Junky
<p class="MsoNormal">"<b>Reflecting Burroughs' studies in anthropology </b>(first at Harvard and then Mexico City College), it [the book <i>Junky</i>] <b>mimics the ethnographic field report, detailing the territories and habits of various urban American subcultures</b>... Its attention to hipster idiom and criminal argot <b>makes it a study of underworld linguistics</b>." (p. x).</p>
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"Finally, the <b>long section of <i>Junky</i> set in the</b> <b>Public Health Service Narcotic Hospital at Lexington</b> is <b>especially significant</b>, because it gives a firsthand description of the <b>key federal institution</b>, important not only for the treatment of addiction, but for <b>medical research</b> (from the 1950s, this included <b>secret CIA experiments</b>) and the <b>development of policy over four decades</b>... In 1946, Lexington's intake was 600; in 1949, there were nearly 3,000 admissions; in1950, over 5,500. <b>This massive increase</b> featured <b>two demographic changes</b>: as Jill Jonnes notes, there were 214 <b>black admissions</b> in 1949; in 1950, the figure was 1,460. The other feature was <b>an equally spectacular rise in the number of young addicts</b>, and in 1951 a special new juvenile ward was opened to cope with the problem; as <b>Bill Gains says, with a gloating smile for emphasis, "Yes, Lexington is full of young kids now." </b>...But, as David Courtwright notes, hard epidemiological data, like the Lexington intake figures, actually supports Burroughs' insistence throughout <i>Junky</i> that <b>addiction is not a moral failing or a psychopathology demanding punitive treatment but a disease of exposure." </b>(pp. xxvi-xxvii).</p>
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The "disease of exposure" assumption seems to have been embedded in the M.O. of Burroughs, Leary, and Kesey's Merry Pranksters in their psychotic multicolored bus.</p>
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""the damage to health is minimal no matter what the uh... American Narcotics Department may say..." "
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnxweVAvE5w</p>