As a means of informing the world about the upcoming psychedelic (r)evolution :wink: I wrote this article; adressed to the common, non-psychonautic reader and edited by Caduceus. Digging it would help :wink::wink:
How the Internet fuels the global psychedelic community
This year and the next, the United Nations will evaluate the War on Drugs. Since its official start in 1998 we have been bombed with official statistics on drug use, drug addiction, drug trafficking, street prices, court cases and all the like. But what does this information tell us? Drugs are bad, drugs are expensive, drugs are addictive, drugs equal crime. These numbers obviously show us that drugs, despite of their bad reputation, are undeniably part of our society.
I am about to take a deeper look into a drug category that does not show up in the statistics provided by the drug monitoring institutions, that are mostly concerned with cocaine and (meth)amphetamines. The drugs within the category I'd like to talk about have a lot in common: they are 100% natural, they are mostly legal, they are not addictive, they provide an expansion of consciousness that can be described as a spiritual experience, they are used by a steadily increasing number of young people, and they are mostly sold over the Internet. How can I be sure about all this if statistics do not provide much information on the matter? It’s simple: the Internet demonstrates it.
Legal Drugs
On the menu are seeds with exotic names such as Hawaiian Baby Woodrose and Morning glory. You can buy ingredients for shamanic potions like Ayahuasca and other indigenous sacraments from the depths of the Amazon. There are also relaxing herbs such as St. Jons Wort, Valerian, Blue lotus, stimulants such as Kratom, and powerful hallucinogens that give worrisome American parents the shivers such as Lady Salvia (Salvia divinorum). There are numerous online vendors that offer these legal psychedelics in their natural form, as plant material. Working for one of these suppliers I’ve witnessed ever increasing sales and returning customers since 1999. I’ve also witnessed an ever increasing number of competitors, with equally increasing sales. Some of them keep an assortment consisting of hundreds of different natural psychedelics; others focus on one easily available and fashionably marketable drug.
The Mighty Web
It appeared that the Web has exactly those qualities that proved essential for the formation of a large, global psychedelic community. More than any other non-mediated social phenomena the use of psychedelics was fueled by the Internet’s biggest successes: access to unbiased information, interactive communication and e-commerce. First hand information from experienced users has proved essential for those who consider using a certain drug. Erowid, with 45.000 documents generally considered the most extensive online source on psychedelic information, was one of the first websites that saw the importance of user submitted content. A few trip reports can provide you with the pitfalls and potentials more so than those static, moralistic, educational texts. But there is more to the psychedelic network that heavily clouds the Web; numerous blogs, dazzling artwork, news about psychedelic studies, podcasts with conference talks of “gurus
How the Internet fuels the global psychedelic community
This year and the next, the United Nations will evaluate the War on Drugs. Since its official start in 1998 we have been bombed with official statistics on drug use, drug addiction, drug trafficking, street prices, court cases and all the like. But what does this information tell us? Drugs are bad, drugs are expensive, drugs are addictive, drugs equal crime. These numbers obviously show us that drugs, despite of their bad reputation, are undeniably part of our society.
I am about to take a deeper look into a drug category that does not show up in the statistics provided by the drug monitoring institutions, that are mostly concerned with cocaine and (meth)amphetamines. The drugs within the category I'd like to talk about have a lot in common: they are 100% natural, they are mostly legal, they are not addictive, they provide an expansion of consciousness that can be described as a spiritual experience, they are used by a steadily increasing number of young people, and they are mostly sold over the Internet. How can I be sure about all this if statistics do not provide much information on the matter? It’s simple: the Internet demonstrates it.
Legal Drugs
On the menu are seeds with exotic names such as Hawaiian Baby Woodrose and Morning glory. You can buy ingredients for shamanic potions like Ayahuasca and other indigenous sacraments from the depths of the Amazon. There are also relaxing herbs such as St. Jons Wort, Valerian, Blue lotus, stimulants such as Kratom, and powerful hallucinogens that give worrisome American parents the shivers such as Lady Salvia (Salvia divinorum). There are numerous online vendors that offer these legal psychedelics in their natural form, as plant material. Working for one of these suppliers I’ve witnessed ever increasing sales and returning customers since 1999. I’ve also witnessed an ever increasing number of competitors, with equally increasing sales. Some of them keep an assortment consisting of hundreds of different natural psychedelics; others focus on one easily available and fashionably marketable drug.
The Mighty Web
It appeared that the Web has exactly those qualities that proved essential for the formation of a large, global psychedelic community. More than any other non-mediated social phenomena the use of psychedelics was fueled by the Internet’s biggest successes: access to unbiased information, interactive communication and e-commerce. First hand information from experienced users has proved essential for those who consider using a certain drug. Erowid, with 45.000 documents generally considered the most extensive online source on psychedelic information, was one of the first websites that saw the importance of user submitted content. A few trip reports can provide you with the pitfalls and potentials more so than those static, moralistic, educational texts. But there is more to the psychedelic network that heavily clouds the Web; numerous blogs, dazzling artwork, news about psychedelic studies, podcasts with conference talks of “gurus
