Thirty years ago, drug users went en masse to a website called Erowid to describe their experiences with everything from the painkiller Advil to LSD. Now it has become a veritable goldmine for scientists and governments.
“I’m melting, help me.” That’s not just an unusual cry for help. It’s also the title of a “trip report” – a description of a person’s experience after using the powerful dissociative drug phencyclidine (also known as “angel dust”).
And it’s just one of many thousands of psychedelic records collected on the Erowid website, a platform that has built one of the world’s most influential databases on drug use and its effects since the early days of the internet.
The project celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. It started as a humble initiative by enthusiasts, but now contains data on everything from aL – LAD) are not just quirky online stories. They have become vital to scientific research, especially for exotic or illicit substances for which clinical evidence either doesn’t exist or is difficult to obtain.
“People publishing their own experiences and conducting experiments outside of legal and academic structures has in many cases paved the way for science,” says David Luke, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Greenwich in the United Kingdom who researches psychedelic substances and conducts clinical trials with microdoses of LSD.
“There were so few academic publications and resources for the study of psychoactive substances that Erowid became invaluable to science – for understanding safety issues and the experience itself,” he adds.
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Psychedelics were of interest mainly to the countercultural community of self-proclaimed “psychonauts” – volunteer testers who immersed themselves in their own minds with chemicals and shared the results.
Except for isolated conferences organised by enthusiasts, formal research virtually ceased due to strict regulations that made it difficult to obtain permits to work with controlled substances.
It was then that two New College of Florida graduates – under the pseudonyms Earth and Fire – noticed a huge gap: there was no reliable central repository where scientists – amateurs and professionals alike – could find reliable information on psychoactive substances.
The internet opened up new possibilities, and from a hobby that later turned into a full-fledged business, Erowid Earth was born. t;It was really revolutionary and bold,” he says.
“They used digital technology and the early internet to create a space that didn’t exist before – and that space dramatically changed psychedelic culture,” adds Eric Davis, a writer and researcher on the psychedelic counterculture and friend of the founders.
“Erowid created an environment for knowledge sharing, but it also became a place where young experimenters could find a ‘big brother’ who already knew what he was doing,” he adds.
Over time, he says, the site has had a significant impact on the rethinking of psychedelics – from demonised drugs to potentially therapeutic agents that could change the approach to mental health.
‘While there were other early platforms on the internet to discuss drugs, Erowid has very quickly become a kook who loves clear data but also has the courage and inspiration to create a new cultural ecosystem,’ says Davies.
He notes that the site has shown how reliable information can help reduce harm and support a community “that can be very non-technical, chaotic and even wild.”
However, Erowid was originally a small, autonomous community of “data nerds” and “data junkies.” As Earth and Fire wrote in a 10-year retrospective review in 2005, to their surprise, visits to the site soared into the thousands after they added Erowid to the search engines.
And then the traffic only increased. Within a few years, it wasn’t just psychedelic fans who became the site’s main audience – anyone interested in information about substances and their effects began to use it.
Becoming photo, Getty Images
Erowid now has more than 5,000 links to Google Scholar, a repository of academic research, as well as government agencies, law enforcement, medical professionals, data scientists, anthropologists, chemists, historians, and digital culture researchers.
Among Erowid’s many references are studies of the effects of new “research chemicals” – semi-legal “designer drugs” that number in the thousands.
Other scientists are investigating what substances can induce an experience closest to the dream state, or how to recreate “chemical induction of synesthesia” – a neurological phenomenon in which our senses are blended and a person can see sounds or taste noises. Earth and fire are even listed as co-authors in some research papers.
Common to all of these studies are user reports in Erowid in their own research, he says. “And I think that’s invaluable, especially at a time when there were no resources other than underground resources. It made science possible “.
The extensive collection of psychoactive experiences on Erowid has helped make the site a point of reference for a variety of professions, not just scientists. Doctors and clinicians use Erowid, especially when treating patients who may have used new psychoactive substances – so-called research chemicals that are not yet regulated and can be misleading due to a lack of literature.
But some are also concerned that Erowid has information about the preparation and use of substances that could be harmful.
As the online drug market develops, new substances are constantly being added to the psychoactive world. This means that the government’s scientific literature has also noticed the rust. Policy makers, including the US National Institute on Drug Abuse, have used Erowid data to track trends and patterns in the emergence of new substances.
Erowid is read by the World Health Organisation as well as the British government, which has cited the site’s archives in reports on the harms of methoxetamine and zopiclone. The US Drug Enforcement Administration also monitors Erowid and refers to it in proposals to regulate new substances. A UK House of Lords committee report even mentions an essay published on Erowid about the psychoactive properties of nutmeg.
Earth and fire, says Davies, have always been about harm reduction. He recalls Earth saying: “Strangely, we found ourselves responsible for a cause that in a perfect society
But before medicalisation was possible, Erowid was “the beginning of marginalised people getting a voice,” says Roseman.
And so this little pre-Wikipedia Web 1.0 site – with its stubborn retro aesthetic unchanged for decades and tiny team of full-time staffers – brought psychonauts together and created a whole new space.
In doing so, it changed the culture, helped legitimise psychedelics in the eyes of the general public and is still having a disproportionate impact.
“The courage that Earth and Fire showed in stepping into the public space during a time of fear and suspicion in the dominant culture really played a huge role in reducing tension on the topic of psychedelics,” says the