The Haunting Abandoned Island In The Middle Of NYC

Heroin Addiction on North Brother Island

The tuberculosis building was never used to treat tuberculosis patients and was instead used for Riverside Hospital’s juvenile drug treatment program. It turns out, the building wasn’t much suited for rehab. Many of the doors in the building were turned into seclusion rooms with heavy deadbolts and sheet metal reinforcement. This is how they’d treat people going through withdrawal.

Drug-addicted patients were locked in a seclusion room given only a bare mattress and a mess bucket. They were forced to go through withdrawal alone, and given no medicine unless the situation was life-threatening. After several days, the withdrawal would be complete, in which case they were thrown back into the general population completely unequipped to handle sobriety.