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Comment by llamataboot | Hacker News Reader

So before people were writing about it on the internet no one was doing drugs in a stupid way? As anecdotal evidence, I know a variety of people using cold water extraction of APAP on tehir opiates that would never have done so without reading about it online, perhaps saving their livers. I think communities like bluelight and erowid are indispensible resources for people to educate themselves about the positives and negatives of various substances, especially so given that the abstinence-only campaigns around substances in many countries (think DARE in the US) are full of so much misinformation and encourage the irresponsible use of drugs by basically declaring them all the same, as "bad".

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No, but before the internet the realm of completely untested novel psychoactive chemicals was confined to certain circles of chemists, academics, psychiatrists, and social commentators/reformers. The first person to test 2C-* series was Shulgin, and only after systematic titration on himself did he ever think of sharing his discoveries. Today it is a little different.

Today, someone can find a lab willing to synthesize a chemical for very cheap with the intention of selling it for a huge profit online. That person then posts on a board such as bluelight or erowid, where the first introduction of its ABUSE is documented. Users of the board are attracted to the novelty of the new substance, and are encouraged by the community to follow the behavior of 'researching and sharing' by acquiring said substance, ingesting, and then relaying back to the board about the experience. They are likely some of the first people in all of history to ingest the substance. If you don't think this is inherently dangerous behavior I don't know what to tell you. I don't think it detracts from their goal of harm reduction, but that element of the community exists and I do think it warrants more scrutiny than immediately dismissing my argument.

If you want to read a well researched book on the phenomenon, pick up Drugs 2.0 by Mike Power. It's on amazon's UK site.

Sure, but at least people are sharing information, trying to shut down sketchy drug makers in China putting out adulterated product, teaching basic purification techniques, talking about drugs to stay away from (lots of MXE addiction stories and MCAT horror stories on bluelight). I know a fair amount of people that ingest grey-market research chemicals. I don't think any of them have any illusions that what they are doing is "safe". But then again, alcohol is quite physically dangerous, has a bad addiction profile, and makes people do far more stupid and dangerous things that many more mind-altering drugs. There's lots of people doing unsafe things in the pursuit of hedonism or escape.

As long as quasi-legal analogues and new substances are going to be sold as cheap highs in head shops and adult video stores and the like, which they most certainly are now that more and more designer drugs are being produced everyday, I certainly want knowledgable people sharing their bad, and good experiences with others.

If some people enjoy beta-testing new substances knowing their long-term safety profile is completely unknown, would you rather it be done completely in the dark, or at least with ideas of dosage ranges, knowledge of warning signs of overdose,etc etc.

While it's clear that Shulgin was more responsible than a lot of budding teenage psychonauts, that's not always the case (Lilly's use of ketamine comes to mind), and it's not clear what he was doing was inherently less dangerous. He was often the first person in history to test a substance.

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