And as Bill continued to experiment with “something that could make a big difference to the lives of many who still suffered” other AA members were not so optimistic. If they were not happy with Bill seeking help from a psychiatrist, then using a mind-altering substance, whether beneficial or not, was an entirely different controversy.
“As word of Bill’s activities reached the Fellowship, there were inevitable repercussions. Most A.A.’s were violently opposed to his experimenting with a mind-altering substance. LSD was then totally unfamiliar, poorly researched, and entirely experimental — and Bill was taking it.”-Pass it On
Although Bill was encouraged and outspoken to his friends about the potential benefits of LSD therapies, he limited his public talks about the subject, perhaps knowing how controversial the subject was. Perhaps the closest he came to trying to convince the greater AA community to remain open to new research comes from these 1959 comments in the AA grapevine.
“We have made only a fair-sized dent on this vast world health problem. Millions are still sick and other millions soon will be. These facts of alcoholism should give us good reason to think, and to be humble. Surely, we can be grateful for every agency or method that tries to solve the problem of alcoholism — whether of medicine, religion, education, or research. We can be open-minded toward all such efforts, and we can be sympathetic when the ill-advised ones fail.”-Bill Wilson, March 1959, Grapevine.
In the end, it appears that AA, the organization, was not willing to endorse anything as controversial as psychedelics as an adjunct therapy for alcoholism, no matter how successful the research seemed to show. For them, it was, and perhaps is still considered…an “outside issue” and there it should remain.
Although it is unknown when Bill Wilson last used LSD, it is suggested that it probably occurred in the early 1960s. Bill Wilson, discouraged with the resistance in accepting psychedelics despite the apparent positive results of research, put more and more attention on the less controversial research in large doses of Niacin in reducing cravings for alcoholics and having an effect on depression. Abram Hoffer, pioneer in the work with alcoholism and LSD, was also experimenting with Niacin (which is not a psychedelic). Since Bill himself had started using large doses (1000mg) of Niacin and found that it dramatically reduced his depressive mood symptoms and cravings for alcohol that kept recurring despite being sober, he then launched his own case study with 30 AA members. He found that in the first month, 10 patients recovered. By the second month, 20 patients were mostly symptom free. Bill noted that patients “… showed prompt and usually spectacular recovery from sometimes long-standing depression, exhaustion, heavy tension and even troublesome paranoid behavior.”
Apparently Bill Wilsons use of psychedelics was not limited to LSD. In a September 1960 letter to Humphrey Osmond, Aldous Huxley writes of a meeting with Bill Wilson and another lesser known psychedelic
“…Yesterday I lunched with Bill Wilson who spoke enthusiastically of his own experiences with leuko-adrenochrome and of the successful use of it on his ex-alcoholic neurotics. This really sounds like a break-through and I hope you are going ahead with clinical testing. Do you have any of the stuff to spare? If so, I’d be most grateful for a sample. It might relieve my tension-pains in the lower back, as it relieved Bill’s aches and those of some of his friends. I wd like too to be able to send a few pills to Laura, who has some of Bill’s symptoms— tension, then exhaustion, and then tremendous drive to overcome the exhaustion.”
No more information is known of Bills usage of the rare psychedelic leuko-adrenochrome and his work with other alcoholics.
In 1968, Bill Wilson published a pamphlet entitled “The Vitamin B-3 Therapy” in which he claimed that those in his trials were now showing a 71% recovery rate after 2 years. Alcoholics Anonymous actively discouraged Bill Wilson to linking any of these studies with Alcoholics Anonymous, despite their possible potential for helping alcoholics, informing him that he needed to not use AA letterhead in any of his letters regarding Niacin therapy. Historically, and perhaps understandably, AA has been reluctant to change any of its program, its materials, or its simple message. Any suggestions to add, subtract or change (outside of simple edits) any of its source material or its program of recovery has always been met with resistance, both within AA the organization and among many of the members worldwide. A common sentiment is there is no need to change something that works so well for them, regardless of if it works equally well for everyone else.
Bill Wilson died 2 years after the publication of this alternative cures Vitamin B-3 pamphlet. It was reported by Ernest Kurtz, author of Not God, that at the end of his life Bill Wilson was asked what he wished to be remembered for. Bill responded, much to the chagrin of millions of recovery members, not with the co-creation of Alcoholics Anonymous…but with his work with Niacin therapy.
