How to Change Your Mind: The New Science of Psychedelics

by Michael Pollan

Leary and others often cited Cohen’s 1960 paper as an exoneration of psychedelics. Yet in a follow-up article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1962, Cohen reported new and “alarming” developments. The casual use of LSD outside the clinical setting, and in the hands of irresponsible therapists, was leading to “serious complications” and occasional “catastrophic reactions.” Alarmed that physicians were losing control of the drug, Cohen warned that “the dangers of suicide, prolonged psychotic reactions and antisocial acting out behavior exist.” In another paper published in the Archives of General Psychiatry the following year, he reported several cases of psychotic breaks and an attempted suicide and presented an account of a boy who, after ingesting a sugar cube laced with LSD that his father, a detective, had confiscated from a “pusher,” endured more than a month of visual distortions and anxiety before recovering. It was this article that inspired Roy Grinker, the journal’s editor, to condemn psychedelic research in an accompanying commentary, even though Cohen himself continued to believe that psychedelics in the hands of responsible therapists had great potential. A fourth article that Cohen published in 1966 reported still more LSD casualties, including two accidental deaths associated with LSD, one from drowning and the other from walking into traffic shouting, “Halt.” But balanced assessments of the risks and benefits of psychedelics we...