Tag Archives: Bill Wilson and LSD

11/3/20

Bill W. and His LSD Experiences Part 2

© Liliya Kapura | 123rf.com

Betty Eisner was an American psychologist who pioneered the use of hallucinogens, particularly LSD, as adjuncts to psychotherapy. Along with Sydney Cohen, she originated the practice of using both male and female therapists during psychotherapeutic hallucinogenic sessions. She also served on the board of advisors for the Alfred Hofmann Foundation. Hofmann was a Swiss scientist and the first person who synthesized and then accidentally ingested LSD, thus learning of its psychedelic effects. But it also seems Eisner was present when Bill W., cofounder of A.A., first tried LSD.

In 2002, Eisner completed an unpublished manuscript that documented her recollections and correspondence about the early work with psychedelics, “Remembrances of LSD therapy past.” “Remembrances” contains several references to W. or W. Wilson (Bill W.) and Tom Powers. She said in the fall of 1956 and early 1957, there was a boiling pot of activity surrounding dozens of people who had taken LSD and/or mescaline.

And we discussed them, Sid and I – and Al, and Humphry Osmond when he visited, and people like Tom Powers who came from the east coast to experience LSD, bringing W. Wilson from AA on several trips. Every one of the people wanted to talk about their experiences, experiences which were so unique that each one of us was busy trying to make sense of all the phenomena which were occurring, and to fit them into some intelligible description, category, and understanding.

In a January 12, 1957 letter to Ewing Reilly, who was funding Cohen and Eisner’s research at the time, she mentioned that one of the hypotheses she wanted to test was that when A.A.’s were really close to accepting the Third Step, were they also “really open to what LSD can do for them.” In a February 13, 1957 letter to Tom, Betty said after dropping him off at Miramar, she had the thought that while he spoke well about not being able to help Bill (W. Wilson, co-founder of A.A.), “the words are not yet synchronized to the music.” She closed her letter asking Tom to give Bill her best regards and tell him it was a real pleasure to meet such an interesting, extraordinary, and powerful person—and challenging problem to himself and others.

On February 16, 1957, Sid, Betty Tom and Bill all participated in the very first “group session” with LSD. It had been Betty’s idea, as she wanted “to see what would happen” if everyone simultaneously took LSD, blurring the line between patient and facilitators. Not sure what the result would be, she conservatively proposed that they should all take a low dose of 25-gamma LSD. On previous occasions they had all taken larger doses of LSD. When Bill came into the room, she knew it would be his session.

Sid was waiting for us in his office at the hospital and there were warm greetings to Tom and W. At 12:20 we took the drug… W. had taken 50 gamma — the rest of us 25. When offered the little blue pills and was told by Sid to take what he wanted, he said — ‘Never say that to a drunk,’ and took two… it was 35 minutes later when he said he felt stirred by the music, and 10 minutes after that when he began talking. Throughout the session he rarely would admit feeling the drug or its action, but about the time he started talking quite a bit in a more relaxed way his face changed, he looked much younger, and the tension began to go.

Tom and Betty took turns in the role of therapist; Sid Cohen was mostly quiet. There were two important dynamics to the problem(s) uncovered that she was hesitant to say much about. The issues were Bill’s experience of himself as unloved and the perception that it was because of his parents that this occurred. Bill’s family history noted in Pass It On is consistent with these two interpretations. She thought Tom jumped “too many levels and lost W.” At other times, she thought he was “off the beam.” At around 4 pm, Bill appeared to be coming out of it and rebuilding his defenses. Later at dinner, she thought her husband Will really got through to Bill a couple of times on “the shared bridge between them of depression.”

On February 26, 1957, Tom wrote to Betty, saying her report of their February 16th session came that day. He said he thought that both her and Will were good for Bill, because they were among the few people who were interested and loving enough to deal with him forthrightly and outside of “the highly forced and artificial context of his position in A.A.” He thought their session did Bill a lot of good— “and I think you and the LSD are very largely responsible.” Bill did not write until March 22, 1957, when he said: “Please forgive this late response in thanking you for all the friendship you gave so freely on my last trip to the coast. More often than you can guess, I have continued to think of you.” He added that since returning home, he felt—and hoped he 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.”

There was further correspondence back-and-forth between Betty and Tom in “Remembrances of LSD therapy past,” but nothing more from Bill. Tom assured Betty in an April 13, 1957 letter that his interest in LSD continued to be very keen and he was looking forward to another planned meeting and an optimum LSD session. He said the total effect of the three sessions had profoundly changed him for the good. He added that Bill was also strongly affected for the good and others noticed how much better he was. “He himself is very happy about it and realizes clearly what it is that has done it.”

In Bill W., Francis Hartigan said Bill’s enthusiasm for LSD convinced his wife Lois and Nell Wing, his secretary, to try LSD. He even convinced Farther Dowling, his spiritual advisor, to try it. Hartigan said under the supervision of a psychiatrist from Roosevelt Hospital, Bill continued with LSD experiments in the late 1950s. The New York participants were all sober. The purpose was to determine if LSD could might produce insights that were preventing people from feeling more spiritually alive. Bill agreed with Huxley’s statement that LSD’s power was that it could open “doors of perception.” He described his first experiences with LSD as similar to what he had experienced in Towns Hospital the night his obsession with alcohol was lifted.

In a long letter Bill wrote to Sam Shoemaker in June of 1958, he discussed his LSD use. He admitted he had taken it several times over the last two years and also collected considerable information about it. He rejected the allegation that LSD was a new psychiatric toy of “awful dangers.” He named several researchers he’d met in his own investigation of LSD, including Sidney Cohen, and said they found no tendency to addiction; no physical risk whatever. “The material is about as harmless as aspirin.”

He thought that prayer, fasting, meditation, despair, and other conditions that predispose an individual to mystical experiences had their chemical components. He then theorized that these chemical conditions helped shut down normal ego drives; and to that extent, “they do open the doors to a wider perception.” Presciently, he saw it would be a huge misfortune if LSD got loose in the general public without careful preparation about what the drug is and what the meaning of its effects could be. “And do believe that I am perfectly aware of the dangers to A.A. I know that I must not compromise its future and would gladly withdraw from these new activities if ever this became apparent.”

As Pass It On noted, Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (later known as Ram Dass), were experimenting with LSD at Harvard. Until that time, LSD experiments has been quiet and uneventful. Their work erupted in a scandal when two of the students in their studies, both minors, has distressing flashback experiences. Leary left Harvard and went on the be famous for the slogan, “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” He tried to get involved with Bill’s LSD work in the late 1950s, but Bill did not want to include him. Bill kept putting him off until eventually, Leary stopped asking.

In “Remembrances of LSD therapy past,” Eisner mentioned Leary in a December 1962 letter to Humphry Osmond, saying it had been fun to see Leary and Alpert. The two of them had been out to California for a weekend of lectures and workshops. She noted there seemed to be quite a movement gathering around Leary and Alpert for personal research in expanding consciousness. She said she was bothered by a separateness, or special sort of language that seemed to be developing with Leary and Alpert.  She then mused, “I wonder why so much of the drug work has led to fractionation rather than fusion.”

In a May 26, 1963 letter from Osmond to Eisner, Humphry said he was worried about Tim Leary, and found it hard to maintain contact with him. He said Leary had failed to get an adequate advisor on psychopharmacology and acted as if the powerful chemicals he was experimenting with were harmless toys: “They aren’t.” Osmond said in illnesses like alcoholism they may be harmless relative to the likely outcome, but that was something different.

In March of 1966 Time magazine reported that the US was suffering from an LSD epidemic. By June both California and Nevada had legislated against LSD, and by October, LSD was illegal in the whole country. All this was too much for Sandoz, which had been taking an increasing amount of flack because of LSD and psilocybin, and in April of 1966, Sandoz terminated all research contracts involved with the two drugs and indicated their willingness to turn over all their supplies to the FDA. For 26 years there was no more legal psychedelic research in the United States.

IF you are interested in reading more about Bill W. and LSD, try “Bill W. and His LSD Experiences Part 1,” or “As Harmless as Aspirin?” For more information on the therapeutic use of hallucinogens, see “Back to the Future with Psychedelics;” “The Unique Scientific Value of Ibogaine” Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3; “Ayahuasca Anonymous,” Part 1 and Part 2; “Psychedelic Renaissance?;” “Give MDMA a Chance?” and more.

10/27/20

Bill W. and His LSD Experiences, Part 1

© Christian Mueller | 123rf.com

Bill W., the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, has an acknowledged history of LSD use in the 1950s. This was when LSD was an unknown, experimental chemical, with no regulations or restrictions regulating its use. The A.A. published story of Bill Wilson and how the A.A. message reached the world, Pass It On, openly discussed Bill’s interest in LSD. It mentioned individuals who were known by or became friends to Bill—Gerald Heard, Aldous Huxley and Humphry Osmond—and who also happen to be important figures in the history of psychedelics. Yet by 1959, “Bill had personally withdrawn from the LSD experiments,” so that he would not compromise the future of A.A. But there is more to the story of Bill W. and LSD than what is found in Pass It On.

It began in the winter of 1943-44 when Bill and his wife Lois set out on a cross-country trip visiting A.A. groups that had sprouted up since the 1939 publication of the Big Book. According to Susan Cheever in My Name is Bill, Bill and Lois met Gerald Heard and Aldous Huxley while they were in Palo Alto, California and there was an immediate attraction between Wilson and Huxley. Heard and Huxley believed the betterment of society would come from an experiment in community and community education. Bill and A.A. were the practical application of that philosophy. Heard and Huxley invited Bill and Lois to spend New Year’s week at Trabuco College, a retreat center in the desert established by Heard to study comparative religion, and research meditation and prayer. The Wilsons returned to New York on January 22, 1944, but an important friendship was formed.

Pass It On said Bill and Huxley had an immediate rapport, one that Bill was immensely proud of. “They had much in common, although Huxley was not an alcoholic.” Huxley would later say he considered Bill to be a “modern saint” and “the greatest social architect of the twentieth century.” It was through Bill’s friendship with Huxley that Bill first heard about, and eventually decided to try LSD.

Humphry Osmond began his research with LSD and mescaline at St. George’s Hospital in London, where he was employed after WW II. In 1951, he moved to Saskatchewan, Canada to join the staff at Weybrun Mental Hospital. At Weybrun he organized the hospital as a design-research laboratory where he conducted a variety of studies into the use of hallucinogenic drugs. He was initially investigating the possibility that schizophrenia arose primarily from distortions of perception similar to those experienced by individuals under the influence of mescaline or LSD. But unexpectedly, Osmond began to see the potential of these drugs to foster mind-expanding, mystical experiences. It was during this time of experimentation that Aldous Huxley began a correspondence with Osmond and eventually asked him if he would kindly supply Huxley with a dose of mescaline.

In May of 1953 Osmond traveled to the Los Angeles area for a conference, where he provided the requested dose of mescaline and supervised Huxley’s experience with mescaline. Huxley would write The Doors of Perception (1954), which enthusiastically described his experience. He wrote: “The mystical experience is doubly valuable; it is valuable because it gives the experiencer a better understanding of himself and the world and because it may help him to lead a led self-centered and more creative life.” Gerald Heard tried mescaline in 1954 and then tried LSD in 1955. Heard felt that properly used, these psychedelics had the potential to enlarge a man’s mind, by allowing him to see beyond his ego.

Huxley and Heard would have naturally thought of what LSD could mean for Bill W., but Bill was initially opposed to giving drugs to alcoholics. In Pass It On, Osmond said: “I went down and was introduced to Bill and told him about it, and he was extremely unthrilled. He was very much against giving alcoholics drugs.” Huxley was apparently able to convince Bill of the mystical potential of LSD. Osmond reported that when alcoholics were given LSD, they reported having a new clarity of vision, a new vividness of experience. From his observations of the LSD work with alcoholics, Bill concluded LSD temporarily reduced the forces of the ego, which allowed the influx of God’s grace.

If therefore, under LSD we can have a temporary reduction, so that we can better see what we are and where we are going—well, that might be of some help. So I consider LSD to be of some value to some people, and practically no damage to anyone. It will never take the place of any of the existing means by which we can reduce the ego, and keep it reduced.

While Bill was debating the wisdom of trying it for himself, there were two other individuals taking the LSD plunge—a man and a woman who would have an important role in Bill’s exploration of LSD.

Dr. Sidney Cohen, a psychiatrist at Wadsworth VA Hospital in Los Angeles, first took LSD on October 12, 1955, reporting that the “problems and strivings, the worries and frustrations of everyday life vanished; in their place was a majestic, sunlit, heavenly inner quietude.” He immediately began doing his own research with Huxley. And on August 29, 1956 at Trabuco College, he supervised Bill Wilson’s first experience with LSD. Gerald Heard took notes; Aldous Huxley and Tom Powers, an A.A. friend of Bill’s from New York, stood by. According to Susan Cheever in My Name is Bill and the A.A. approved book Pass It On, Bill loved LSD and felt it helped him eliminate many of the barriers erected by the ego that stood in the way of his direct experience of God and the universe. It reminded him of his initial “hot flash” experience in Towns Hospital.

Betty Eisner, a psychology grad student, was Cohen’s initial research subject in 1955. As a result of her intense interest in his LSD work, Betty began meeting periodically with Sidney Cohen. A case report of her LSD experience was included in an article published in The American Journal of Psychiatry in July of 1958, “Subjective Reports of Lysergic Acid Experiences in a Context of Psychological Test Performance.” Eisner completed her Ph.D. by the end of July 1956 and was a coauthor of this paper along with Cohen and Lionel Fichman.

Eisner and Cohen began to think LSD could be helpful in facilitating psychotherapy, as well as curing alcoholism and enhancing creativity. They coauthored, “Psychotherapy with Lysergic Acid Diethylamide,” which was published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disorders in 1958. For a time, Bill W. was an integral part of their exploration of the psychotherapeutic benefits of LSD. Eisner maintained an active interest in hallucinogens throughout her career. Cohen would eventually become a director for the National Institute of Mental Health, but was always opposed to the counterculture movement’s use of LSD. He thought it was only safe when used under medical supervision.

In Part 2, we’ll look at the time period between the fall of 1956 and early 1957, what Eisner described as a boiling pot of activity surrounding LSD and mescaline. And Bill W. was in the middle of the pot.