PSYCHEDELIC PIONEERS.
““I don’t believe [LSD] has any miraculous property of transforming spiritually and emotionally sick people into healthy ones overnight. It can set up a shining goal on the positive side, after all it is only a temporary ego-reducer.””
Bill Wilson, November 26, 1895- January 24, 1971
AA is an international mutual aid fellowship with about two million members worldwide belonging to AA groups, associations, organizations, cooperatives, and fellowships of alcoholics helping other alcoholics achieve and maintain sobriety. During his sobriety treatment He was also given belladonna, which causes hallucinations. According to Wilson, while lying in bed depressed and despairing, he cried out, "I'll do anything! Anything at all! If there be a God, let Him show Himself!" He then had the sensation of a bright light, a feeling of ecstasy, and a new serenity. He never drank again for the rest of his life. In the 1950s, Wilson used LSD in medically supervised experiments with Betty Eisner, Gerald Heard, and Aldous Huxley, taking LSD for the first time on August 29, 1956. According to Wilson, the session allowed him to re-experience a spontaneous spiritual experience he had had years before, which had enabled him to overcome his own alcoholism.
““There is a world beyond ours, a world that is far away, nearby, and invisible.””
Maria Sabina, July 22, 1894- November 22, 1985
Maria Sabina who lived in Huautla de Jiménez, a town in the Sierra Mazateca area of the Mexican state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico. Her healing sacred mushroom ceremonies, called veladas, were based on the use of psilocybin mushrooms, particularly Psilocybe caerulescens, a sacred mushroom important to the Mazatecs. María Sabina's veladas contributed to the popularization of indigenous Mexican ritual use of entheogenic mushrooms among westerners, though this was not her intent.