Towns Hospital, in Manhattan, is remembered here as the setting of a pivotal experience in Bill Wilson’s life: in 1934, he was given belladonna there and underwent a mystical experience that he later credited with his sobriety. The hospital’s significance in the account lies in this episode’s connection to the spiritual foundation of Alcoholics Anonymous and, years later, to Wilson’s interest in LSD-assisted experiences.

The 1934 Experience

Wilson received belladonna, a plant-derived alkaloid with hallucinogenic properties, at Towns Hospital in 1934. The account identifies the experience as mystical and says Wilson credited it with his sobriety. It does not describe the hospital’s treatment methods or the circumstances of his admission; what gives the place its particular importance is the experience Wilson associated with it.

A Spiritual Precedent for Alcoholics Anonymous

Wilson’s experience at Towns Hospital anticipated an idea that became central to Alcoholics Anonymous: that spiritual awakening could lead a person to surrender to a higher power. The narrative draws a direct line between that fellowship principle and Wilson’s drug-induced mystical experience, while noting that few members knew of this connection. Towns Hospital thus enters the history not simply as a medical setting, but as the site of an experience later linked to a widely shared spiritual framework.

Wilson’s Later Interest in LSD

In the mid-1950s, after learning about Humphry Osmond and Abram Hoffer’s work with alcoholics, Wilson wondered whether LSD might help people in recovery undergo a life-changing spiritual experience. Through Osmond, he contacted Sidney Cohen and, beginning in 1956, took several LSD sessions in Los Angeles with Cohen and psychologist Betty Eisner. These later sessions did not take place at Towns Hospital. Their relevance to the hospital is biographical: they show Wilson returning to the possibility of chemically occasioned spiritual awakening, a possibility already tied to his 1934 experience there.