Little known fact: Bill Wilson, the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, took LSD and was an advocate for the drug in the 1950s.
He believed LSD could help “cynical” alcoholics who had trouble with the concept of a higher power to have a “spiritual awakening.”
Wilson had a secret admirer in Aldous Huxley, author of the dystopian novel Brave New World and the essay The Doors of Perception, in which he wrote about his experiences with the hallucinogen mescaline. Through Huxley, Wilson met a couple of scientists — Dr. Humphry Osmond (a British man of science who coined the term “psychedelic”) and Dr. Abram Hoffer — who were experimenting with the drug on alcoholics and schizophrenics. Those tests began in 1954, nearly 20 years after AA had been founded. Almost no one yet knew what LSD was let alone had ever taken it.
But after taking LSD, when it was still an obscure drug, Wilson argued that it reduces ego and opens up the mind to submit to a supernatural experience and a higher power.
The following quotes in this article come from the anonymously written book Pass it On: The Story of Bill Wilson and How the AA Message Reached the World.
Bill was enthusiastic about his experience with LSD; he felt it helped him eliminate barriers erected by the self, or ego, that stand in the way of one’s direct experience of the cosmos and of God. He thought he might have found something that could make a big difference to the lives of many who still suffered.
At first, Wilson was skeptical. He didn’t want to give alcoholics drugs. When he saw the findings Osmond and Hoffer were producing — that LSD had the power to affect spiritual transformation — he changed his mind.
Wilson came to consider LSD as harmless and a benefit for some people. He believed that anything that could be of help to alcoholics was good and saw LSD as a means to connect with people who had dropped out of the program or for whom the program did not work.
Wilson noted that many thought LSD was being used as a dangerous psychiatric experiment, but that nothing could be farther from the truth.
In the course of four years, Drs. Osmond and Hoffer had administered acid to 400 people, using an audio recorder to chronicle the trips. The researchers reported that there was no harm, no risk of addiction, and that LSD was “about as harmless as aspirin,” according to Bill.
Because of Bill’s spiritual revelation, Alcoholics Anonymous considered sanctioning LSD in the program. And, in 1959, Wilson stopped participating in acid tests. It is unclear why. Meanwhile, LSD went on to be the drug of choice for hippies in the Woodstock era of the “Turn On. Tune In. Drop Out” late ‘60s.
But why would Wilson actually think that a synthetic, mood-altering chemical drug was worthy of the program? Well, if you look at the 12 Steps and the 12 Traditions of AA, there is actually no mention of illicit drugs — only alcohol. Was he tripping? Yes indeed, he was.
