By Steve K.

For thousands of years, humans have sought altered states of consciousness as a pathway to healing, meaning, and connection with the sacred. In traditional societies, plant medicines that induce hallucinations were not dismissed as illusions but embraced as tools to access the divine or to repair broken relationships between body, spirit, and community.

In the early 20th century, this tradition resurfaced in a medical setting: the Towns Hospital in New York City. There, while undergoing the so-called “belladonna cure” for alcoholism, Bill Wilson — later co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) — experienced a vision of “White Light” that he interpreted as a direct encounter with God. Though the belladonna treatment was administered as a medical detox rather than spiritual cure, the hospital clinicians were aware the treatment caused altered states of consciousness (hallucinations and delirium) that could have a profound impact upon the patient.  Wilson’s interpretation of his experience placed him within an ancient lineage: the use of hallucinatory states as catalysts for profound spiritual transformation.

The Belladonna Cure at Towns Hospital

At Towns Hospital in New York, Charles B. Towns and Dr. Alexander Lambert developed a regimen that included belladonna, henbane, and related alkaloids, combined with purgatives and sedatives. The intent was to medically detoxify patients and interrupt dependence on alcohol and narcotics. However, patients often experienced delirium, vivid hallucinations, and extreme physiological and psychological reactions. While the method was promoted as a scientific cure, it inadvertently reproduced the same hallucinatory states that had long been sought in religious or shamanic contexts.

Bill Wilson entered Towns Hospital in December 1934, desperate after repeated alcoholic relapses. He had already been influenced by his friend Ebby Thatcher and the ‘Oxford Group’, a Christian evangelical movement that emphasized confession, moral inventory, and surrender to God. During his stay, Wilson underwent the belladonna cure (aka ‘Towns-Lambert Cure’). He later described experiencing a great White Light and feeling the presence of a Spirit who released him from fear and obsession.

Whether this experience was caused by the medication cannot be proven. What is certain is that it coincided with the treatment and was interpreted by Wilson — primed by his Oxford Group exposure and search for God — as a genuine ‘spiritual experience’. He later discussed what happened with Dr. William Silkworth, who encouraged Wilson to embrace it as a turning point. This experience became the spiritual foundation of Alcoholics Anonymous, illustrating how altered consciousness can catalyse profound personal transformation.

Plant Medicine and Spirituality

Modern readers sometimes assume that if an experience is drug-induced, it cannot be spiritual. However, historical traditions show otherwise. Indigenous traditions across the world have incorporated psychoactive plants into healing and spiritual practices for thousands of years. 

Native American communities integrated peyote (mescaline) into ceremonial contexts, especially within the Native American Church. Archaeological evidence of peyote use in Mexico dates to c. 3,000 BCE.

Amazonian shamans used ayahuasca, a visionary plant medicine, to cleanse illness and receive guidance from the spirit world. Evidence suggests ritual/spiritual use of this plant for at least 1,000 years and it still continues today.

The Bwiti religion in West-Central Africa traditionally used the root bark of iboga, consumed during initiation and healing ceremonies to induce powerful visions and personal renewal. Ritualized Bwiti practice dates to the pre-colonial 19th century, but iboga’s use as a medicinal and visionary plant predates this.

In these settings, hallucinations were understood not as meaningless chemical by-products but as doorways to truth — experiences that carried moral, spiritual, and therapeutic healing.

Europe has its own history of utilising visionary plants. Medieval herbalists and folk healers used members of the nightshade family — belladonna, henbane, mandrake, and datura. Small doses were used as sedatives, analgesics, or treatments for ailments ranging from insomnia to pain. Larger or ritualistic doses could induce visions, sensations of flight, or encounters with otherworldly beings. Some practices were later condemned by organised religion as witchcraft, yet they reflected attempts to access spiritual knowledge and healing through the use of plant medicine.

As in traditional societies, these substances were used not simply for relief of symptoms but as portals to other realms of knowledge and experience.

LSD Experiments

In the 1950s and 1960s, LSD* research provided a bridge between Wilson’s 1930s vision and modern clinical trials using psychedelics. LSD was synthesized by Albert Hofmann in 1938, and Sandoz Pharmaceuticals distributed it to psychiatrists beginning in 1947. Tens of thousands of patients participated in psychiatric studies worldwide, exploring LSD’s potential for treating alcoholism, depression, anxiety, and psychosomatic disorders.

Bill Wilson personally experimented with LSD during the late 1950’s under the guidance of researchers such as psychiatrist Dr Sidney Cohen, exploring whether it could induce experiences similar to his White Light vision.

While Wilson’s work was informal and exploratory rather than a controlled clinical trial, it was part of the broader wave of mid 20th-century LSD research, demonstrating the therapeutic potential of mystical-type experiences in supporting recovery from addiction.

Legacy and Modern Clinical Trials

The consequences of Wilson’s 1934 White Light experience were enormous. Millions have found sobriety through Alcoholics Anonymous, whose spiritual principles and suggestions of a ‘spiritual awakening’ remain central to recovery.

In the 21^st century, psychedelic-assisted therapy (using psilocybin, ayahuasca, ibogaine, or LSD in controlled clinical settings) echoes both Wilson’s intuition and ancient traditions. Modern research by University College London (1) and John Hopkins University (2) confirms that mystical-type experiences are often the most therapeutically effective component of treatment for addiction, depression etc, demonstrating the continuity of human engagement with hallucinatory plant medicines across cultures and centuries.

From shamans in the Amazon to healers in medieval Europe, from the ‘belladonna cure’ to mid-20^th century LSD experiments and modern clinical trials, hallucinatory plant medicines have consistently played a role in healing and spiritual transformation. Bill Wilson’s ‘White Light’ experience, though medically coincident with the belladonna cure, resonates with this broader history. Altered consciousness can catalyse profound insight, moral realignment, and enduring recovery. Human societies have long recognized that such experiences — whether ritual, medical, or personal — can open pathways to the sacred.

Silence, Storytelling, and the AA Narrative

One of the striking features of Bill Wilson’s White Light experience is how little he, and Alcoholics Anonymous as a fellowship, connected it to the belladonna cure in the literature that shaped AA. The Big Book emphasizes the transformative power of surrender and reliance on a Higher Power, but makes little mention of the medical treatment, its hallucinatory effects, and the possible relationship with Bill’s ‘spiritual experience’.

There are several possible reasons for this silence. Firstly, Wilson was a gifted storyteller who believed that the ‘message’ of recovery was more important than the factual detail of his personal circumstances. He shaped his experience in a way that carried universal appeal, stressing the spiritual essence of his awakening rather than the possible pharmacological trigger. Secondly, AA quickly developed a spiritual (implicitly non-drug) philosophy, emphasizing sobriety through the practice of altruistic and spiritual principles. Explicitly linking its origins to a hallucinatory drug would have conflicted with this ethos and perhaps undermined the credibility of the fellowship.

This tension resurfaced in the 1950s, when Wilson experimented with LSD under the guidance of medical researchers. (3) He believed the substance could help others access the same kind of spiritual awakening he had experienced. However, many within AA were deeply uncomfortable with this, seeing it as inconsistent with the fellowship’s commitment to abstinence from mood-altering substances. As a result, Wilson’s explorations with LSD were largely unsupported or ignored within AA.

The cause and nature of Bill Wilson’s White Light experience during his treatment for alcoholism at Towns Hospital could neither be proven nor disproven by him or by clinicians. What mattered was its subjective meaning. Wilson’s own interpretation gave the experience profound meaning, one that proved transformative, healing, and positive. The origin story of AA rests on a belief—that recovery arises through spiritual practice and grace, not through the by-products of hallucinogenic plant medicine. This conviction shaped AA’s identity as a spiritual fellowship grounded in the 12 Steps, even though its founder’s spiritual experience remains entangled with humanity’s long history of using psychoactive substances as a pathway to healing and transformation.

1. Psilocybin with Psychological Support for Treatment-Resistant Depression: Six-Month Follow-Up” (Carhart-Harris et al., 2018)
2. Psilocybin Occasioned Mystical-Type Experiences: Immediate and Persisting Dose-Related Effects” (Griffiths et al., 2011)
3. See ‘Pass It On’, Chapter 23, pp 368-377, AAWS, Inc., NY. 1984.

* Although LSD is not a traditional plant medicine – it is a semi-synthetic compound from Lysergic acid in the ergot fungus – it has played a central role in the history of psychedelic research. While distinct from naturally occurring psychedelics such as psilocybin, peyote, or ayahuasca, LSD is often included in the broader history of hallucinogenic substances used for therapeutic and spiritual purposes.

Related BBC Sounds Podcast:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002gqgb