Sidney Cohen

Side Effects and Complications

Sidney Cohen surveyed researchers at the VA Neuropsychiatric Hospital who had administered LSD or mescaline to nearly 5,000 subjects across more than 25,000 doses. He found no cases of serious prolonged physical harm and quantified low rates of suicide attempts, psychotic breaks over 48 hours, and other adverse effects.

An excerpt (25:14–36:48) from a February 1965 UCLA lecture by Sidney Cohen on extrasensory perception and claims of "dermal optical perception," or seeing through the skin. Cohen mentions synesthesia under LSD and mescaline, then argues that unproven claims belong in a "suspense file" rather than being accepted or dismissed.

A talk at UCLA in March 1966 by Sidney Cohen, the Los Angeles psychiatrist who had studied LSD since 1955. Cohen compares the drug state to religious mystical experience and calls LSD a valuable research tool, but predicts that its future is "miserable" as accidents, public fear, and new laws pile up.

Lisa Bieberman's October 1970 bulletin reviews the two studies then available on whether heavy LSD use damages the brain: Sidney Cohen and Allen Edwards's 1968 neuropsychological tests of thirty users, and William McGlothlin's 1969 attempt to replicate them. Because their results disagree, she concludes there is no evidence of general brain damage. The issue also prints a social worker's letter about how taking LSD changed his work with drug-using teenagers.