LSD treatment is most effective against the demon drink, says a 2020 report. But AA founder Bill ‘W’ was ahead of the curve back in the 1950s

Hospitalised three times already in less than two years during the mid-30s, Bill ‘W’ Wilson checked himself into hospital for rehab bearing a copy of William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience.

He was given the Towns-Lambert treatment for detoxification made using deadly nightshade, henbane (both lively natural psychedelics) and morphine over a period of days.

A close converted christian friend and recovery fellow, Ebby, visited, and pressed the conversation towards Wilson’s atrocious treatment of his wife Lois. Wilson hit ‘rock bottom’ – ego death – and, as he writes in autobiography Pass it On:

“Then came the blazing thought, ‘you are a free man!’ A great peace stole over me, and this was accompanied by a sensation difficult to describe. I became acutely conscious of a Presence which seemed like a veritable sea of living spirit. I lay on the shores of a new world. ‘This’, I thought, ‘must be the great reality.”

“LSD therapy has contributed not a little to this happier state of affairs”

Wilson also experienced visions of “a chain of drunks” extending around the globe, assisting each others’ recovery. This would become Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Wilson also came to value spirituality, and etched its practice into The Twelve Steps. According to his I am Bill biographer Francis Hartigan, Wilson thought depression grew from a “lack of faith” and a dearth of “spiritual achievement.”

Vitally, he “did not see any conflict between science and medicine and religion.”

Thanks to Osmond’s work, church and community leaders were (at this stage) pro-LSD, having seen Osmond’s patients rejoin functional society. Wilson met Osmond and Hoffer in his role as an abstinence thought leader to discuss addiction in 1954. At this stage our favourite post-war sub-arctic boffins were blundering around believing LSD would prompt delerium tremens attacks that might shock drinkers out of their rut. Osmond: "We found, in fact, that this wasn't quite how it worked… not unlike Bill's experience. It gave us pause for thought. Not on the grounds of how terrifying it was, but how illuminating it was."

In 1955 Wilson took LSD under supervision from consciousness pioneer Gerald Heard and psychiatrist Sidney Cohen (who also provided Aldous Huxley’s deathbed LSD).

He wrote to Betty Eisner, one of his therapy team plus an especially innovative researcher into addiction and LSD, reporting:

“Since returning home I have felt — and hope have acted! — exceedingly well. I can make no doubt that the Eisner-Cohen-Powers-LSD therapy has contributed not a little to this happier state of affairs.”

AA's narrative was that it healed through a combination of complete sobriety and the ‘higher power’ (the latter Wilson considered contactable via LSD). Psychedelics and even psychology didn’t fit with that. To fervent AA members, “Bill’s seeking outside help was tantamount to saying the program didn’t work” writes Hardigan. 

“This,” 12-step founder Wilson thought, “must be the great reality”

In 2020, a systematic review published by Frontiers in Psychology compiling figures from alcoholism LSD treatments over many decades said, “LSD is revealed as a potential therapeutic agent in psychiatry; the evidence to date is strongest for the use of LSD in the treatment of alcoholism.”

John Hopkins stand-out Matthew Johnson began trials on psilocybin for smoking cessation in 2014, and has since racked up an 80% success rate that dwarfs other approaches. His team are also starting or planning studies using psilocybin therapy for a wide range of other conditions, including opioid addiction and alcoholism. 

Bill ‘W’ Wilson caved into pressure and stopped LSD therapy in the mid-60s. Neither his depression nor drinking returned.