I’m doing the music for the film.”. I do know from listening to Wayne talk about his prison experiences that it was crushing for him. It was dehumanizing and I gather, very scary at times as well.

From 1935 to the late 1960s The Narcotic Farm was synonymous with a humane approach to dealing with drug addicts. But by the time Wayne got there in 1976, the federal prison system’s approach to dealing with addicts had changed direction to such a degree that the attitude was: drug addict or not, you were doing hard time.

Our film and book are records of a place that, when it opened in 1935, was gleaming and optimistic and really trying to do good for a population that was, up until then, really demonised in a way that makes you feel ashamed. I think that now, in many ways, we’re right back there. Drug addiction is a complicated problem and it seems that in many cases the solution is to lock people up and call that justice.

The Narcotic Farm always had a thriving jazz scene with all-star bands composed of world class players.
Photo courtesy of The Library of Congress

Did any of the research lead to useful findings?

LW - Absolutely. For one, they showed that alcohol withdrawal, DTs, is a genuine physical condition and not a delusion, as a lot of doctors thought. They showed that barbiturates, which were widely used at the time, are highly addictive and have an extremely dangerous withdrawal process that can kill you.

They were trying to prevent the kind of pharmaceutical addiction that happened when heroin came on the market as a couch medicine in the late 1800s, and that we see today with drugs like Oxycodone. Their best-known development was Buprenorphine, currently the great medical hope to treat heroin addiction. They also came up with a conditioning theory of cues and triggers that helps explain why relapse is so common among recovering addicts. Once you go back into the environment where you started using drugs you’ve rewired your brain to the point that it's telling you “drugs are nearby, drugs are nearby.”

But I’d say the lab’s most important contribution was just a Big Idea, which was that addiction is a chronic, relapsing brain disease. They were way ahead of their time and this really moved the whole subject of drug addiction out of the realm of moral stigma and into a scientific one, which, frankly, is where we think it should stay.

Why was it shut down?

JPO - It came to be viewed as an expensive failure because there was no progress in lowering relapse rates. And this is something some deny to this day but I believe to be true. The connection between the CIA and its funding of the research lab to conduct LSD experiments on humans in the 50s looked so bad when it came out in 1973, there was no way they could continue. They looked like ghouls, frankly.

Strangely enough, the same kinds of drug experiments are still happening today in the States except they’re done on ‘free’ addicts, meaning you can come get your free crack, be studied and sent on your way with a couple thousand dollars in payment. It’s not talked about openly, but human drug tests are going on in medical centers all over the US right now, as I speak. WMO

More about The Narcotic Farm documentary and book

www.narcoticfarm.com