LSD’s Controversial Connection With Alcoholics Anonymous
In a fascinating long-read, Katie McBride at Inverse traces the controversial and little-known connection between LSD and Alcoholics Anonymous. When co-founder and hero of the abstinence-only program, Bill Wilson, dropped acid 66 years ago, he had two decades sober and AA was in full swing. This experience would “fundamentally transform his outlook on recovery, horrify AA leadership and disappoint hundreds of thousands who had credited him with saving their lives.” Despite it being hushed up, Wilson believed that LSD was actually crucial to his ultimate recovery. He wrote in 1957, “I am certain that the LSD experience has helped me very much. I find myself with a heightened color perception and an appreciation of beauty almost destroyed by my years of depression… The sensation that the partition between ‘here’ and ‘there’ has become very thin is constantly with me.” Essentially, the belief centers on the fact that sobriety doesn’t always cure depression. As McBride says, “Mind-altering drugs are not always antithetical to sobriety. Instead, psychedelics may be a means to achieve and maintain recovery from addiction.” Read the full story at INVERSE.
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Via inverse.com link opens in a new window
