EROWID.ORG

Drug Information Wants to be Free

Dear Readers: This article was written by the top bidder for one page of
editorial space in last December's Strangercrombie auction.

It is about drugs (specifically about how to obtain information on
drugs), and drugs are something we here at The Stranger certainly know
something about.

We ain't the only ones--rumor has it musicians know a thing or two
about drugs as well, which is why we've placed this here drug article
in the music section. So please enjoy, and remember: Just say
no--unless, of course, you choose to say yes. And if you say yes? Know
what you're getting yourself into... which brings us back to this
article, which, as stated before, is about how to get information on
drugs.

You see, it all works out in the end. --Eds.

tried acid for the FIrst time 12 years ago, I didn't realize that
"acid" and "LSD" were the same substance.

I was an ignorant college kid in the Midwest, at a time before the
Internet was ubiquitous, back when the only information about illicit
substances in our college library was a couple books' worth of Timothy
Leary's lunatic ramblings about "cosmic consciousness."

An explosion of new substances has hit the streets since then, thanks
largely to the research of renegade chemist Alexander Shulgin. He and
his wife Anne published two groundbreaking works, Phenethylamines I
Have Known and Loved (PIHKAL) and Tryptamines I Have Known and Loved
(TIHKAL). These books are massive collections of recipes for making
novel psychoactive substances, along with personal experience reports
about many of the drugs from Shulgin and his friends.

Shulgin is so widely respected that when the DEA eventually raided his
lab, agents brought along copies of PIHKAL for him to autograph.

Now the underground is filled with drugs like 2C-T-21, 5-MeO-DIPT
("the foxy methoxy"), AMT, DPT, and more, alongside more well-known
characters like ketamine, GHB, 2C-B, ecstasy (MDMA), and good old LSD.
Each one holds promise and peril.

If you believe your federal government, each and every one is a bullet
aimed straight at your nervous system; if you believe your
pot-addicted stoner buddies, each one is a kick-ass party and there's
no need to come down. Clearly, the truth lies somewhere in between.

Enter the Vaults of Erowid (www.erowid.org), an independent,
member-supported source of unbiased, nonjudgmental information about
psychoactive plants and chemicals.

Since its inception in 1995, Erowid has grown into an incredibly
well-respected resource for a tremendous range of users: from college
students to parents, from health professionals to law enforcement,
from researchers to curious laypeople.

When Rolling Stone did a story on 2C-T-7 and called the DEA for
information, the DEA referred the journalist to Erowid. Teachers and
educators use Erowid; counselors and medical professionals use Erowid;
drug-policy-reform and harm-reduction organizations use Erowid.

Because Erowid accepts no paid advertisements and no government
support, it is a truly independent aggregator and publisher of
reliable information about nearly 250 psychoactive chemicals, plants,
herbs, pharmaceuticals, and nootropics ("smart drugs"). This
invaluable library is provided free to the public.

As the Guardian said, "Due to the independent nature of Erowid.org, it
is now cited by leading research agencies as a useful first port of
call for anyone who is keen to learn more."

In 2003, Erowid received more than 7.5 million unique visitors,
serving an average of 30,000 unique visitors a day, who viewed about
13 pages each. More than 26,000 content files are available for
perusal, a combination of chemical, medical, legal, and experiential
information. Erowid is hosted free of charge on the legendary
Hyperreal network, and somehow this amazing resource manages to
survive and grow with only 2.5 full-time staffers working on an
absolute shoestring budget, and a small but dedicated crew of
volunteer staffers rounding out the effort.

Erowid is not a proponent of any of these drugs.

It doesn't try to convince people to take them, or for that matter,
not to take them. Erowid's value is in collecting and publishing as
much information as possible about both licit and illicit substances
in an attempt to broaden the cultural dialogue beyond shrieking
war-on-drugs propaganda. It offers balanced, reliable information
about both the risks and the benefits of drug use. And as with many
things almost too good to be true, Erowid relies on member support to
survive.

That's where you come in. Whether you feel drugs are a fool's errand
or whether you're an ardent proponent of psychedelics or other
substances, you may still realize the value and critical importance of
such a vital repository of data that is independent of mass media and
government control.

More than 94 million Americans admit to trying marijuana, a drug
widely known to be vastly less harmful than alcohol.

Despite this, the federal government has opted to savagely attack the
very idea of the medical application of marijuana--often, as seen in
Washington State and California, against the wishes of city and state
officials.

Recently, high-profile research published in the respected journal
Nature had to be retracted because scientists were accidentally
studying methamphetamine instead of MDMA in their rush to prove a point.

Grave methodological problems remain in many government-funded studies
that attempt to prove ecstasy is dangerous.

The Office of National Drug Control Policy was caught buying not just
commercials, but placement of anti-drug messages within the actual
stories of prime-time television programs--your tax dollars at work
reprogramming your own ideas!

But although some of the heady idealism of the '60s is long gone, the
use of psychedelics in particular has spread beyond what anyone could
call a "counterculture." Whether you partake or not, it's entirely
possible someone close to you uses psychedelics for spiritual,
psychological, or recreational benefit.

You can't pigeonhole a psychedelic user. I personally know practicing
physicians, heads of surgery, engineers, actual rocket scientists,
computer scientists and programmers, geneticists, nationally respected
journalists and authors, lawyers, college professors, corporate
managers, and successful entrepreneurs who incorporate psychedelics
into their lives, along with the obvious cross-section of musicians
and artists who contribute to culture in so many ways.

We're all around you. There are more of us all the time. The country
is hardly collapsing into fits of drug-induced hysteria.

So if the notion of such a data treasure appeals to you, please
consider becoming a member.

Yes, you can get a mug or a T-shirt. But more importantly, you can
have an impact on how our society interacts with psychoactives. At a
time when tobacco and alcohol wreak a devastating toll on our country,
yet researching the use of MDMA to help treat victims of posttraumatic
stress disorder is a shocking challenge to the system, it's clear that
attitudes have to change.

The government doesn't want you to have the truth, and that's not just
a paranoid fantasy.

But the truth is already out there; now we need to make sure it stays
there.

You can make a tax-deductible donation to Erowid via their fiscal
sponsor, MAPS (the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic
Studies, an important organization that sponsors federally-approved
studies into the use of psychedelics for therapeutic purposes), or you
can donate directly. Please visit www.erowid.org/donations or e-mail
donations@erowid.org for more information, or send a check to Erowid,
P.O. Box 1116, Grass Valley, CA, 95945.