AA Was Born in a Psychedelic Hospital Room

In 1934, while detoxing from alcohol at Towns Hospital in New York City, Bill Wilson experienced what he would later call a 'white light'(Footnote 1) awakening. He had been admitted for chronic alcoholism and was undergoing what was then a common, though extreme, detoxification procedure involving belladonna, hyoscyamus, and other anticholinergic (F2) plant derivatives. During this process, Wilson reported an overwhelming sensation of presence and peace, a release from fear, and a felt sense of being carried by a great wind. This mystical episode catalyzed his permanent sobriety and laid the groundwork for what would become Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and the 12-Step Program—a framework now central to global addiction recovery culture.

But what’s often left out of AA’s origin story is not just the pharmacological context of Wilson’s awakening. Less often acknowledged is the broader historical and chemical lineage of the substances involved. To understand the deeper implications of Wilson’s experience, we must place it within the entheogenic (F3) and colonial currents of the time—acknowledging not only the role of belladonna as a psychoactive compound but the institutional and spiritual patterns from which it was drawn.

Who Was Bill Wilson? Light and Shadow

William Griffith Wilson was many things: a failed stockbroker, a chronic alcoholic, a war veteran, and eventually a spiritual seeker and community builder. He was not a therapist, priest, or scientist, yet his legacy would shape all three domains.

In light, Wilson was a man of deep sincerity, who sought to understand suffering—his own and others'. He openly courted mysticism, corresponded with spiritual and psychological thinkers of the time, including Carl Jung and Aldous Huxley, and later explored the use of LSD as a therapeutic sacrament.

In shadow, Wilson wrestled with depression, ego inflation, and relational imbalances. He was known to slip into messianic patterns—taking on the impossible burden of being a savior figure for millions. These patterns didn’t mean he was trying to control people on purpose. But they show how someone’s pain—especially when it goes unhealed—can shape how they lead, connect, and take up space in a group. Sometimes what looks like confidence or certainty is really someone trying to feel safe. Notably, his experimentation with LSD in the 1950s, which he believed could replicate the ego-dissolving effects of his earlier awakening, was met with deep resistance from within AA. The very community he had birthed, now increasingly aligned with moralism and orthodoxy, pressured him to disavow the medicine. That rejection reflects not Wilson’s shadow—but the shadow of an institution afraid of its own roots.

Belladonna and the Industrialized Purge

The detox protocol Wilson underwent—often called the "belladonna cure"—was not an accident of history, nor merely a crude medical intervention. It was a product of a time when institutional science and elite psychiatric practice were experimenting with psychoactive and purgative plants, often stripped from their ceremonial contexts.

Belladonna (Atropa belladonna), also known as deadly nightshade, contains potent anticholinergic alkaloids: atropine, scopolamine, and hyoscyamine. These substances block acetylcholine, a key neurotransmitter in the parasympathetic nervous system, resulting in dry mouth, visual hallucinations, disorientation, paralysis of digestion, and at higher doses, delirium, amnesia, and temporary dissociation from physical and spatial reality.

When administered in tandem with other herbs and purgatives, as it was in Towns Hospital, the goal was to induce a full-body catharsis. The patient would vomit, hallucinate, and often experience a psychic rupture (F4) so intense that afterward, continued drinking seemed impossible.

This was not healing through gentle regulation—it was healing through radical interruption. Through purge, rupture, and ego unbinding, the belladonna protocol forcibly broke the loops that held Wilson in addiction and despair. While the belladonna protocol more closely resembles a modern Kambo and datura combination in terms of its physical intensity and disorientation, its overall purpose mirrors the broader intention behind many macrodose Plant+ medicine experiences for addiction—whether through RSO (F5) therapy, psilocybin, ayahuasca, ibogaine, or LSD/MDMA-assisted protocols. The goal in each is to strip away resistance, disrupt entrenched patterns, confront death or ego illusion, and create space for something new to emerge.

Not Accidental, Not Innocent

To frame Wilson’s experience as an "accidental" psychedelic awakening obscures the very real context of the 1930s: this was a time when ethnobotanists, chemists, colonial physicians, and spiritual seekers were actively experimenting with psychoactive plants. Indigenous wisdom was being studied, extracted, and often distorted into medical practice. The belladonna protocol was not the product of cultural happenstance—it was an institutional repurposing of longstanding Indigenous frameworks that used purge and altered states as tools of transformation.

What was missing, however, was the ceremonial containment, the community witnessing, and the cosmological grounding (F6) that accompanies such practices in traditional cultures. The belladonna experience was industrialized, decontextualized, and lonely—and this matters not just culturally, but somatically. (F7) Without relational containment, a rupture of this magnitude can lead to dissociation or retraumatization, rather than repair. In Indigenous contexts, the ceremonial field holds the nervous system as it unravels. In Wilson’s case, the unraveling happened in isolation.

This is why working with Plant+ medicines without skilled guideship and integration can be deeply destabilizing. When these experiences are approached without proper preparation, containment, or follow-up support, they can open more than a person is resourced to hold. The intensity of rupture, especially in systems already carrying trauma, can amplify disconnection rather than repair it. Guideship is not about directing the experience, but about creating enough safety and resonance for the nervous system to reorganize meaningfully.

From Belladonna to Modern Entheogens: A Line of Disruption

The lineage from belladonna to today’s entheogens—including plant-based (ayahuasca, psilocybin, peyote) and synthetics (LSD, MDMA, ketamine)—is not merely chemical. Belladonna’s action on the parasympathetic nervous system places it in a different category than serotonergic psychedelics like psilocybin or empathogens like MDMA. Its effects were disorienting, chaotic, and not always visionary in the poetic sense. In this way, belladonna has more in common with Kambo and datura than with heart-opening or insight-producing medicines.

Kambo, like belladonna, is purgative, harsh, and not inherently "psychedelic." Both induce a physical and energetic rupture intended to reset the body and clear blocked patterns. The difference is, in traditional Kambo ceremonies, this is done with intention, reverence, and integration. In Wilson’s case, the rupture was real—but the meaning had to be constructed after the fact. He received no interpretation, no containment. Just a white light, a room in a hospital, and a radical change in perception.

Likewise, datura, a fellow member of the nightshade family, shares belladonna’s anticholinergic and delirium-inducing properties. Known for its capacity to induce powerful visions, confusion, and amnesia, datura is regarded with great caution—and deep respect—by cultures that work with it ceremonially. Like belladonna, it opens the door not through clarity or connection, but through dissolution, death imagery, and descent into the unconscious. Without the container of ritual or lineage, its effects can be disorienting or dangerous. With guidance, however, it can catalyze profound release, confrontation of shadow, and reorganization of perception. In this way, belladonna’s legacy is part of a wider pharmaco-spiritual lineage of rupture-based transformation—an approach that still echoes in the edges of modern healing practices, and one that continues to demand discernment, (F8) reverence, and ethical responsibility.

The Structuring and Sanitizing of AA

After his awakening, Wilson co-founded AA with Dr. Bob Smith, a fellow alcoholic. Their early gatherings were informal circles of mutual aid (F9)—sharing stories, offering support. But as AA grew, it needed structure. Wilson drew heavily from the Oxford Group, a Christian revivalist movement that emphasized confession, moral inventory, and surrender to God. These ideas became the foundation of the 12 Steps, first published in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous in 1939.

Though Wilson insisted on the phrase "God as we understood Him" to keep the program open to diverse spiritual beliefs, the dominant cultural context quickly narrowed the interpretation. The Christianization of AA was not written into its DNA, but grew from the religious norms and fears of mid-20th century America. The increasing stigmatization of drugs (especially post-Drug War), combined with the institutional desire for order, led to a version of AA that rejected the very kind of experience Wilson had lived.

Today, AA largely promotes a rigid interpretation of sobriety that excludes all psychoactive substances, even those that show promise in treating addiction and trauma. And yet, caffeine, nicotine, sugar, pharmaceuticals, and trauma-numbing SSRIs are often accepted without question. The issue is not consistency—but cultural conditioning.

HETA: A Return to Multivalent Healing

HETA (Harmonized Embodied Transformation Approach) and the 12-Step Program share meaningful common ground. Both emphasize self-reflection, community support, and honest expression. Both can be used as life frameworks—ways of understanding and living within complex human experiences, especially those shaped by trauma, addiction, and disconnection. And both honor the need to pause, step out of patterned reactivity, and cultivate meaningful connection—with oneself, others, and something greater.

Where they begin to diverge is in form and philosophy. The 12 Steps are structured, sequential, and theologically framed—often resonating most with those who benefit from defined stages and the concept of surrender to a Higher Power. HETA, by contrast, is somatic, relational, and rooted in neurobiological attunement (F10) and energetic discernment. While often described as nonlinear, HETA does offer structure through the Rainbow of Resonance—a model that moves through color-coded stages of awareness and action. It honors present-moment entry at any point on the rainbow and recognizes that healing may follow a spiral rather than a straight path. At the same time, this structure can be especially supportive to those whose nervous systems crave clarity, rhythm, and progression. HETA makes space for both pattern and spontaneity, welcoming people who need linearity as well as those who respond to more emergent unfolding. It's not a replacement for step-based systems—it’s a broader map that meets people where they are and grows with them as their capacity evolves.

For some, HETA can be a companion to AA—offering tools for embodiment and relational healing that enhance the foundation of the 12 Steps. For others who have not found the resonance they hoped for in AA, HETA may offer an alternative path that centers the body, invites curiosity rather than confession, and facilitates spiritual reconnection without requiring theological alignment.

HETA also functions as a robust integration framework for those working with Plant+ medicines. Many people who’ve benefited from AA reach a point in their healing where deeper trauma, attachment wounds, or dissociative patterns begin to surface. HETA offers a body-based container for metabolizing these layers—using breathwork, energetic mapping, self-inquiry, and nervous system presence to help individuals make meaning of psychedelic, purgative, or non-ordinary states without bypassing them.

HETA does not require plant medicines, but, like AA/12 Step, it is informed by what they can reveal: that rupture and release can be portals to clarity, that the body carries truth, and that healing requires presence, not performance. Through breathwork, nervous system awareness, self-inquiry, and honest relational witnessing, HETA helps individuals reorganize from within—without pathologizing survival patterns or demanding external validation.

It’s important to recognize that the sanitization and moralization of recovery models in the mid-20th century—including AA—emerged from a broader system of power and suppression, shaped by racialized systems of control, Christian moral frameworks, and the growing influence of carceral logic. (F11) The rejection of plant-based or psychoactive healing tools was part of a larger cultural move to suppress Indigenous, Black, and global South knowledge systems in favor of institutionally sanctioned methods.

Ultimately, spiritual connection is not something that must be added to the self. It is what naturally emerges when resistance dissolves and when the whole system is given permission to be felt, seen, and integrated.

What might your own white-light moment look like—not as an escape, but as a return to something your body already knows? And what support would help you trust that return?

Footnotes

1. White Light Experience A term often used to describe a sudden, overwhelming sense of peace, clarity, or divine presence—commonly reported in near-death, mystical, or psychedelic states.

2. Anticholinergic Refers to substances that block the neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which plays a key role in the parasympathetic nervous system. Anticholinergic effects include dry mouth, blurred vision, disorientation, hallucinations, and digestive paralysis. Belladonna, datura, and other nightshades exert their psychoactive effects this way.

3. Entheogenic Describes a substance—usually plant- or fungi-based—that induces a spiritual or mystical experience. From Greek roots meaning “generating the divine within,” the term is often used to distinguish ceremonial or sacred uses of psychedelics from recreational ones.

4. Rupture—whether through a traumatic event, a psychedelic experience, or a somatic breakthrough—can create a powerful opening, but it is not healing in and of itself. For rupture to catalyze transformation rather than retraumatization, it must be held within a container of relational safety, somatic support, and integration over time. Without these elements, the nervous system may respond with shutdown, fragmentation, or overwhelm. Healing depends not on the intensity of the rupture, but on how it is witnessed, metabolized, and reintegrated into the whole system.

5. RSO Therapy RSO (Rick Simpson Oil) is a high-potency, full-spectrum cannabis extract typically used medicinally. In some Plant+ contexts, RSO is explored for its effects on inflammation, trauma-related insomnia, and chronic pain, as well as its capacity to induce a gentle, sustained altered state.

6. Cosmological Grounding The act of situating one’s healing or ritual work within a larger framework of meaning—often tied to spiritual beliefs, ancestral lineage, Earth-based wisdom, or mythic time. In traditional cultures, this grounding helps protect the psyche during altered states.

7. Somatic Relating to the body—not just as a physical form, but as a site of awareness, memory, and intelligence. Somatic healing practices emphasize felt sense, movement, breath, and the nervous system as key to integration and transformation.

8. Discernment The ability to sense and choose what is aligned, appropriate, or resonant—particularly when navigating complex experiences. In Plant+ or somatic work, discernment helps guide pacing, boundaries, and integration choices.

9. Mutual Aid A model of community care where individuals support one another through shared resources, labor, or presence—outside of hierarchical or institutional frameworks. It emphasizes reciprocity, solidarity, and interdependence.

10. Attunement The act of sensitively and accurately perceiving and responding to one’s own or another’s inner state. In healing, attunement builds safety, connection, and nervous system coherence.

11. Carceral Logic A way of thinking shaped by systems of surveillance, punishment, and control. In recovery and mental health spaces, it shows up as moralizing behavior, valuing compliance over curiosity, or using rigid protocols instead of relational understanding.