The Towns -Lambert Treatment

The “Towns-Lambert Treatment,” referred to as the “so-called belladonna treatment” by Bill W. on page 7 of the Big Book, was founded upon “bizarre early theories” and “strange ideas” just as Glenn Chesnut has described. However, such observations result from our vastly improved knowledge of the disease of alcoholism, for which we should be very grateful. But if the knowledge of today is used too harshly to describe the past, the adjectives may not be an entirely accurate appraisal even though they’re true. Would not a clearer picture be comprehended by accurately understanding the collective wisdom of the times?

Glenn has wanted to defend the reputation of Dr. Silkworth. Yes, the belladonna treatment, as accurately described by Robert Stonebraker, was used at Towns Hospital. However, it is highly unlikely, if not entirely unlikely, that Dr. Silkworth ever provided the treatment as Towns originally developed it. The Towns-Lambert Treatment was administered for fifty hours on the hour—just as so eloquently documented by Bill Pittman. But that practice may have ceased at the hospital years before Silkworth was hired, or at least stopped when Silkworth became the chief medical director. As Glenn Chesnut has shown, Silkworth had his own ideas of how to sober up a drunk. Consequently, the combination of Silkworth’s picture along with paragraphs that describe the 50 hour “puke and purge” do not accurately portray “the little doctor that loved drunks.”

Glenn Chesnut has been so generous to reference pages from his book. I’ll be more than happy to share a few pages from mine on the belladonna administered to Bill W. by the time he arrived at Towns Hospital:

Bill Wilson left this first visit to Towns Hospital “a new man,” but the new man did not stay new.[1] He could not recall when he became, as his wife Lois described him, “a drunken sot” again,[2] or how many months he had stayed sober.[3] Lois wrote, “There was nothing to do but get him back to Towns Hospital immediately.”[4] This first relapse, which may have lasted until July, 1934,[5] caused his marriage to “hit a new emotional low and his second visit to the hospital.” Bill’s next relapse took place after a shorter period of being sober than before.[6] He could not remember why he got drunk again. All he could recall is that his “hopelessness broadened and deepened” as he experienced drunk after drunk. He was often “taken drunk without knowing how or why.”[7]

Of particular interest was his stated reason he did not want to go back to Towns Hospital. If the belladonna treatment was so horrific, if he had to go through fifty hours of literal hell through the quack medicine provided at Towns Hospital, he did not state that as the reason. Instead, he shamefully confessed he “couldn’t take the doctor” again, meaning that he did not wish to face Doctor Silkworth.[8] But by September, 1934,[9] he was taken to Towns Hospital a third time in “terrific shape.”[10] After three or four days, he was able

to regain a “semblance of [his] faculties” before a “depression set in.”[11]

Soon after Bill emerged from this third episode at Towns in late September, 1934[12] with the verdict that he could not “go on this way another year” if he were to live, and if he was to stay sober, he was going to have to be locked up somewhere where he could not get alcohol. This time he left the hospital “really terror stricken.”[13] His sobriety lasted him until Armistice Day, 1934 when he downed a free scotch at a Staten Island bar senselessly though he said it was insane to do so.[14] This binge lasted about a month and included being visited by Ebby Thacher twice.[15] A very drunk Bill voluntarily arrived at Towns Hospital a fourth time on December 11, 1934. … Years later, Wilson admitted receiving the belladonna treatment when Alcoholics Anonymous was published in 1939[16] in “Bill’s Story” and in his autobiography in 1954.[17] Dale Mitchel documented the use of belladonna when he wrote “Wilson was treated with belladonna by Dr. Silkworth at Towns during this fourth visit. His treatment is documented in Towns Hospital case number 1152, in December 1934.”[18] Because he mentioned belladonna specifically when he documented his first and fourth visits, as well as having described his fourth hospitalization in his autobiography to include belladonna as part of “the usual treatment,” the available evidence suggests he received belladonna during each of his four visits. Not mentioned, not even hinted at by Wilson are any of the bizarre side effects as documented in the 1910’s, including the “puke and purge” and “delirium, diarrhea and damnation” observations of others during the treatment. Had Wilson been treated with the belladonna four times in a year and a half, each time for fifty hours on the hour, with the outcome of greenish stools while being invaded constantly by nurses and doctors, may it be presumed that Wilson would have had far more to say about it? Even when, for example, Bill Wilson recounted his fourth visit to Towns in 1956, he said nothing about belladonna, but instead he said, “At first I was suspicious. I was afraid I was going to be evangelized.”[19]

A much safer assumption would be, as Glenn F. Chestnut suggested in his article “Bill Wilson’s Vision of the Light at Towns Hospital,” that “they were not given very much belladonna”[20] under the direction of Doctor Silkworth relative to the 1910’s when the Towns-Lambert treatment was considered state-of-the-art. Silkworth fully realized the shortcomings of belladonna in his observation of the miniscule recovery rate when he began work at Towns. Dr. Silkworth was not the only doctor that would be using at least some belladonna during the 1930’s. Dr. Robert Holbrook Smith, AA’s celebrated cofounder, used the “Towns [Hospital] treatment”[21] on a fellow named Eddie not that many weeks after the Akron doctor’s sobriety date.[22] However, at no time was there any hint of a fifty hour, round-the-clock, bizarre show of puking and purging. Any belladonna dosages involved had to have been employed in relative moderation. Belladonna was also occasionally involved in other forms of medical treatments into the 1940’s—one peculiar episode in Germany documented that.[23]

Bill’s White Light Experience, which he sometimes referred to as his “hot flash,” followed on or about December 14, and he left the hospital on December 18, 1934 never to drink again. In years to come, however, Bill’s explanation of his visionary experience led some critics to assert that the event occurred because of the belladonna. In retrospect, after three decades of patients receiving the medicines provided by Towns; of the many sideeffects experienced by thousands of patients; and of all the doctors that had been references for the hospital and its treatment, Bill Wilson emerged as the only known historic “hot flash.” To attribute Bill’s experience to belladonna becomes absurd! After all, if the solution could provide such a life-changing, positive, cataclysmic event, would not

Charles Towns already have been advertising that virtue for decades? He, the one who could stretch the truth beyond the breaking point to promote his hospital, never advertised or reported anything by a patient that even remotely resembled a “hot flash,” or the experience of a white light that was from a “God of the preachers.”[24]

While the Towns-Lambert treatment was in every way bizarre, we must keep in mind that Towns was praised not only by Dr. Alexander Lambert, who went on to become President of the AMA, but other doctors such as very highly esteemed Robert C. Cabot of Massachusetts General Hospital. Towns’ advertising brochures carried the endorsements of more than two dozen other doctors. Towns authored four articles in Century Magazine on alcoholism and addiction in 1912, nearly three dozen articles in sophisticated magazines marketed to doctors such as Modern Hospital and Medical Review of Reviews from 1916 to 1918. His book Habits That Handicap, published in 1915, is still available in print today with the forward by Dr. Cabot and the appendix by Dr. Lambert. Not bad for Towns, who was a self-educated man who may have never had more than an eighth grade education.

But as bizarre as Towns’ methods were, I don’t believe the belladonna treatment would fit into the top five of weird treatments for alcoholism, maybe not even the top ten, used around a hundred years ago. The Oppenheimer Treatment was advertised to be supported by 3,000 doctors, and all you had to do was send in $5 to receive the cure. The Keely Cure, where one received four injections a day of a mysterious formula, is right up there in bizarre-land. There are many more. My particular bizarre favorite? How about the treatment given Roland Hazard in 1928? Included as a footnote in my book thanks to Cora Finch:

A medical approach to curing alcoholism was given to Rowland Hazard in 1928, and is listed here as an example of a cure provided by a licensed medical doctor of the times. From Stellar Fire: Carl Jung, a New England Family, and the Risks of Anecdote, Cora Finch, “ http://hindsfoot.org/jungstel.pdf, @2008, p. 28, After returning to the United States, Rowland Hazard went into treatment with Dr. Edward S. Cowles in New York City. Dr. Cowles subscribed to an allergy theory of alcoholism. The allergy, he believed, irritated the membranes of the brain and spinal cord. His treatment included repeated lumbar punctures. Dr. Cowles believe that drawing off spinal fluid would decrease the pressure and protein content of the cerebrospinal fluid, and that this would eliminate the craving for alcohol. His methods were unorthodox and controversial, even by the standards of the time.”

There is that key phrase that Cora Finch used, for which I ask the Towns’ belladonna treatment to be measured: “by the standards of the times.” We must keep in mind that Towns was such an authority on addiction and alcoholism only because so little success was being experienced by the medical community of his times. When Dr. Bob was quoted regarding how little the medical community knew about treating alcoholism before AA, his words spoke volumes. That was why Towns became a national, an even international, authority on alcoholism at least until 1920, when the high rates of relapse by patients from Towns Hospital became obvious to many. Still, Towns Hospital remained as a drying-out place predominantly for the wealthy and did very well for many years.

I support any assertion that separates Silkworth from the original Towns-Lambert Treatment. I further support the rejection of any line of reasoning that asserts Bill W. received his white-light experience because of belladonna. I applaud Glenn Chesnut’s desire to reject Dr. Silkworth being associated with a “quack” treatment. However, I will defend the enigmatic Charles B. Towns, who was so very controversial—literally a self-made determined pioneer—an almost philanthropic Clarence Snyder who didn’t drink, use, or smoke (He’d be at home at a Crossfit gym—he often spent two hours working out). He became an “expert” on alcoholics and addicts simply by sheer force of will and a determination to succeed. Nobody really knew squat about the subject. Even Towns himself waffled on the concept of alcoholism as a disease, but when one wrote a lot as he did, he may have not always remembered what he had written before.

Keep in mind, without Charles B. Towns (“Charlie” seems to be only found in AA literature), when Bill W. needed help in 1933, Dr. Leonard Strong supported sending his brother-in-law to Towns Hospital. Did Dr. Strong know about the hospital because of all the advertising Towns had done in medical magazines (many of which are in the book)? Had he read any of Towns’ three books? Did he choose Towns Hospital because of Dr. Silkworth? Regardless, without Towns Hospital and Towns’ great hire, Bill W. most likely would have never met Dr. Silkworth. And then, where would we be? Bill W. might have become one of the countless, nameless faces at Bellevue Hospital and we might have never heard of him.

Rather than simply dismissing Charles Towns for his faults and failures, I’m finding myself in increasing gratitude that this controversial native Georgian, born in 1862, ended up being a great resource for Bill W. and his fledgling group of sober drunks who desperately were searching for help. Early in 1935, seventy-two year old Towns had let a three-time loser wander around his hospital and talk to Towns’ patients when Towns had previously claimed in print that a drunk talking to another drunk would only lead to more drinking. That decision, by itself, was a remarkable switch for Towns who had prohibited patients interacting with each other for years since his hospital was founded. Complete patient privacy and confidentiality had been promised previously instead.

A great deal more remains to be learned about Charles Towns, and I have a hunch that the more we learn about him, the more we will appreciate that we owe him a good deal of respect and gratitude. He changed his mind, contradicting what he’d written in his own books, about how drunks could stay sober. When presented with new evidence and Bill’s enthusiasm, Towns recognized a good thing. Towns supported Bill’s visions even after Bill had rejected becoming a Towns employee. Contemplate that for a moment,

please! How many of us would loan someone almost $50,000 in today’s money out of his own pocket after that same person had rejected a very generous offer of employment? If Towns had been a little man worth forgetting and not made the loans, the chances of Alcoholics Anonymous being published on April 10, 1939 would have been miniscule, if not entirely impossible. While the money Towns loaned was repaid, the AA fellowship has debts to Charles B. Towns that in some ways have never been fully repaid.

Gary Neidhardt Author of King Charles of New York City A short video at King Charles of New York City by Gary W. Neidhardt King Charles of New York City by Gary W. Neidhardt View on www.youtube.com Preview by Yahoo

[1] Bill W. My First 40 Years, Bill Wilson, Hazelden, p. 113. Message 3330 from Silkworth.net “AA History Lovers” has the second visit being in July of 1934, the third visit being in September 17, 1934. Afterward Bill stayed sober until Armistice Day, November 11, 1934, with the fourth visit on December 11, 1934. [2] Lois Remembers, Memoirs of the co-founder of Al-Anon and the wife of the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc. 1600 Corporate Landing Parkway, Virginia Beach, VA, 23454- 5617, p. 86 [3] Pass It On, Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc. p. 106: “By the time the summer came . . . [soon

afterwards] Bill wound up in Towns for the second time . . .”; Bill W. My First 40 Years, Bill Wilson, Hazelden, p. 114: “ . . . I left Towns after the second trip with considerable renewal of hope.”; Bill W., Robert Thomsen, p. 176: “In July he was put into Towns Hospital again, and again there was a memorable session with Silkworth.” [4] Lois Remembers, Al-Anon Family Groups, p. 86 [5] Bill W., Robert Thomsen, p. 175: “Even years later, no matter how hard he tried, Bill could not remember the circumstances of his next drunk, or even when it started., whether it was a month or a couple of weeks after leaving Towns. He knew only that it was one of his worst and one that seemingly was impossible to stop. In fact, his memories of this entire period, from 1933 until about the end of 1934, were totally disordered. Yet strangely he remembered the shameful debilitating weakness, the black terror . . . “ p. 176: “In July he was put into Towns Hospital again . . .” [6] Bill W., My First 40 Years, Bill Wilson, Hazelden, p. 115 [7] Ibid., p. 115 [8] Ibid., p. 115 [9] This is the place of an ongoing dispute: whether or not Bill Wilson was at Towns three times, or four times, can be argued, and the confusion can come from the date of the third visit, which seems to make it the second. Pass It On (p. 108) and Bill W. in his autobiography both say this visit was in mid-summer of 1934. However, Bill W.’s biography clearly has “the second trip” to Towns, p. 114, followed by his “next relapse” and then going to Towns again at the bottom of p. 115. Pass It On has the second visit on p. 106 and the third on p. 108. Both of these books clearly have these two visits clearly differentiated from the December 11, 1934 last visit to Towns Hospital.

Robert Thomsen stated “Four times in 1933-34, Bill was a patient at Towns Hospital . . .” on p. 174 of his Bill W. biography, but Thomsen only describes three visits himself. A July visit is described on p. 176. Lois Wilson describes Bill Wilson entering Towns Hospital in the vicinity of July, but leaving Towns in late September, 1934 on p. 87 of Lois Remembers. Clearly he was not there for two months, suggesting the July visit was the second and his third visit led to his departure in September. Message 3330 from Silkworth.net “AA History Lovers” has the second visit being in July of 1934, the third visit being in September 17, 1934. Afterward Bill stayed sober until Armistice Day, November 11, 1934, with the fourth visit on December 11, 1934. Ernest Kurtz wrote in Not God on p. 15: “Wilson was introduced to the Charles B. Towns Hospital, a drying out facility on Central Park West to which he was admitted four times in 1933-1934.” Bill Pittman in AA The Way It Began wrote on p. 150: “ . . . he was admitted to Charles B. Towns Hospital on four separate occasions in 1933 and 1934.” Language of the Heart, p. 283: “As Jung had told Rowland that his case was hopeless and that medicine and psychiatry could do nothing more for him, so Silkworth told Lois on a fateful day in the summer of 1934 [visit #2], ‘I am afraid that Bill Will have to be committed. There is nothing that I can do for him, or anything else that I know.’ These were words of great humility from a professional. The scared me into sobriety for two months, although I soon resumed my drinking [leading up to visit #3].” [10] Bill W., My First 40 Years, Bill Wilson, Hazelden., p. 115 [11] Ibid., p. 115 [12] Lois Remembers, Al-Anon Family Groups, p. 87

[13] Bill W., My First 40 Years, Bill Wilson, Hazelden, p. 117 [14] Bill W., Robert Thomsen, p. 181 [15] Bill W., My First 40 Years, p. 132: “The area way bell at 182 Clinton Street rung, and there [Ebby] stood.” That was Ebby’s first after Bill’s debauch that began on Armistice Day. The second visit of Ebby, p. 135: “One afternoon Ebby turned up with a friend, Shep Cornell.” [16] Alcoholics Anonymous, Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, p. 7 [17] Bill W. My First 40 Years, Bill Wilson, Hazelden, p. 140 “The usual treatment began. Barbiturates to temper me down, doses of belladonna, and a little sedative.” [18] Silkworth, Dale Mitchel, p. 48 [19] We Recovered Too, The Family Group’s Beginnings in the Pioneers Own Words, Michael Fitzpatrick, Hazelden, Center City, Minnesota, 55012, 2nd Audio Track, Bill Wilson, June 1956. Note: As a former smoker myself, Bill Wilson’s smoker’s cough clearly audible in the recording. [20] “Bill Wilson’s Vision of the Light at Towns Hospital,” Glenn F. Chesnut, http://www.hindsfoot.org/lightbillw.pdf [21] The writing of Bill to Lois as quoted in Dr. Bob and the Good Old Timers on p. 78: “Bill told [Eddie] to wait [and not commit suicide] until they had a chance to talk. Then he and Bob ‘tore over to Cleveland in the middle of the night, got him here and to the hospital and commenced to give him the Towns [Hospital] treatment. That, plus more oxidizing has been magical,’ Bill wrote Lois, ‘and is creating a great stir at the City Hospital, where the doctors are all agog, being unable to do anything with these cases.’ (“Oxidizing” was probably short for “Oxfordizing” . . .). [22] Dr Bob and the Good Oldtimers, Alcoholics Anonymous

World Services, Inc., New York, NY, @1980, p. 78. [23] Adolph Hitler, John Toland, Volume 2, p. 933: “[On September 20, 1944, Doctor] Giesing checked the three X rays with Morell and was amazed that his colleague identified the cheekbones as the sinuses. There followed the daily examination of the patient in his bunker and Giesing noticed Hitler’s face had an odd reddish tinge in the artificial light. Afterward Hitler was stricken with stomach pains and insisted on taking more than a half a dozen of the “little black pills” prescribed by Morell. Concerned by the continuing dosage, Giesing began to make caution inquiries. Linge showed him the pill container. Its label read: Antigas Pills, Dr. Koster, Berlin, Extract nux vomica 0.04; Extract belladonna 0.04. Giesing was appalled. Hitler had been heavily dosing himself with two poisons—strychnine and atropine. Perhaps that explained his attacks, his growing debility; his irritability and aversion to light; his hoarse throat and strange reddish tinge of his skin . . . Morell advised Hitler to remain in bed all day but he insisted on getting up for his regular examination by Giesing. He, in turn, advised discontinuance of the cocaine treatment, [which was a ten percent cocaine solution to relieve the sinus] . . .” [24] Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, Alcoholics Anonymous Publishing, Inc., NY, NY, 1957, p. 63

On Tuesday, December 15, 2015 7:43 PM, “Glenn Chesnut glennccc@sbcglobal.net [AAHistoryLovers]” <AAHistoryLovers@yahoogroups.com> wrote:

Bob, with apologies — you do such beautiful work, and I know that

the information you have posted on this link shows up all over the internet and even in printed books — but we genuinely need to stop propagating this myth about Bill Wilson being given large doses of this witch’s brew of belladonna, henbane, and prickly ash, even if it is done in all innocence, and believing that it really happened. It is doing harm to a serious study of Bill Wilson’s life and his religious experience at Towns Hospital.

What was the source of this idea? Back in 1988 Bill Pittman published a book — The Roots of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.: The Way It Began) — in which he cited two papers published in medical journals in 1909 and 1912 by Dr. Alexander Lambert, M.D., describing the use of the horrible witch’s brew which you describe in the treatment which was given to alcoholics and drug addicts at Towns Hospital.

It makes entertaining reading, which is probably why people keep repeating the story over and over (citing Bill Pittman’s book but never looking at the two journal articles by Dr. Lambert). But let us all think about this seriously: this kind of treatment is quack medicine, pure and simple. It is frankly hard for me to see how any knowledgeable physician, even of that time, could have thought seriously that giving that brew to any human being could be medically justified.

In 1934, when Bill Wilson entered Towns Hospital for the last time, Dr. Lambert was long gone, and Dr. Silkworth, who was a genuine qualified physician, was now in charge of the treatment at Towns, and DR. SILKWORTH’s treatment is described in two very sensible and detailed articles. These are the ones that we need to go to, if we want to know what kind of treatment Bill Wilson was given.

Some people die when they are detoxing from alcohol. They go into convulsions, and afterwards, their hearts fail to start beating again in a

regular manner. So back in the first half of the twentieth century, you tried to keep them from going into convulsions by giving them “sedatives” of some sort. Small doses of alcohol, tapering down over time. Or substances like paraldehyde, barbiturates (colloquially called goofballs, as in Dr. Bob’s self-detox after coming back from the AMA convention), bromides, chloral hydrate (colloquially called a Mickey or Mickey Finn), and codeine. Belladonna was normally spoken of as a “sedative” only in certain specialized cases (such as whooping cough and Parkinson’s disease) but we find it still being used in VERY small doses at Knickerbocker Hospital in New York City even as late as 1952.

When tranquillizers were discovered, physicians quickly began switching to that to help keep alcoholics from going into convulsions when they were in detox. Far fewer negative side effects.

But please, let’s get those vivid accounts of massive doses of belladonna out of the AA literature. Dr. Silkworth was a good physician, not a quack. It’s maligning his good name.

Glenn Chesnut

========================= SOURCES

Alexander Lambert, M.D. “Care and Control of the Alcoholic,” Boston Medical and Surgical Journal [now called the New England Journal of Medicine] 166 (April 25, 1912): 615-621.

Alexander Lambert, “The Obliteration of the Craving for Narcotics,” Journal of the American Medical Association LIII, 13 (1909): 985-989.

As cited in Bill Pittman, The Roots of Alcoholics Anonymous (Center City, Minnesota: Hazelden, 1999; orig. pub. as A.A.: The Way It Began by Glen Abbey Books in 1988) 164-169.

William D. Silkworth, “Reclamation of the Alcoholic,” Medical Record (April 21, 1937), available online at http://www.aa-nia-dist11.org/Documents/silk.pdf.

Anonymous, “I’m a Nurse in an Alcoholic Ward,” Saturday Evening Post (Oct. 18, 1952), written by a nurse who worked in the A.A. ward at Knickerbocker Hospital in New York City. “We give them vitamins to re-establish nutritional balance, fruit juices to combat dehydration, and bromides and belladonna for jagged nerves.” =========================

BOB S. GIVES THE FOLLOWING ACCOUNT which is taken from Bill Pittman’s book and his account there of the two articles by Dr. Lambert.

“Belladonna was given every hour, day and night, for nearly 50 hours. The end of the treatment was marked by the abundance of stools and then castor oil was given to the patient as a further purgative. The treatment was also described as ‘puke and purge’.Every 12 hours the patient was given CC (Compound Cathartic) pills and Blue Mass. These were 19th century medications of varying composition. Blue Mass included mercury, and was prescribed for a cornucopia of ailments. When a patient was admitted to the hospital while intoxicated or at the end of a spree, the first thing that was done was to put the patient to sleep. The only medication given prior to the hypnotic was the four CC pills. The hypnotic Lambert found best contained chloral hydrate and morphine along with one or two grams

of paraldehyde. If the patient went to sleep easily on this hypnotic it was safe to wake him every hour for his belladonna regimen. Dr. Lambert believed it was important to administer a small amount of strychnine every four hours.”

………………………………………………. DESCRIPTIONS OF WHAT DR. SILKWORTH WAS ACTUALLY DOING:

See Glenn Chesnut, around the middle of the page at Alcoholics Anonymous Archival and Historical Materials Part 2 Alcoholics Anonymous Archival and Historical Materials P… Alcoholics Anonymous history Alcoholism and addiction treatment Spirituality and religion Psychology and philosophy Recovery and self help Click on squares below:… View on hindsfoot.org Preview by Yahoo

http://hindsfoot.org/lightbillw.pdf “Bill Wilson’s Vision of the Light at Towns Hospital on December 14, 1934.” Glenn F. Chesnut shows that it COULD NOT have been produced by taking belladonna. That drug belongs to the general group called the “hallucinogens,” but it is classified as a deliriant, not a psychedelic or entheogen. That means it does not fill you with a sense of ecstacy, bliss, or being in contact with a good and loving God or divine reality. If given too large a dose, it throws you into a stumbling, delerious state; it contains the same poisonous alkaloids as datura, which was one of the drugs used in Haitian mythology for turning people into zombies.

http://hindsfoot.org/bellasilkw.pdf “Dr. Silkworth in Action c. 1947: A Nurse’s Eyewitness

Account.” In an article in the Saturday Evening Post, a nurse describes the way Dr. Silkworth set up his alcoholism ward, and the medications that he actually used.

http://hindsfoot.org/belladonna.pdf “The Effects of Belladonna and Henbane: first hand accounts and detailed descriptions.” Some long accounts written by recreational drug users describing their own experiences when they took belladonna, plus a few notes on what it feels like to take henbane.

With (at the end) a note from Lawrence Willoughby, a psychotherapist whose speciality is adolescent alcoholics and drug addicts, who writes:

“In my 35 years of clinical experience, with one of my specialties being the treatment of adolescents who are alcoholics and drug addicts, I have known at least a thousand cases of people who have experimented with using belladonna to get high. Belladonna to the best of my experiences with patients has NEVER produced anything like what Bill Wilson reported happening to him at Towns Hospital. It is always bad. The attempt to claim that Bill Wilson’s experience was a hallucination induced by belladonna is the silliest thing I have ever heard. Where is this coming from?”

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Posted by: Gary Neidhardt <morningmael@yahoo.com>

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