The Roots of Recovery

William Wilson, also known as Bill W., was one of the co-founders of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), whom Life Magazine named one of the most influential men of the 20th Century. Despite his obvious accomplishments routinely suffered from bouts of personal problems and inner turmoil, despite the obvious success of the recovery movement he had helped create.

Lest we forget that prior to the advent of AA, we are told that the only places for drunkards in the advanced stages of alcoholism were jails, mental institutions, the streets…or cemeteries. But Bill W. was reportedly a chronic philanderer, even after he sobered up and his paroxysms of what can probably be termed sex addiction caused no shortage of internal discord and friction in his marriage and, one may assume, in his own mind. I’m no judge of this behaviour; I’m merely interested in what we can learn from this information

Behavioral addictions such as sex, spending, eating, gambling and working, are tougher to recognize, let alone treat, because through the activity itself, the addict’s brain is a lab manufacturing its own supply of the very thing it is craving. Wilson was also eager for publicity, and he suffered from bouts of depression, loneliness and self-doubt—not to mention a debilitating addiction to cigarettes.

This information is in no way intended to detract from the invaluable contribution Bill Wilson made to the human race but to demonstrate that he clearly didn’t know or possess sustained inner peace; if the man who more or less wrote the book on conventional 12-step recovery suffered so much mental anguish after sobering up, I put forth that it is possible that the organization’s program is possibly missing some elements required to achieve happiness, peace and serenity—at least for some seekers.

One of the greatest attributes a seeker of truth needs to possess is an objective, discriminating mind which is free from prejudice.

It appears Bill Wilson possessed this faculty and his afflictions eventually led him to dabble in the occult and various forms of mysticism, including his friendship with Aldous Huxley and experimentation with Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LSD). Wilson likened LSD to a miracle substance—and he reportedly used it regularly in a controlled therapeutic context well into the 60‘s. But we never talk about this in AA. The relevance of hallucinogens to Bill W.’s sobriety and research is not part of A.A. folklore. But denial of events that do not fit into the paradigm we have fashioned cannot help us expand our awareness.

Modern Drunkard Magazine writer Richard English even reports that Wilson, near his 70th birthday, had concocted a plan to distribute tabs of blotter to AA meetings nationwide.  Conferring with an AA historian, I have discovered that there is thankfully no factual basis in this anecdote; the notion of feeding acid to scores of insecure, often anxiety-ridden, recovery neophytes who huddled in musty church basements across the continent is, to put it mildly, alarming.

Nonetheless, no substance has been more widely tested and used in the treatment of addiction in North America than LSD and it hasn’t been without significant success. These trials were eventually published in a book by Doctors Hoffer and Osmond entitled A Cure for Alcoholism. This book is no longer in print. 

LSD didn’t help Bill W. with his depression or his cravings. There were also instances of people having psychotic reactions to the LSD. Later they pulled the plug on the LSD research, and this eventually led them to study Niacin, which was validated to be, essentially, a wonder cure for multiple ailments, including heart disease and depression. 

But there is still some basis in the research that shows hallucinogens  can be beneficial in treating addiction. This is highly relevant at a treatment centre called Takiwasi, which is located in the jungles of Peru, where French doctor Jacques Mabit works with hardcore addicts using traditional shamanic medicine, specifically Ayahuasca, that is thousands of years old. Ayahuasca, however, is stepping away from the laboratory and moving further into the mystical realm of entheogens, into the sacredness of plant consciousness itself. Mabit’s rate of success for recovery is somewhere around 80%.

When I recently travelled to Peru to take part in shamanic yoga training, I’d done my homework on the roots of recovery and the nexus between addiction and psychotropic plant medicine—but the knowledge I carried when I arrived in Cusco didn’t do much to discharge my aversion to psycho-reactive substances. I reminded myself that many of these medicines, particularly ayahuasca, are traditionally used for the treatment of addiction and while my recovery program has kept me clean and sober for over 12 years, I have not yet managed to find freedom from addictive patterns of thought and behavior, as well as depression and anxiety.

My gut urged me to delve into the experience of plant medicine with a teachable heart and to seek out the courage and support I needed to do so—not only from the competent and professional people running my training, but from my non-physical guides and teachers. Ultimately, as much as I feared and had antipathy towards letting anything perception-altering past the blood/brain barrier, I also knew intuitively that there was something in this opportunity that would assist me in becoming more adept at shifting my existential reference point to allow me to more fully experience the lessons which are, I believe, all around us.

Yet the gerbil in the wheel of my small mind kept running back to the awareness that I was more or less bucking the tradition I come from and potentially isolating myself from my own community of recovering people.

Ultimately it was worth the risk, partly because it has long confounded me why so many people recovering from addiction are trapped in grief, depression, anxiety, ignorance, subtle layers of denial, not-so-subtle judgement. So many people in recovery, myself included, engage in this navel-gazing victimization, too often re-hashing their problems and living in fear. The characterization of recovering alcoholics as chain-smoking coffee addicts who subsist on an abhorrently unhealthy diet is not far off the mark in numerous cases.

As a yoga teacher and student of yoga, I have come to understand how, after my breath, the food I put in my body is the most vital component to my health—not only my physical health but my mental and emotional health. The time for our species’ belief that these states worked independently of one another passed a long time ago.

So here it was: I wanted to know why there so many people in recovery living such unhealthy lives, treating their bodies as garbage pails, similar to how they functioned in active addiction; I also want to know how to help them.

It’s a sad but earnest truth that for every person who makes it in recovery, 20 don’t. The answer to this problem, by the members who stick around and stay sober long enough, is that the people who relapse and continue to live in misery are just not working a program. Still, more fascinating are the multitudes of men and women who stay in recovery and stay sober but require the use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI’s) for depression and anxiety, despite theri dubious worth and effectiveness—and those who are on medication for stress, high blood pressure and for many other physical ailments, the roots of which I suspect are planted in a lingering and profound sense of disconnection.

I don’t know of any reliable statistics on the number of addicts who turn to behavioural addictions to continue the natural search for connection and inner peace but my sense of it is that the numbers are alarmingly high.

These medicines, as has been demonstrated by ancient history, as well as some avant-garde researchers, have proven extremely useful for opening a students’ or patients’ paradigm rapidly and safely. In confronting my own doubts and fears, I reminded myself that these medicines have been considered sacred since before recorded history—likely well before. They are recognized as important, legal and ethical by not only numerous governments around the world, but by the United Nations as well.

I’m not the only one. AA members need to start thinking outside the box again, fully considering the impact of these other dimensions of experience. I think that is fundamentally what Bill W. had in mind when he wrote Step 12.