Life and Career
Dr. Sidney Cohen was born in New York City in 1910 and died from heart complications while at his home in Los Angeles at the age 76 on May 8th, 1987. He is survived by his wife, Ilse; a son, Richard of Boulder, Colo.; a daughter, Dorothy Cohen of Los Angeles, and a sister, Yetta Wiener of Beverly Hills, Calif.
Dr. Cohen was a psychiatrist and the leading authority on Cannabis, LSD and a variety of other mood altering drugs throughout the 1950's and 60's. He attended school at Columbia University in New York and then obtained his MD from Bonn University in Germany. He worked as the Chief of Psychosomatic Medicine at the Veterans Administration Hospital at UCLA from 1959-1968 and was the editor of the peer reviewed, Journal of Psychopharmacology.
Betty Eisner was Dr. Cohen's first test subject with LSD and on November 10, 1955 she began working with Dr. Cohen for approximately a year and a half studying LSD. In that time Cohen and Eisner took LSD with Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (A.A.), which resulted in Wilson's failed attempt to incorporate LSD into the "self help" A.A. program.
In 1962 Dr. Cohen alerted the medical community to the dangers of LSD and expressed his concern for the growing demand of the drug. LSD had become a hit in the United States and abroad and the demand for the drug was fueling the black market. He was the first of his colleagues to express his concern on this matter.
In the late 60's Dr. Cohen served as the Division of Narcotic Addiction and Drug Abuse at the National Institute of Mental Health in Maryland.
Dr. Cohen's research extended into all classes of drugs that altered ones consciousness. Many of his findings have been published in over seventy scientific journals. His efforts have laid the foundation for what we know today about LSD and it's affects on the mind. He has lectured masses here in the United States and abroad, on his findings and has appeared with Timothy Leary on many occasions, one of which he shared a platform with the icon at the University of Maryland during a student conference.
Early Years
Education
PhD. Columbia University in New York
MD. from Bonn University in Germany
Career
Recent Times
Collected Works
Books
Dr. Cohen is the Author of:
Psychochemotheraphy: The Physicians Manual (1962)
The Beyond Within: The LSD Story (1964)
Drugs of Hallucination: Uses and Misuses of Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (1965)
Articles
Research Papers
Music
Filmography