Erowid.org About
Erowid Monthly
WHO DO YOU KNOW?
WHO WANTS TO HELP CHANGE THE WORLD?


Erowid Center is entering a critical period of seeking major new funders to make up a $60,000 budget shortfall, at a time when our site requires considerable infrastructure upgrades in order to continue providing top quality information about psychoactive drugs. We're excited to have received one new $5,000 grant, and we've had discussions with other possible funders. But we continue to need your help in locating potential donors or foundations that support cutting-edge efforts to break through the educational and harm reduction gridlock created by prohibitionist regulations.

With 40% of Erowid's members outside of the USA and 30% of our traffic coming from non-U.S. addresses, our small non-profit has global impact, influencing information accessibility and public policy from the United States to Australia, Europe and beyond.

Erowid's primary mission is educational, providing information about recreational drugs in order to improve health and build the groundwork necessary for societal reform. We work with you, our visitors and contributors, as part of a global community, exploring new information while preserving and archiving existing resources. We are not an advocacy organization. Erowid acts directly--this year, this month, today--to foster the cultural changes that are necessary, given the increasing availability of psychoactive substances and technologies.

Erowid has over a decade-and-a-half of success in bringing together doctors, lawyers, parents, and young people, allowing them to share a reviewed, refereed, high-quality source of information. This global community of Erowid users now has the opportunity to build on that success and help ensure that a balanced, non-judgmental, visionary voice continues to be heard within the dialog regarding shifts in policy, research, education, and recreational drug use.

We need to locate previously untapped sources of non-advertising funding, especially in the $5,000 to $50,000 per year range. Please bear with us as we search for these crucial new funders over the next few months. We appreciate any assistance that you can provide in our quest. Contact us at donations@erowid.org with leads or suggestions.

Earth & Fire,
Co-founders, Erowid Center
Drug Geek Factlet
Big changes may be coming in psychoactive drug research in the USA. The National Institutes of Health are considering combining the "National Institute on Drug Abuse" and the "National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism" into a new "National Institute of Substance Use and Addiction Disorders". Entrenched interests will make this a complex fight, but we're excited that the government's psychoactive research funding apparatus might recognize that there is "use" that isn't "abuse". NIH invites feedback:

http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-12-045.html
Events
International Students for Sensible Drug Policy Conference
(Mar 23-25, 2012) in Denver, Colorado

http://ssdp.org/events/2012-national-ssdp-conference
Latest Additions
Published in the 1990s, The Entheogen Law Reporter provides information and commentary on the various legal issues surrounding visionary plants and drugs during that decade. Erowid has scanned and published PDFs of all twenty-two issues of TELR.
We've recently added vaults for cognitive liberty attorney Richard Glen Boire and counter-culture heroine Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Garcia, as well as the psychedelic drug war prisoner and purported LSD chemist William Leonard Pickard.
David Goldstein, Curator of the PHD (Papers from the History of Drugs) Archival Library and Database, assembled this comics collection from 1971 through 1994, featuring assorted newspaper strips that touch on psychoactive drugs.
This early zine billed itself as "The Magazine of the Psychedelic Community" in the late 1960s. Issue #1 (1966) included a manifesto lamenting the lack of "positive useful data" available to the millions of users, as well as articles by Peter Stafford, Timothy Leary, and Lisa Bieberman.
Crew Notes
Erowid is helping researchers with a new survey looking at the use of psychedelics (and other psychoactive substances) and synaesthesia. To participate in the survey, which usually takes 10-30 minutes to complete, see:

https://erowid.org/survey_2012_greenwich_university
From the Vaults
In this short story that appeared in the family paper Leslie's Chimney Corner, Alcott describes the effects of eating hashish bonbons on a group of young upper-class Southerners. Alcott's book Little Women was published around the same time.
More New Content
  1. Chemical Salvation? (Japanese)
    A Japanese translation of the popular LSD Trick tract.
  2. Teatime: Drug of Choice
    The Teafaerie is teaching in Haiti this month, and having had difficulty securing reliable internet access, she submitted this short but sweet Teatime via SMS.
  3. John Beresford, Remembered
    A memorial booklet created in November 2007 for John Beresford, the LSD researcher who first thought of distributing acid as measured drops placed onto sugar cubes, which was the original source for the phrase "dropping acid".
  4. Court Order Allows Oregon Daime Church to Use Ayahuasca
    This court order from January 2012 blocks the DEA from stopping the Oregon Santo Daime church from importing and using ayahuasca.
Mentions
Erowid is frequently mentioned in articles and books. These mentions may be reviews, recommendations or the use of Erowid as a reference.
  • British Medical Journal - Feb 15, 2012
    In "New recreational drugs and the primary care approach to patients who use them": Among "Additional educational resources", describes Erowid as an "extensive database of expert and user opinions on various legal, prescribed, and illegal substances."
  • Minnesota Public Radio News - Feb 2, 2012
    In "The grim reality behind the numbers in the state drug report": "It's one thing to read about a drug and all of its complexity on Erowid. It is another to see the side effects in person and know what to do, and yet another to feel responsible when a good friend has a tragic consequence as a result of bad advice."
Ecstasy Data
EcstasyData is a project of Erowid Center that conducts laboratory testing of street Ecstasy tablets and publishes these and other test results online.
Donate Or Become A Member
If you find Erowid a useful resource and are interested in supporting its future development, please consider donating or becoming a member. Donations to Erowid Center are tax-deductible in the United States.
List Subscription Information
  • To UNSUBSCRIBE - send an empty email to: e_announce-unsubscribe@erowid.org
  • To SUBSCRIBE - send an empty email to: e_announce-subscribe@erowid.org