Steven J. Novak

LSD before Leary: Sidney Cohen's Critique of 1950s Psychedelic Drug Research

Isis March 1, 1997 Steven J. Novak 68 citations

In 1962 Sidney Cohen presented the medical community with its first warning about the dangers of the drug LSD. LSD had arrived in the United States in 1949 and was originally perceived as a psychotomimetic capable of producing a model psychosis. But in the mid 1950s intellectuals in Southern California redefined LSD as a psychedelic capable of producing mystical enlightenment. Though LSD was an...