|
veggie

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
|
This Day In History - August 29, 1956 2
#14995832 - 08/29/11 10:37 AM (12 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
August 29, 1956
Bill Wilson, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, took LSD for the first time
William Griffith Wilson, also known as Bill Wilson or Bill W., was the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) a fellowship of support groups world-wide dedicated to helping alcoholics achieve sobriety.
British radio commentator Gerald Heard introduced Bill W to Aldous Huxley and British psychiatrists Humphrey Osmond and Abram Hoffer. Humphrey and Osmond were working with schizophrenic and alcoholic patients at a Canadian hospital.
Bill joined with Heard and Huxley and first took LSD in CA on August 29, 1956. Medically supervised by psychiatrist Sidney Cohen of the LA VA hospital, the LSD experiments occurred well prior to the "hippie era" of the late 1960's.
Among those invited to experiment with LSD (and who accepted) were Nell Wing, Father Ed Dowling, Sam Shoemaker and Lois Wilson. Marty M and other AA members participated in NY (under medical supervision by a psychiatrist from Roosevelt Hospital).
Bill is quoted as saying: "It is a generally acknowledged fact in spiritual development that ego reduction makes the influx of God's grace possible. 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. The goal might become clearer. 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."
Bill thought of LSD as something of a miracle substance and continued taking it well into the ‘60s. As he approached his 70th birthday, he developed a plan to have LSD distributed at all AA meetings nationwide. A few years later the Federal government made the point moot by making the drug illegal.
|
Doobalicious
Ride the nightmare!



Registered: 08/17/11
Posts: 149
Loc: New Jersey (or is it...)
Last seen: 11 years, 10 months
|
Re: This Day In History - August 29, 1956 [Re: veggie]
#14995919 - 08/29/11 11:05 AM (12 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Good read!
|
DoDahDay
Stranger?



Registered: 10/10/10
Posts: 285
Loc: Bat country
Last seen: 2 years, 5 months
|
Re: This Day In History - August 29, 1956 [Re: Doobalicious]
#14997465 - 08/29/11 03:49 PM (12 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Bad outcome.
-------------------- "I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hampster and your father smelt of elderberries!"
|
cbhead23
Frisbee



Registered: 09/16/09
Posts: 539
Loc: GA
Last seen: 9 years, 1 month
|
Re: This Day In History - August 29, 1956 [Re: DoDahDay]
#14998237 - 08/29/11 06:25 PM (12 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Truth and truth!
|
OneMoreRobot3021



Registered: 06/06/03
Posts: 61,024
Loc: the sky
|
Re: This Day In History - August 29, 1956 [Re: DoDahDay]
#14998352 - 08/29/11 06:44 PM (12 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
DoDahDay said: Bad outcome.
How? I assume you are implying that you disapprove of AA as an organization - in case you misread (or didn't read the article in its entirety), Wilson took LSD long after he had created AA.
-------------------- Acid doesn't give you truths; it builds machines that push the envelope of perception. Whatever revelations came to me then have dissolved like skywriting. All I really know is that those few years saddled me with a faith in the redemptive potential of the imagination which, however flat, stale and unprofitable the world seems to me now, I cannot for the life of me shake. -Erik Davis
|
Toe_Jam
Bluefoot Bandit



Registered: 04/15/10
Posts: 3,693
Loc: Around some corner...
|
Re: This Day In History - August 29, 1956 [Re: veggie]
#14998372 - 08/29/11 06:48 PM (12 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
veggie said: he developed a plan to have LSD distributed at all AA meetings nationwide.
That would have been interesting.
-------------------- God lay his finger at the Mouth of the Serpent March 1984   A pleasing land of drowsy head it was, Of dreams that wave before the half-shut eye, And of gay castles in the clouds that pass, For ever flushing round a summer sky. -Castle of Indolence
|
DoDahDay
Stranger?



Registered: 10/10/10
Posts: 285
Loc: Bat country
Last seen: 2 years, 5 months
|
Re: This Day In History - August 29, 1956 [Re: Toe_Jam]
#14998644 - 08/29/11 07:32 PM (12 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
Quote:
Bill thought of LSD as something of a miracle substance and continued taking it well into the ‘60s. As he approached his 70th birthday, he developed a plan to have LSD distributed at all AA meetings nationwide. A few years later the Federal government made the point moot by making the drug illegal.
This was the bad outcome.
I believe that AA is a great thing. If they were doing this know, I would become an alcoholic tomorrow.
But, seriously, AA is a good thing.
-------------------- "I fart in your general direction! Your mother was a hampster and your father smelt of elderberries!"
|
waves


Registered: 04/03/10
Posts: 2,213
|
Re: This Day In History - August 29, 1956 [Re: DoDahDay]
#15000113 - 08/30/11 01:33 AM (12 years, 5 months ago) |
|
|
judging by that picture, the man was clearly an early pioneer of punk rock music
|
|