Treatment of Alcoholism with Psychedelic Therapy

Alcoholics Anonymous, the great self-help group-therapy movement, is the only established treatment for alcoholics. Until much more is known about the personal (biochemical and psychological), familial, and social factors that contribute to alcoholism, so it will remain. Most new therapies are merely adjunctive to AA and will continue to be so until it is shown that they have therapeutic value when used alone. In my view, psychedelic therapy is best used as a preparation for AA. When Bill W. and Dr. Bob founded AA, alcoholism had not been accepted as a disease, either by society at large or by the medical profession. Society considered it a moral problem, but found itself confronted with an interesting dilemma, for only a small proportion of the total drinking society drank excessively. No moral sanctions were required for the majority, who eventually made social drinking an integral part of the culture. The majority who remained moral drinkers could not understand why a minority became intemperate or alcoholic. Moral sanctions were applied on the premise that excessive drinking arose from defects of character, defects of will, and defects in society. These sanctions included education, persuasion, incarceration, and banishment. Unfortunately, the most stringent measures had little permanent effect, and the proportion of the drinking society (a concept developed by Dr. H. Osmond) remained the same or increased. Medicine also considered alcoholism a non-disease. The founders of AA introduced the medical model first to alcoholics, later to society, and finally to the medical profession. This concept was very appealing to alcoholics because it gave them a satisfactory explanation for their misfortunes. If they were sick and not evil, then they might expect the same sort of treatment they would receive if they developed pneumonia or diabetes. Bill W. and Dr. Bob also introduced the concept of allergy, which thirty-five years ago was incorporated into medicine as a new group of diseases. (1) But AA insisted that alcoholism was more than a physical illness. It also carried strong personal responsibility. An alcoholic could not be censured for being an alcoholic, but he could be for doing nothing about it. Society resisted the idea that alcoholics are sick, since it got no guidance from a reluctant medical profession. Doctors expect diseases to be more or less definable, to have treatment that may be ineffective but must be in common use, and to have a predictable prognosis. When they became convinced that AA did help large numbers of alcoholics remain sober, they gradually accepted alcoholics as patients. Even now, the majority of hospitals are extremely reluctant to admit alcoholics who are drunk, and many doctors dread seeing them in their offices. Eventually AA forced the profession to accept the fact that alcoholism, which has been