4 ms·

They are not doctors. I would not trust that website as a source of medical advice.

coderintherye 3y ago
That's fine if you don't trust it and if you want medical advice, you should always talk to your primary care provider for that advice. However I work with doctors, and through that have had the ability to discuss the site with various medical doctors. In general, they have also noted it as a good resource. They've also noted there is limited ability for them as medical doctors to assess the medical side effects of various drugs due to the illegality of them in their jurisdictions. Thus, the need for resources such as Erowid. If you want your medical doctor to be able to give you medical advice about psychedelic drug use then help push for continued legal reclassification of and access to psychedelics for medical researchers.
anigbrowl 3y ago
That's OK, I don't trust doctors who lack any first hand experience of these substances. I'm deeply skeptical of the push to medicalize their administration, given the parlous state of that industry.
indrora 3y ago
I was explicitly told to read up on several topics from Erowid by my psychiatrist upon starting an antidepressant. Her comment was: "I can't tell you what you'll experience, but if you're willing, here's some resources". I read the comments, including quite a bit of medical research that I would have been otherwise unaware of, and was prepared for some of the weirder effects that can come with it (the drug itself is a dopamine receptor augmenter). The fact of the matter is that a lot of researchers depend on the folk knowledge that is stuffed into Erowid for their own research because it's one of the higest quality sources of information on the actual effects of various substances that people have been putting into their bodies. Much of the research on these substances cannot be funded easily (federal law in the US bans the use of federal funds to research LSD, marijuana, etc due to their classification by the DEA of "intractably bad for society, useless for medicine, and not worthy of academic study.") This means that researchers have to turn to these contemporaneous accounts. Nobody calls Erowid "medical advice." It's the tripper's notebook, shared and amalgamated by many a substance user. It's the closest thing we have to a Merck Manual for things that alter your mind.
taneq 3y ago
In my (admittedly limited) experience there's quite an overlap in expertise between the better-informed illicit experimenters and the left side of the bell curve for psychiatric professionals.

That's fine if you don't trust it and if you want medical advice, you should always talk to your primary care provider for that advice. However I work with doctors, and through that have had the ability to discuss the site with various medical doctors. In general, they have also noted it as a good resource. They've also noted there is limited ability for them as medical doctors to assess the medical side effects of various drugs due to the illegality of them in their jurisdictions. Thus, the need for resources such as Erowid. If you want your medical doctor to be able to give you medical advice about psychedelic drug use then help push for continued legal reclassification of and access to psychedelics for medical researchers.

anigbrowl 3y ago

That's OK, I don't trust doctors who lack any first hand experience of these substances. I'm deeply skeptical of the push to medicalize their administration, given the parlous state of that industry.

indrora 3y ago

I was explicitly told to read up on several topics from Erowid by my psychiatrist upon starting an antidepressant. Her comment was: "I can't tell you what you'll experience, but if you're willing, here's some resources". I read the comments, including quite a bit of medical research that I would have been otherwise unaware of, and was prepared for some of the weirder effects that can come with it (the drug itself is a dopamine receptor augmenter). The fact of the matter is that a lot of researchers depend on the folk knowledge that is stuffed into Erowid for their own research because it's one of the higest quality sources of information on the actual effects of various substances that people have been putting into their bodies. Much of the research on these substances cannot be funded easily (federal law in the US bans the use of federal funds to research LSD, marijuana, etc due to their classification by the DEA of "intractably bad for society, useless for medicine, and not worthy of academic study.") This means that researchers have to turn to these contemporaneous accounts. Nobody calls Erowid "medical advice." It's the tripper's notebook, shared and amalgamated by many a substance user. It's the closest thing we have to a Merck Manual for things that alter your mind.

taneq 3y ago

In my (admittedly limited) experience there's quite an overlap in expertise between the better-informed illicit experimenters and the left side of the bell curve for psychiatric professionals.