Bill's Experiment Was In A Clinical Setting
Found this which puts in context...His first time was at a VA hospital. This was way before Timothy Leary "discovered" it. Bill essentially went to any lengths and his intentions were good. He was trying to fid a way to help other alcoholics get that spiritual experience.
On August 29, 1956, Bill Wilson took LSD in a laboratory setting. “When Bill took LSD, use of the drug was legal. He first took it as a participant in a medically supervised experiment with Gerald Heard and Aldous Huxley in California.” (Hartigan, p. 178) To return to the point of the early paragraphs, this was a full ten years before Timothy Leary’s “turn on” revolution. There was no incense burning, no Jefferson Airplane on the stereo, and it is highly unlikely that Bill was wearing bell bottoms and a tie-dyed t-shirt.
In a very real sense, LSD wasn’t LSD yet.
Its use was limited to hospitals, clinics, labs and universities.
“Here, then, is one clear reason why Bill Wilson experimented with LSD: he was seeking still further ways of helping alcoholics, specifically those alcoholics who could not seem to attain sobriety in Alcoholics Anonymous because, apparently, they could not ‘get the spiritual’.” (Collected Kurtz, p. 42) Support for this research came from a surprising source. When one of his parishioners expressed concern to Sam Shoemaker, the reverend consulted his superior, Bishop Pardue who “declared himself ‘in utmost sympathy with what (Bill) is doing.’ The bishop, Shoemaker reported to Wilson, ‘is convinced that the biochemical factor is of the greatest importance…half our problems are bio-chemical and do not go back to sin and cannot be wholly governed by prayer’.” (Collected Kurtz, p. 43