A researcher who helped launch the field of psychedelic studies, while his warnings about LSD's misuse in the early 1960s foreshadowed the controversies that would surround psychedelics in the decades to come.

Sidney Cohen (1910-1987) was an American psychiatrist, professor, and author who was one of the pioneering researchers into LSD and other psychedelic drugs in the 1950s and 1960s. Born in New York City, Cohen graduated from Columbia University as a pharmacist in 1930 before going on to earn his medical degree from the University of Bonn in Germany in 1938.

After completing his medical internship and residency, Cohen served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps during World War II, reaching the rank of colonel. In the late 1940s, he became chief of psychiatric services at the Veteran Administration's Wadsworth Hospital in Los Angeles. When UCLA's medical school started in the early 1950s, Cohen joined the faculty, eventually becoming a clinical professor of psychiatry.

In the mid-1950s, Cohen began investigating the effects of LSD. His early studies followed the standard “model psychosis” methodology, administering the drug to carefully monitor its adverse effects. However, after having his own powerful mystical experience on LSD in 1955, his approach shifted. Influenced by Aldous Huxley and others, Cohen began to see LSD as a potentially beneficial substance capable of providing insight and personal growth rather than just psychosis.

Cohen launched new studies into LSD’s potential as an adjunct to psychotherapy, a treatment for alcoholism, and a creativity enhancer. He collaborated with psychologist Betty Eisner on significant early studies using LSD in psychotherapy. During the late 1950s, Cohen also provided LSD to notable figures including author Aldous Huxley, Alcoholics Anonymous founder Bill Wilson, and philosophers Gerald Heard and Alan Watts.

However, by the early 1960s, Cohen grew alarmed at the popularization and spread of LSD use outside careful medical supervision. Distancing himself from the enthusiastic claims of Huxley, Heard and others about LSD's potential, Cohen became an early public voice warning about the dangers of the uncontrolled use of the drug. His warnings predated the late 1960s backlash against psychedelics.

From 1968 to 1970, Cohen took a leave from UCLA to serve in the Nixon administration as the first director of the National Institute of Mental Health's Division of Narcotic Abuse and Drug Addiction. A prolific writer, he authored over 300 articles and several books including The Beyond Within: The LSD Story in 1964.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Cohen remained a prominent expert on drug abuse issues. He died in 1987 at the age of 76.

📻 Audio recording: Sidney Cohen’s March 2, 1966 lecture on psychedelics at UCLA