Psychoactives Online: Keyboard warriors know drugs more than your doctor
The leading factor underlying hallucinogenic experiences is compatible with the phenomenon of ego dissolution. Ballentine, et al. 2023
Despite a focus on plants, much of EGA and the greater contemporary ethnobotanical community finds roots in information technology, computers and the internet. Many cut their teeth on user generated content posted online across Erowid, Shroomery, Bluelight, DMT Nexus, the Corrobboree and now defunct forums such as The Hive and Australian Ethnobotany.
The psychoactive community has long been oppressed, and the value of online spaces have been as safe(r) places to discuss criminalised and stigmatised information that is crucial to the science, health and culture of people and plants. As the psychedelic renaissance brings more and more attention to substances that were previously ignored, or worse, demonised, researchers are realising the value that online discussion can hold for the advancement of psychoactive science.
A particularly expansive example of such scientific advancement is a recent paper; Trips and neurotransmitters: Discovering principled patterns across 6850 hallucinogenic experiences. In this paper, the authors use content lifted from Erowid to investigate
“word usage in 6850 free-form testimonials about 27 drugs through the prism of 40 neurotransmitter receptor subtypes, which were then mapped to three-dimensional coordinates in the brain via their gene transcription levels from invasive tissue probes.”
The breadth of online data used in this study, incorporation of brain imaging and AI technology are all exceptionally novel and interesting.
However, a core issue with the research of online drug discussion is ensuring psychoactive communities benefit from the use of their data by researchers. If the research of these websites skirts issues of drug law, policy and health reform and harm reduction practice, then the research may not provide any real benefits to the participants from whom they extract data. Indeed, such research may be causing participants additional harms by compounding the damages of the prohibition machine.
EGA friends Monica Barratt, Liam Engel and Stephen Bright have long been using forums as data in their research of psychoactives. While they too have drawn upon forum data to advance psychedelic medicine (e.g.; Sober sitter or coconsumer? Psychedelics, online forums and preferences for interpersonal interactions; Presence, trust, and empathy: preferred characteristics of psychedelic carers), they have sought to keep harm reduction, stigma and drug reform front and centre (e.g.; Positive drug stories: possibilities for agency and positive subjectivity for harm reduction; Psychedelic forum member preferences for carer experience and consumption behavior: Can “Trip Sitters” help inform psychedelic harm reduction services?).
A focus on drug reform and harm reduction might be seen as an ethical obligation when working with psychoactive communities. At the same time, many see medicine as a ‘trojan horse’ for broader drug reform, as medical applications of previously illegal drugs can be used to demonstrate drug benefits and the misrepresentation of harms.
There is no simple conclusion to the drug reform debate, but we hope to see a study applying a similar methodology to this Trips and neurotransmitters paper that addresses a broader range psychoactive substances, not just psychedelics, and detailed implications of findings for harm reduction practice and drug reform. Furthering understandings of new psychoactive substances (NPS) would be particularly valuable to psychoactive communities. Let’s keep painting the psychoactive rainbow!
