This book covers the history of for-profit institutions for the treatment of drug and alcohol habits which were established prior to the Repeal of Prohibition, as well as a number of miscellaneous entities such as mail-order opium cures. These include the famous Charles B. Towns Hospital and its notorious belladonna cure. Although many people know that Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson was treated with the belladonna cure at the Charles B. Towns Hospital, few are aware that Towns was an insurance salesman with an eighth grade education and no medical training who lied about inventing an addiction cure that he got from someone else, that Towns had also been a stockbroker who was convicted of grand larceny after embezzling money for his clients, and that Towns only decided to make a buck in the addiction cure business after being banned from stock trading. Furthermore, in the 1910s, Towns proposed that state government should force drug addicts to take his cure against their wills, and that death camps should be built to exterminate anyone who relapsed after taking his cure. This book also tells the story of Harry Hubbell Kane, who founded the De Quincey Home for the cure of drug addicts in 1881. After the De Quincey Home failed in 1883, Kane invented and marketed a notorious patent medicine named Scotch Oats Essence. Scotch Oats Essence was comprised of one third alcohol and each ounce contained about a half a grain of morphine. It seems that Kane had decided that if he couldn't make money by curing drug addicts, he could make a lot of money by creating them. These are only two of hundreds of addiction treatment facilities which existed prior to the founding of AA: some good, some bad, and some indifferent. These stories and many more can be found in this book.

This is an updated listing of facilities for the treatment of drug and alcohol addiction up to 1950.

The inebriate asylum movement of the 19th and early 20th century was guided by a dystopian vision which sought to incarcerate all drinkers until they were cured, and to incarcerate incurable inebriates for life. This plan to create a nationwide chain of state-run inebriate asylums to rival the insane asylums of the era, which was promoted by the American Association for the Cure of Inebriates, ended in abject failure. Few inebriate asylums were ever established, and those that were established did not last long. Many were shot through with political corruption and graft. Moreover, no state government was willing to pass a law to incarcerate drinkers indefinitely, perhaps for life. Most states never built an inebriate asylum or passed a law to commit inebriates to specialized inebriate institutions, for the few states which did pass such laws, the typical commitment was six months or one year. A rival movement of the same era sought to establish inebriate homes rather than asylums. Inebriate homes were run on the honor system and sought to cure with kindness and a client-centered approach which foreshadows Rogerian Therapy. Inebriate homes had more success than inebriate asylums; the Boston Washingtonian Home was in existence for more than a century. This book tells the story of the government-run and the non-profit addiction treatment facilities which were founded prior to the Repeal of Prohibition in 1933: inebriate asylums, homes, and farms, as well as the municipal narcotic clinics which dispensed morphine to addicts, the Federal Narcotic Farms at Lexington and Fort Worth, and the alcoholic ward at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. This book also discusses the close ties between the temperance movement and addiction treatment in the 19th and early 20th centuries and the automaton theory of inebriety, which presages today's hijacked brain theory. This book also discusses the genesis of the 12-step Minnesota Model at the State Inebriate Farm at Willmar, the introduction and disastrous ending of Synanon-based therapeutic communities at the Lexington Narcotic Farm, and the introduction of methadone programs at Bellevue and at the Boston Washingtonian Hospital. Groundbreaking studies of opiates, marijuana, barbiturates, alcohol, naloxone, and LSD conducted at the Lexington Narcotic Farm are also covered, as is the research at Bellevue Hospital on Korsakoff's Syndrome and the protective effect of vitamin B1.

This work uncovers the history of women and addiction in America and how dependent women have been treated. The author is critical of doctors who have often been quick to prescribe narcotics to female patients.