Erowid, also called Erowid Center, is a non-profit educational organization that provides information about
psychoactive plants and chemicals.
Erowid documents legal and illegal substances, including their intended and adverse effects. Information on Erowid's website is gathered from diverse sources including published literature, experts in related fields, and the experiences of the general public. Erowid acts as a
publisher
Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...
of new information as well as a library for the collection of documents and images published elsewhere.
History
Erowid was founded in April 1995 as a small business; their website appeared six months later. The name "Erowid" was chosen to reflect the organization's stated philosophy of education. Using
Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the reconstructed common ancestor of the Indo-European language family. No direct record of Proto-Indo-European exists; its proposed features have been derived by linguistic reconstruction from documented Indo-Euro ...
linguistic roots, "Erowid" roughly translates into "Earth Wisdom" (
*''h₁er-'',
*''weyd-'').
[Emily Witt]
"The trip planners."
'' New Yorker.'' 23 November 2015. Retrieved 2018-03-05.
In 2005, the
501(c)(3)
A 501(c)(3) organization is a United States corporation, Trust (business), trust, unincorporated association or other type of organization exempt from federal income tax under section 501(c)(3) of Title 26 of the United States Code. It is one of ...
non-profit educational organization, "Erowid Center", was formed. The organization is supported by donations, and its
website
A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...
is free of advertisements. Although its primary focus is on the website, Erowid Center also provides research and data for other
harm reduction
Harm reduction, or harm minimization, refers to a range of intentional practices and public health policies designed to lessen the negative social and/or physical consequences associated with various human behaviors, both legal and illegal. H ...
, health, and
education
Education is the transmission of knowledge and skills and the development of character traits. Formal education occurs within a structured institutional framework, such as public schools, following a curriculum. Non-formal education als ...
al organizations. The organization is based in
Northern California
Northern California (commonly shortened to NorCal) is a geocultural region that comprises the northern portion of the U.S. state of California, spanning the northernmost 48 of the state's List of counties in California, 58 counties. Northern Ca ...
.
Fire Erowid and Earth Erowid are the
sobriquet
A sobriquet ( ) is a descriptive nickname, sometimes assumed, but often given by another. A sobriquet is distinct from a pseudonym in that it is typically a familiar name used in place of a real name without the need for explanation; it may beco ...
s of the two creators of the site. Both work full-time on the project, along with speaking at conferences, producing original research, and contributing to
entheogen
Entheogens are psychoactive substances used in spiritual and religious contexts to induce altered states of consciousness. Hallucinogens such as the psilocybin found in so-called "magic" mushrooms have been used in sacred contexts since ancie ...
ic research.
According to the site, the creators' vision includes a "world where people treat psychoactives with respect and awareness; where people work together to collect and share knowledge in ways that strengthen their understanding of themselves, and provide insight into the complex choices faced by individuals and societies alike."
Erowid Center's mission is to provide and facilitate access to objective, accurate, and non-judgmental information about psychoactive plants, chemicals, technologies, and related issues.
According to one study, "Erowid is a trusted resource for drug information—both positive and negative,"
and Erowid has been extensively cited worldwide by book authors, scientific and medical journals, newspapers, magazines, filmmakers, radio and TV shows, Ph.D. students, web sites, and other media producers.
Projects
Online library
The library contains over 63,000 documents related to over 737 psychoactive substances,
[ including images, research summaries and abstracts, FAQs, ]media
Media may refer to:
Communication
* Means of communication, tools and channels used to deliver information or data
** Advertising media, various media, content, buying and placement for advertising
** Interactive media, media that is inter ...
articles, experience reports, information on chemistry
Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...
, dosage, effects, law
Law is a set of rules that are created and are enforceable by social or governmental institutions to regulate behavior, with its precise definition a matter of longstanding debate. It has been variously described as a science and as the ar ...
, health
Health has a variety of definitions, which have been used for different purposes over time. In general, it refers to physical and emotional well-being, especially that associated with normal functioning of the human body, absent of disease, p ...
, traditional and spiritual use, and drug testing. , over 17 million people visit the site each year.
The site generally contains more detail in the pages listed under plants
Plants are the eukaryotes that form the kingdom Plantae; they are predominantly photosynthetic. This means that they obtain their energy from sunlight, using chloroplasts derived from endosymbiosis with cyanobacteria to produce sugars f ...
and chemicals
A chemical substance is a unique form of matter with constant chemical composition and characteristic properties. Chemical substances may take the form of a single element or chemical compounds. If two or more chemical substances can be combin ...
than in other sections. It does not have comprehensive information about the specific effects of most pharmaceuticals. Such information may appear elsewhere on the site, where one can read about people's individual reactions to various drugs.
Experience Vaults
Erowid allows site visitors to submit descriptions of their own personal experiences with psychoactive substances for review and possible publication. The site states that they welcome all perspectives regarding personal psychoactive experience, including positive, negative, and neutral. Their collection consists of more than 30,000 edited, reviewed, and published reports, as well as stating that they have another 55,000 unpublished reports undergoing review. Many of their reports are collected from Bluelight.org, and the two organizations have collaborated to categorize and publish trip reports.
DrugsData / EcstasyData
Erowid also runs DrugsData (formerly EcstasyData), an independent laboratory drug checking
Drug checking or pill testing is a way to Harm reduction, reduce the harm from drug consumption by allowing users to find out the content and purity of substances that they intend to consume. This enables users to make safer choices: to avoid more ...
program co-sponsored by IsomerDesign and DanceSafe.
Launched in July 2001 under the name EcstasyData, its purpose was to collect ecstasy pill samples sent anonymously by the public, in order to manage, review, and publicly report laboratory test results from a variety of organizations As the site evolved into DrugsData, the service expanded to testing samples of most recreational drugs, and publicly report the sample's chemical composition as well as what it was sold as.
As of April 10, 2024, DrugsData's service is on administrative pause until further notice, by order of the DEA. DrugsData has published test results for over 20,000 samples throughout its 23 years of service.
Testing costs have sometimes been covered by project funding (when available) and at other times are covered by those who submit tablets for testing. Multiple published studies use EcstasyData.org as a primary source of data.
Tablets of street ecstasy can be anonymously submitted to a DEA licensed laboratory for testing and then photos of the tablets and GC/MS test results are published on the project's website.
Erowid Extracts
''Erowid Extracts'', the bi-annual members' newsletter of Erowid, has been published each year since 2001. It provides updates on the organization's activities, results of surveys conducted on Erowid.org, experience reports, new articles on various aspects of psychedelic and psychoactive plants and drugs, and information about psychedelic culture and events. New issues of ''Erowid Extracts'' are sent to members, but past issues are available on the Erowid website.
Psychoactive Reference Library
Erowid and The Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS
A map is a symbolic depiction of interrelationships, commonly spatial, between things within a space. A map may be annotated with text and graphics. Like any graphic, a map may be fixed to paper or other durable media, or may be displayed on ...
) collaborated on two large reference database projects. Erowid has provided expertise and work developing and coordinating the construction of an online psychoactive drug reference library, and MAPS has published a similar collection
Document archiving
Erowid Center also archives and provides access to thousands of older texts in their online and physical libraries. By collecting and making these texts available, they attempt to promote an understanding of the changing contexts surrounding the use of psychoactive drugs. Major archiving projects include the Albert Hofmann collection, the Myron Stolaroff Collection, documents from Alexander Shulgin, and a complete archived snapshot of The Hive.
Reception
Due to the subject matter presented on Erowid.org, the site has drawn praise and criticism from both the media and medical officials. Edward Boyer, an emergency-room physician, and toxicologist, while admitting that Erowid has a plethora of useful information, once argued the site may cause more harm than good to potential drug users.
Anthropologist Nicolas Langlitz argued that Erowid also sometimes serves as a mechanism of postmarket surveillance or pharmacovigilance
Pharmacovigilance (PV, or PhV), also known as drug safety, is the pharmaceutical science relating to the "collection, detection, assessment, monitoring, and prevention" of adverse effects with pharmaceutical products.
The etymological roots ...
in the realm of illicit and experimental substances.
See also
* Bluelight (web forum)
* The Hive (website)
* Drug rehabilitation
Drug rehabilitation is the process of medical or psychotherapeutic treatment for dependency on psychoactive substances such as alcohol, prescription drugs, and street drugs such as cannabis, cocaine, heroin, and amphetamines. The general int ...
* Responsible drug use
Responsible drug use seeks to maximize the benefits and minimize the risks associated with psychoactive drug use. For illegal psychoactive drugs that are not diverted prescription controlled substances, some critics believe that illegal recreationa ...
* Trip report
References
{{reflist, 33em
External links
Drugsdata.org
DMT-Nexus
American educational websites
Drug culture
Hallucinogens
Charities based in California
American digital libraries
501(c)(3) organizations
Harm reduction
Non-profit organizations based in California