[HN Gopher] Erowid - Documenting the Complex Relationship Betwee...
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Erowid - Documenting the Complex Relationship Between Humans and
Psychoactives
Author : slow_typist
Score : 192 points
Date : 2025-10-21 20:31 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.erowid.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.erowid.org)
| mitchbob wrote:
| Some previous discussions of Erowid:
|
| What do people see when they're tripping? Analyzing Erowid's trip
| reports (263 comments):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43171007
|
| An Experience with Modafinil (343 comments):
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30067264
| Windchaser wrote:
| > An experience with Modafinil
|
| Well, there went two hours of my morning, and I only made it
| halfway through the comments.
| nativeit wrote:
| This feels like a good audience for Erowid.
| handfuloflight wrote:
| I'm sure there's already a significant overlap.
| 0xEF wrote:
| Likely. I spent a lot of my youth exploring the idea that the
| brain is sort of like a radio that could be tuned to
| different layers of reality using psychoactives. Also had a
| bit of a love affair with DMT for awhile, as well as trying
| to find the right combo of "soft" drugs that would induce
| hypnogogic dream states.
|
| As fruity as all that sounds, I learned a lot about chemistry
| and how to conduct (or not conduct, perhaps), verifiable
| research, which is an important part of my thinking today as
| we navigate an ever-increasing flood of claims about tech,
| medicine and mental health. I have to imagine HN attracts
| some pretty analytical minds by default, my own being novice,
| at best.
|
| I have a lot of great respect for the folks at erowid and I'm
| glad to see they're still around.
| sph wrote:
| Erowid facilitated my deep dive into psychedelics in 2010 or
| so. Such a treasure trove on information about harm
| reduction, dosage, etc.
|
| My old bad trip was meticulously documented and is published
| on the site (don't mix cannabis with psychedelics, yo! You
| don't wanna get paranoid as the walls are melting)
|
| Funny aside: I think I spent 13 BTC to buy some LSD on the
| dark web at the time. Years later, the change from that
| transaction was enough to pay a month's rent in London. Not
| only I spent what is a small fortune today, but the parcel
| was seized by the authorities so I never had the pleasure of
| trying LSD. Maybe one day...
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| I hope your dealer held on to your million pounds.
| code_biologist wrote:
| Reading Erowid trip reports persuaded me to try high dose
| tripping on Robitussin (DXM). From Wikipedia:
|
| _The first plateau (1.5 to 2.5 mg per kg body weight) is
| described as having euphoria, auditory changes, mild
| stimulation, and change in perception of gravity._
|
| _The second plateau (2.5 to 7.5 mg /kg) causes intense
| euphoria, vivid imagination, and closed-eye hallucinations._
|
| I like recovered.org's description of fourth plateau dose
| experiences:
|
| _The fourth plateau (at extremely high doses) can cause
| complete disconnection from reality, a sense of entering
| "another universe," and a loss of sensory contact with the
| environment._
|
| Sounds about right. Definitely kills some brain cells, but a
| hell of a ride. Would not recommend it if you don't like
| dissociatives.
| firmretention wrote:
| I would also recommend checking that the cough syrup you
| pick does not contain large doses of sugar alcohols like
| sorbitol, which in high doses, function as a very effective
| laxative. Nothing like spending 4 hours on a toilet
| emptying your bowels while tripping balls.
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| That sounds like a vital life experience that can connect
| you to your ancestors.
| WD-42 wrote:
| My friends and I used to visit this site a lot in high school and
| got kicks out of reading experiences for the more "hardcore"
| drugs like nightshade. Who knows how many of them were legit, but
| it was a great stoner activity. Glad to see this site is still
| around.
| phatskat wrote:
| I first came across Erowid in college when my friends were
| getting me into psychedelics. It's an incredibly informative
| site, and as a kid who read the warning labels on _everything_,
| it really helped me feel comfortable.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| We did exactly the same :) The thornapple trip reports were
| particularly nasty.
| lorddumpy wrote:
| I ended up trying them around 2 decades ago (I do not
| recommend lol) and learned so much from that site. The
| information about the long time for it to take effect (1.5
| hours AFAIK), warnings to take the right dose and no more,
| and the vision side effects the next day, along with horror
| stories of what could go wrong, Erowid probably saved us a
| trip to the ER or even worse.
|
| Love those guys, incredible resource.
| spacechild1 wrote:
| So you read the trip reports and decided to give it a try
| nevertheless? Wow...
| Nursie wrote:
| I've spent a lot of time reading those. They are entertaining
| and terrifying.
|
| Erowid's a really good source of "Hey, you know, maybe I don't
| want to get involved in that" at times.
| temp0826 wrote:
| This site is an "old internet" gem and I hope it never changes. I
| saw Earth and Fire (the creators of the project) speak at the
| Psychedelic Science conference a few years ago, quite a treat!
| Genuinely great people oozing integrity
| novaray wrote:
| Do you have a link to the video?
| temp0826 wrote:
| I'm not finding the exact one I was at (I saw them at the
| 2023 conference) but here is one from 2017-
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=lk9-PMKZPAY
| novaray wrote:
| Thanks!
| jbstack wrote:
| I'm curious how people go about finding safe sources for
| something like LSD (to be clear I'm not asking for anyone to give
| specific details, just an explanation). While psilocybin is easy
| to try safely (just travel to a place where it is legal), LSD is
| illegal in every jurisdiction as far as I know. The thought of
| ingesting some substance from dubious sources, that could be
| contaminated with absolutely anything, terrifies me and I
| honestly don't know how people bring themselves to take this kind
| of risk. Am I missing the point and there is some safe
| underground supply chain for this sort of thing?
| andrepd wrote:
| - Buy on the darkweb. Marketplaces exist with established
| vendors, open forums, feedback, customer support, escrow... I
| could write a long text about how this is an infinitely better
| way to do things for all concerned than to "force" non-violent
| people to interact with violent drug traders and adulterated
| products, but let's leave that for now. You can pay with Monero
| for untraceability.
|
| - Test what you get. Some stuff being sold as LSD might
| actually be another synthetic psychedelic, potentially
| dangerous (unlike LSD). So test: even in jurisdictions in which
| LSD is banned, you can easily buy tests; for LSD, this would be
| Erhrlich's reagent. If it tests positive, and since there's no
| reason to have LSD _and_ an adulterant (unlike other drugs such
| as cocaine), you 're safe.
|
| Of course, this is what my _friend_ told me.
| jbstack wrote:
| Interesting. Can you clarify this part?
|
| > there's no reason to have LSD and an adulterant
|
| Why is that? From what I understand LSD is pretty challenging
| to produce, so isn't there an advantage to an unscrupulous
| producer using something easier/cheaper?
| echelon_musk wrote:
| From my old and hazy memory (someone correct if wrong):
|
| There are few psychoactive compounds that work in the same
| microgram range as LSD. So if you're getting blotter then
| the size of the tab is important. The other compounds such
| as the NBOMe series use bigger blotters that are easy to
| spot.
| cypherpunks01 wrote:
| I think generally yes, phenethylamines are the primary
| compounds known to work in the same dose range as LSD.
| Unfortunately they are much cheaper to produce, and the
| majority of the 25C- and 25I-NBOMe fatalities occur after
| people believed they were taking LSD. I have read
| similarly, that tab size of a dose might be an indicator,
| but I don't think it's a fully reliable method. Check out
| the old 2013 Erowid "Spotlight on NBOMes" article [1]-
|
| > Silk Road prices for pure 25I-, 25C-, and 25B-NBOMe
| powder currently range from $90 to $200 per gram. The
| most problematic listings are vendors selling blotter
| that begs to be resold as acid: 1/4-inch perforated
| squares in 100-hit sheets bearing designs such as Albert
| Hofmann's bike ride and The Beatles Yellow Submarine,
| among other acid-blotter designs from the past. One
| vendor states "each tab is acid size, no big blotters
| here". Another offers hits supposedly containing 1 mg of
| 25I- and 25B-NBOMe each! Dosages range from 500
| micrograms to 2 mg per 1/4-inch hit, with advertised
| doses averaging around 1 mg. On Silk Road, LSD blotter is
| 5-10 times more expensive than NBOMe blotter.
|
| I think unfortunately toxic and potentially fatal doses
| can fit on a 1/4 inch hit or in a single liquid drop.
| There needs to be a lot more active chemical though,
| whereas you get a slight metallic taste with LSD, the
| article says NBOME is extremely bitter due to the higher
| concentration, which is sometimes covered up with mint or
| other flavor (never heard of this with LSD).
|
| There's an interesting 2019 article "Multimodal imaging
| of hallucinogens 25C- and 25I-NBOMe on blotter papers"
| [2] that analyzed a random seized NBOME sample from
| Germany. It has lower concentration per cm2 than what
| Erowid cited, but I don't think it's a technical limit
| unfortunately that prevents scary doses from fitting on a
| standard blotter.
|
| [1]
| https://erowid.org/chemicals/nbome/nbome_article1.shtml
|
| [2] https://analyticalsciencejournals.onlinelibrary.wiley
| .com/do...
| Denatonium wrote:
| I think what OP is saying is that if a manufacturer is
| putting real LSD on a tab, it's unlikely that they're also
| adding an adulterant.
| BurnTheBoss wrote:
| In addition to what others are saying, I think it's
| important to think "apples to oranges" here.
|
| Think about it this way, if you're a dealer you want to
| inflate your supply right? So, if you have a street drug
| that is an 'upper' and you want to cut it, you need to cut
| it with uppers, or something that can mask an upper. That
| cut needs to blend in, if you're expecting something blue,
| and it has red in it, then you'll know its off.
|
| Psychedelics would need to be cut with other psychedelics,
| but it's not as easy as mixing two things and having it
| come out. LSD comes as a crystal and is then put in an
| alcohol solution and dried on paper, there's not many
| things that would work that way. If the goal is to stretch
| your supply, you just further dilute it, and many people
| do.
|
| Where there are cheaper/easier alternatives are things in
| the 2c family, or others that are _close_ to the experience
| of LSD but not, and are also more toxic.
|
| I don't know if any of that is clear, or makes sense but
| noman-land wrote:
| How does your friend receive the mailed packages?
| soburn wrote:
| Every jurisdiction has its own rules but in broad strokes:
| receiving a package containing drugs isn't illegal,
| otherwise, anyone could send their enemy drugs.
|
| To safely receive drugs through the mail, you do not do
| anything clever (like mailing them to an empty house)
| instead you behave in a way that gives you plausible
| deniability. And you do not do anything that would lead
| police to think you're distributing.
|
| Order small, personal use quantities to your name and your
| address and leave the package on your counter for a couple
| of days after it arrives. If the police show up, say you
| didn't recognise the package and left it on the counter
| until you had time to return it to the post office.
|
| Where you're ordering from and to matters too. Ordering
| from the Netherlands into Australia almost guarantees the
| drugs will be found because all international mail is
| processed by Australia's postal service and the Netherlands
| is an obvious source country. Order nationally to avoid
| processing.
|
| Ultimately, it's just like buying drugs on the street: be a
| nobody buying for personal use.
|
| The biggest risk is that inevitably the seller will
| eventually get busted and your address will be in the
| seller's records. If you've bought large quantities, the
| police will see you as a dealer and try to catch you in a
| sting. The best sellers do not keep records for this
| reason, but it's something you won't know until they get
| caught. If you buy personal use quantities, the police
| aren't going to waste time on you, even if they have
| records of your orders.
| andrepd wrote:
| My friend was extra careful and sent it to a PO box kind
| thing, with a fake name and throwaway email just in case.
| But he thinks that is overly paranoid: if the letter was
| intercepted (highly unlikely), there would be no legal
| consequences because there is no link between him and the
| purchase (therefore strictly speaking all that happened was
| that someone mailed him illegal drugs without his knowledge
| ;)).
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| This is what my friends in the bodybuilding world have
| come to accept.
|
| Yes packages get intercepted. But it isn't the legal
| liability of an addressee for what is in some box that
| SOMEONE put in the mail. Otherwise it would be an amazing
| blackmail (nigh literally) tool to target any enemy.
| newsclues wrote:
| I found a hippie with a jar of liquid lsd in a safe.
|
| You just gotta trust people and be a Guinea pig, if you aren't
| going to test drugs you buy.
| Nursie wrote:
| Back in the day (90s and before) the other substances that
| could fit on a blotter and still have an effect were very, very
| niche, and somehow LSD was very very cheap so if it worked at
| all it was probably the real thing.
|
| > The thought of ingesting some substance from dubious sources,
| that could be contaminated with absolutely anything
|
| People used to trust networks of friends, rather than
| stereotypical 'gangs' or 'dealers'. The problem now is that
| there is so much other stuff floating around that nearly
| anything you go after could be nearly anything else.
|
| In the UK there is a service called WEDINOS, which is of
| interest in this area - you can anonymously submit them a
| sample of whatever it is and they will publish the result on
| their website. They use the data to track drugs (their
| particular interest is novel or 'emerging' drugs) around the
| country. You basically get a number, fill in a form and post it
| to them alongside a sample, and they will do GCMS. You're not
| supposed to send them things you know are illegal, but ...
| looking at the website people do, a lot.
|
| As the other poster mentions reagent tests are available fairly
| widely and can give you a rough idea.
|
| Also in many countries some LSD derivatives are not (yet)
| illegal, and in those it is quite often possible to order
| things like 1P-LSD, which is (as far as can be ascertained) a
| pro-drug that is quickly metabolised into LSD, on the open
| internet.
| zyf wrote:
| Find a source, get a test kit, test meticulously, stick to the
| source. If you're getting a new source, test again and try a
| very small dose first.
|
| Also, besides Erowid, other reliable information sources have
| popped up. Psychonautwiki, tripsit.me for example.
|
| Some countries have anonymous test pipelines via hospitals or
| universities, but it's less common. Test kits are available
| online.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| DMT vape pens are "legally" available in parts of Canada last I
| checked.
| alessandru wrote:
| you would go to where trustworthy people are selling it. you
| would have your friend try it first if purchased from random
| street dealer. i think many of these get confused in the
| street, like how would you know it is true lsd and not some
| other research chemical?
|
| in america there are pockets of psychadelic support that would
| provide clean sources, you'd maybe network with them through
| campus norml groups, or that cool chemistry TA. these people
| have zero incentive to sell you something different or
| contaminate it with anything (more work).
|
| when it is dosed correctly, you can take a small dose of lsd
| and see if it is the effect you recognize or something else.
| definitely just do some homework to make sure that it can be
| trusted.
| redwood wrote:
| Absolutely critically experience vaults here. In my youth these
| were invaluable
| Canada wrote:
| When I was young, I looked at this site like a TODO list...
| neom wrote:
| As did I, and I made a pretty good dent in it!
| ratelimitsteve wrote:
| when I was a teenager back in web pre-alpha erowid either put me
| in grave danger or saved my life, depending on whether you
| emphasize the drug use or the fact that I survived it relatively
| unscathed
| progmetaldev wrote:
| This site helped me tremendously in my youth, with staying safe
| and giving me actual knowledge about different chemicals, rather
| than the complete abstinence information from programs like DARE.
| At one point, I found that a psychoactive chemical I was taking
| had a serious side effect with a prescription I was taking, and
| that information was nowhere to be found through web searches.
| Without Erowid, I definitely would have permanently damaged my
| liver! I don't think we should necessarily be marketing
| psychoactives to the youth, but I'm glad that this type of
| information is available for those that choose to search for it.
| alessandru wrote:
| "news"
|
| ahahaaha you people just found out about this?!>?!
| sans_souse wrote:
| This was my Most Valued Resource of the old internet.
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