The paths of Tom Powers and Bill Wilson, two pivotal figures in the early days of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), intersect in fascinating and contrasting ways. Both men were influential in writing the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions book, although many do not know the name of Tom Powers, as he eventually leaves AA and forms a more orthodox program of recovery based upon the 12-steps and the Four Absolutes of the Oxford Group. Initially united by a shared commitment to helping those struggling with addiction and their collective work in writing the “12 and 12” their lives would take them down very different spiritual roads.
While Powers would begin his journey as an atheist, only to embrace a more traditional and dogmatic spiritual approach, Wilson would evolve in the opposite direction, moving toward a more open, exploratory, and inclusive vision of recovery. The catalyst for these diverging paths? LSD and the spiritual experiences it sparked.
Tom Powers: From Atheist to Spiritual Traditionalist
Tom Powers’ story begins in the midst of Alcoholics Anonymous, where he, like many others, found refuge from the wreckage of addiction. However, Powers’ entry into AA was as an atheist, skeptical of the spiritual underpinnings that the twelve-step program promoted. Despite his reservations, he respected Bill Wilson’s vision of a recovery program that emphasized spiritual awakening as the key to overcoming alcoholism. Powers initially approached his recovery pragmatically, focused on the psychological aspects rather than the spiritual components.
However, his deep involvement in AA, particularly his work alongside Bill Wilson in crafting Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (the Twelve and Twelve), gradually began to shift his perspective. Powers’ contributions to this foundational text reflected a growing openness to spiritual concepts, even as he grappled with his own evolving beliefs. The Twelve and Twelve itself is a nuanced work, balancing psychological insight with spiritual principles, and Powers’ fingerprints are evident in its focus on personal responsibility, moral inventory, and the search for deeper meaning in recovery.
It was during this time that Powers, like Wilson, began experimenting with LSD. Initially, these psychedelic experiences were viewed as potential tools for recovery, particularly in facilitating profound spiritual insights. For Powers, however, these experiments marked a turning point. The LSD-induced mystical experiences led him to a realization that spiritual transformation required not just occasional moments of insight but a disciplined, traditional approach to spiritual growth.
Increasingly uncomfortable with the looseness of AA’s spiritual framework and the reliance on personal interpretation of a “higher power,” Powers began to distance himself from Wilson’s more fluid vision of recovery. In his view, true recovery demanded rigorous adherence to a more structured and dogmatic spiritual path. This shift culminated in his decision to leave AA and form All Addicts Anonymous (AAA) in 1958, a program that went beyond AA in its spiritual demands. AAA addressed not only alcoholism but all forms of addiction, requiring participants to engage in strict self-examination, personal accountability, and a deeply traditional spiritual journey. AAA, went back to the earliest roots of AA and the Oxford Group and embraced not only the Twelve Steps but also encouraged practicing the Four Absolutes. Powers had moved from atheism to an uncompromising belief in the necessity of a higher spiritual authority as the only path to lasting recovery.
His retreat center in East Ridge, New York, became the embodiment of this philosophy. At East Ridge, those seeking recovery were expected to fully immerse themselves in a spiritually rigorous environment, free from the distractions and compromises that Powers felt had seeped into AA. His vision of recovery was no longer about just staying sober—it was about spiritual discipline and transformation, achieved through unwavering commitment to traditional dogma.
Bill Wilson: A Journey Toward Openness and Inclusion
Bill Wilson’s story, in contrast, is one of expanding openness. While Wilson was deeply spiritual from the beginning, believing in the necessity of a spiritual awakening for successful recovery, his early views on spirituality were relatively conventional. The AA program he co-founded was rooted in a belief in a higher power, but this was initially conceived in more traditional Christian terms. Over time, however, Wilson’s understanding of spirituality became increasingly flexible, and his leadership of AA reflected a growing willingness to embrace diverse approaches to spiritual experience.
The LSD experiments that Bill Wilson and Tom Powers both participated in were pivotal for Wilson, but they pushed him in the opposite direction. Rather than becoming more dogmatic, Wilson began to explore a broader range of spiritual experiences, convinced that recovery could be enhanced by expanding the ways individuals connected to their higher power. The mystical experiences induced by LSD opened Wilson’s mind to the idea that spiritual experiences could be diverse, subjective, and not confined to traditional religious frameworks.
Wilson’s growing interest in the broader potential of spiritual exploration led him to advocate for the use of LSD as a tool to help people in recovery access these profound experiences. He believed that the drug could offer a shortcut to the kind of spiritual awakening that was often central to overcoming addiction. This put Wilson increasingly at odds with Powers, who was becoming more rigid in his spiritual beliefs.
While Wilson never succeeded in integrating LSD into AA officially, his post-LSD vision of recovery was markedly different from the program’s early days. Wilson became increasingly focused on inclusivity, making AA more accessible to people from different religious backgrounds and even to those with no religious belief at all. The once clear line between spirituality and personal psychology began to blur for Wilson, who believed that the key to recovery was not adherence to dogma, but rather an individual’s unique spiritual experience—whatever form that might take.
As Wilson grew older, his vision for AA continued to expand. He became a vocal advocate for ensuring that AA remained open and flexible, allowing people to interpret their “higher power” in whatever way worked for them. His post-LSD journey led him to distance AA from rigid definitions of spirituality, instead emphasizing the importance of personal growth, psychological…
Two Diverging Paths: Tom Powers and Bill Wilson