science

PsychonautWiki

PsychonautWiki is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand PsychonautWiki rather than just read about it. In short: PsychonautWiki (PW) is a major drug information website and resource written for recreational drug users. It is a community-driven wiki and has academic-style encyclopedic articles on psychoactive drugs as well as other related content like experience reports.

Key takeaways

PsychonautWiki belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect PsychonautWiki to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of PsychonautWiki from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

PsychonautWiki (PW) is a major drug information website and resource written for recreational drug users. It is a community-driven wiki and has academic-style encyclopedic articles on psychoactive drugs as well as other related content like experience reports. The site has been described as the largest dedicated psychoactive drug encyclopedia on the web, with more than 300 entries for hallucinogens alone and about half a million visitors per month in 2018. In addition to drug education, PsychonautWiki advocates responsible drug use and harm reduction. The site was founded by Josie Kins in 2013. It was originally named Encyclopedia Psychonautica. One of Kins's projects, the Subjective Effect Index (SEI), is integrated into PsychonautWiki. Kins says that she lost control of PsychonautWiki and left the site in 2017. She now works as a psychedelic phenomenologist at the pharmaceutical company Mindstate Design Labs. Since 2017, PsychonautWiki has been run by a software engineer named Kenan Sulayman. While advocating for responsible drug use and harm reduction, some of PsychonautWiki's own contributors have struggled with harm from use of drugs, for instance one major contributor passing away from an overdose and another developing symptoms of psychosis. PsychonautWiki has posted extensive dosing information for psychoactive drugs. It also includes experience reports (also known as "trip reports") and psychedelic replications. Along with that on other sites like Erowid, TripSit, Bluelight, and various Reddit subreddits, the information on PsychonautWiki has often been cited, reproduced, and/or analyzed in the scientific literature as part of research into psychoactive drugs as well as into novel designer drugs (also known as novel psychoactive substances or NPS). Researchers have solicited recreational drug users from PsychonautWiki and related sites for research purposes as well. The site has been described by some users as the "new Erowid", but others have questioned the trustworthiness of its information.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with PsychonautWiki

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what PsychonautWiki claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to PsychonautWiki before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about PsychonautWiki ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of PsychonautWiki

In research: PsychonautWiki appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses PsychonautWiki in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: PsychonautWiki is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Drug culture, Educational websites, Hallucinogens, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for PsychonautWiki outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study PsychonautWiki in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what PsychonautWiki means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain PsychonautWiki out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is PsychonautWiki in simple terms?

Why does PsychonautWiki matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study PsychonautWiki?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on PsychonautWiki.