How to Change Your Mind

IN THE MID-1950S, Bill Wilson, the cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous,
learned about Osmond and Hoffer’s work with alcoholics. The idea that a
drug could occasion a life-changing spiritual experience was not exactly
news to Bill W., as he was known in the fellowship. He credited his own
sobriety to a mystical experience he had on belladonna, a plant-derived
alkaloid with hallucinogenic properties that was administered to him at
Towns Hospital in Manhattan in 1934. Few members of AA realize that
the whole idea of a spiritual awakening leading one to surrender to a
“higher power”—a cornerstone of Alcoholics Anonymous—can be traced
to a psychedelic drug trip.
Twenty years later, Bill W. became curious to see if LSD, this new
wonder drug, might prove useful in helping recovering alcoholics have
such an awakening. Through Humphry Osmond he got in touch with
Sidney Cohen, an internist at the Brentwood VA hospital (and, later,
UCLA) who had been experimenting with Sandoz LSD since 1955.
Beginning in 1956, Bill W. had several LSD sessions in Los Angeles with
Sidney Cohen and Betty Eisner, a young psychologist who had recently
completed her doctorate at UCLA. Along with the psychiatrist Oscar
Janiger, Cohen and Eisner were by then leading figures in a new hub of
LSD research loosely centered on UCLA. By the mid-1950s, there were
perhaps a dozen such hubs in North America and Europe; most of them
kept in close contact with one another, sharing techniques, discoveries,
and, sometimes, drugs, in a spirit that was generally more cooperative
than competitive.
Bill W.’s sessions with Cohen and Eisner convinced him that LSD
could reliably occasion the kind of spiritual awakening he believed one
needed in order to get sober; however, he did not believe the LSD
experience was anything like the DTs, thus driving another nail in the
coffin of that idea. Bill W. thought there might be a place for LSD therapy
in AA, but his colleagues on the board of the fellowship strongly
disagreed, believing that to condone the use of any mind-altering
substance risked muddying the organization’s brand and message.

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