The Inebriate Asylum: America's First Addiction Hospital

When Dr. Joseph Edward Turner proposed a publicly funded hospital to treat alcoholism as a medical disease, most Americans thought he was out of his mind. Temperance groups and religious reformers insisted drunkenness was a moral failing, not an illness. The state legislature was skeptical. But Turner persisted for decades, and in eighteen fifty-four the New York State Inebriate Asylum was chartered in Binghamton.

Construction began in eighteen fifty-seven. The first patients arrived in eighteen sixty-four, making it the first medically directed addiction treatment center in the United States, built in the middle of the Civil War. The experiment did not last long in its original form. By eighteen seventy-nine, funding pressures forced a conversion to a general mental hospital. The castle-like building continued in psychiatric use until nineteen ninety-three. Today it stands on the National Register of Historic Places, a reminder that the argument over how America understands addiction is older than most people imagine.