Originally Posted by
AlwaysGrowing 
Early on I thought Bill was a saint in chapter 2 of his life. Later I came to understand he is just a man like the rest of us. Back in the day they experimented on everything. Can I judge yesterday from today?
That said, should we try those drugs just because he and others did back in the day? Isn't that a cop out of clean and sober living. It is to me. Maybe I'm just been sober awhile and worked for it. Why cheapen living life on life's terms.
As others have mentioned the drug was fairly new at the time Bill started tripping and not illegal. Initially Bill may have been looking for a way to stop smoking but after he heard from Aldous Huxley about those who took the drug and who had an epiphany Bill got to thinking. Perhaps acid might help the alcoholic experience what he felt in Towns Hospital many years before.
Bill first took acid in 1956 and loved it. H e urged everyone he knew to try it.
Needless to say when word got back to the membership of AA there were grumblings. But Wilson had given thirty years of his life to service. He wasn't planning to stop doing service, but he didn't see why he should continue to be held responsible for the feelings and spirit of an organization for which he, specifically, had decide to lay aside responsibility.
Still by the ended of 1959 he had stopped extorting friends to take LSD and ended his own experiments.
Around this time Timothy Leary approached Bill asking to be included in his experiments but by then Bill had stopped experimenting with the drug.