PsychonautWiki

PsychonautWiki
Formation2013 (2013)
FoundersJosie Kins[1][2][3]
FocusDrug education; Responsible drug use; Harm reduction
Key people
Josie Kins (former), Kenan Sulayman (current)[1][2][3]
Websitepsychonautwiki.org
encyclopediapsychonautica.org
Formerly called
Encyclopedia Psychonautica

PsychonautWiki (PW) is a major drug information website and resource written for recreational drug users.[4][3][5][6][7] It is a community-driven wiki and has academic-style encyclopedic articles on psychoactive drugs as well as other related content like experience reports.[1][4][7][5][8] 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.[3] In addition to drug education, PsychonautWiki advocates responsible drug use and harm reduction.[9][10]

The site was founded by Josie Kins in 2013.[1][2][3] It was originally named Encyclopedia Psychonautica.[1][3] One of Kins's projects, the Subjective Effect Index (SEI), is integrated into PsychonautWiki.[4][1][11] Kins says that she lost control of PsychonautWiki and left the site in 2017.[1][3] She now works as a psychedelic phenomenologist at the pharmaceutical company Mindstate Design Labs.[12][13] Since 2017, PsychonautWiki has been run by a software engineer named Kenan Sulayman.[3] 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.[3][1]

PsychonautWiki has posted extensive dosing information for psychoactive drugs.[14][7][15] It also includes experience reports (also known as "trip reports" in the case of hallucinogens).[16][17] 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).[15][16][17][18][19] Researchers have solicited recreational drug users from PsychonautWiki and related sites for research purposes as well.[20]

The site has been described by some users as the "new Erowid",[21] but others have questioned the trustworthiness of its information.[22]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Taylor Sterling (18 September 2025). "#22: Mapping the Ineffable: Josie Kins on Documenting Psychedelic States". Tripsitter Podcast (Podcast). Tripsitter. Transcript.
  2. ^ a b c DiNardo, Dillan (5 November 2022). Intentional Design of Novel Modified Conscious States / Mapping the Biological Basis of the Psychedelic Experience. Wonderland Conference (Wonderland 2022). Miami, Florida. Event occurs at 13:30–14:12. Archived from the original on 29 May 2023. [DiNardo of Mindstate Design Labs:] We also brought on board Josie Kins. Josie was the founder of psychonautwiki.org, effectindex.com, and some of the largest online psychonaut communities. She's devoted her life to looking at and documenting and concretizing and categorizing and defining all of these different psychedelic effects in these various obscure molecules, taking the drug-induced ravings, the fantastic metaphors, and putting them into discernible, discrete categories that are defined and can be used again extending the realm of what can be said. At this point we have over 500 distinct aspects or qualia of the psychedelic experience.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Berg, Eric van den (13 November 2018). "What It's Like to Run the Biggest Drug Encyclopaedia in the World". VICE. Retrieved 9 January 2026. PsychonautWiki is an online drugs encyclopaedia that aims to document in a clear, academic tone every known hallucinogenic substance and its effects. [...] So far, the group [...] have documented over 300 hallucinogens. [...] PsychonautWiki isn't the first attempt at creating an online drug encyclopaedia, but it's probably the most successful. Today, the website attracts about half a million visitors per month, of which a quarter come from the dark web. [...] VICE: [...] What inspired you to work on PsychonautWiki? [...] It started from Josie Kins' blog, Disregard Everything I Say. Kins and her readers tried to create a clear overview of all the effects psychedelics can have on a person. That project outgrew the blog, so she created the Wiki. It was first called Encyclopedia Psychonautica, but just try to pronounce that. It soon morphed into PsychonautWiki. [...]
  4. ^ a b c Singh, Manvir (20 May 2025). Shamanism: The Timeless Religion. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. p. 77. ISBN 978-0-593-53755-8. Retrieved 9 March 2026. One of the best resources for comparing the effects of drugs is PsychonautWiki, a self-described "community-driven online encyclopedia that aims to document the emerging field of psychonautics (i.e., the exploration of altered states of consciousness) in a comprehensive, scientifically-grounded manner." Psychonaut Wiki has the standard drawbacks of wikis: articles are works in progress; anyone can create or edit them; they can be vandalized. Nevertheless, it is closely monitored and has two advantages that most academic studies lack. First, it is ambitious, aspiring not only to study as wide a range of psychoactive substances as possible but also to capture what it feels like to use those substances. It synthesizes far-flung accounts of non-ordinary states, including trip reports on websites like Erowid. Second, it characterizes each substance using a standard list of subjective effects—called, quite fittingly, the Subjective Effect Index, or SEI. The SEI is huge. As of March 2023, it comprised some 240 subjective effects and included everything from "double vision" to "orgasm depression." Combined with the website's scope and careful editing, the SEI makes PsychonautWiki ideal for our purposes. Using it, we can investigate what, if anything, is shared across shamanic trance states. 10
  5. ^ a b Marrone, Tancredi (17 June 2024). "Sacred Settings: The Aesthetics of Psychedelic Sacred Spaces". Modernity and the Construction of Sacred Space. De Gruyter. p. 169–186. doi:10.1515/9783111062624-009. ISBN 978-3-11-106262-4. Retrieved 9 March 2026. Additionally, there is a plethora of data found on webpages such as DMTNexus and the Vaults of Erowid; information of this kind can also be found on Reddit. Psychonautic Wiki provides further information in the format of the Wikipedia page, where much information can be found on the formation of setting or directing the reader to relevant resources.²⁶
  6. ^ Gómez-Escolar, Antón (1 May 2022). Essential guide to the Psychedelic Renaissance: All you need to know about how psilocybin, MDMA and LSD are revolutionizing mental health and changing lives. ArgoNowta. ISBN 978-84-18943-29-4. Retrieved 9 March 2026. Also, "psychedelic societies24" are flourishing in most cities in the world25, allowing anyone with an interest in these substances to join, learn and contribute to this renaissance. All of this, together with the decentralized dissemination of information that the Internet and its forums allow, has given the general population access to much first-hand information on these substances. Thanks to resources such as PsychonautWiki, TripSit, Erowid, Bluelight, Drugs-Forum or Energy Control, anyone outside the academic field can access scientific information on substances and risk reduction techniques, which would have been very difficult to find years ago. resources
  7. ^ a b c Trott, Dominic Milton (9 April 2019). The Drug Users Bible: Harm Reduction, Risk Mitigation, Personal Safety. MxZero Publishing. pp. 498–500. ISBN 978-0-9955936-8-8. Retrieved 9 March 2026.
  8. ^ Liu, Shu Qi; Mount Royal University (2020), Dark net markets: White House market drug trades, doi:10.60770/48HK-PK14, retrieved 9 March 2026, There are many resources on safe drug use on the internet. Sites such as Psychonautwiki lists most of the drugs sold on DNMs and can explain things like the chemical makeup, doses, thresholds, experiences, and the legal status of the drug (Psychonautwiki, 2020).
  9. ^ Pestana, Jani; Beccaria, Franca; Petrilli, Enrico (19 May 2021). "Psychedelic substance use in the Reddit psychonaut community. A qualitative study on motives and modalities". Drugs and Alcohol Today. 21 (2): 112–123. doi:10.1108/DAT-03-2020-0016. ISSN 1745-9265. Retrieved 9 March 2026. According to the informal platform PsychonautWiki (2019): "Responsible drug use broadly refers to a set of attitudes and practices intended to maximize the benefits and minimize the harms associated with recreational psychoactive substance use". This set of practices involves reading trip reports, gathering information around optimal dosage, reagent testing substances and sharing stories, advice and experiences. [...] Frequently, psychonauts consider themselves to be responsible drug users, and a definition of responsible use is part of the PsychonautWiki (2019). This definition includes an emphasis on harm reduction practices and the maximization of benefits.
  10. ^ Day, Jason K.; Grooff, Michael T. (28 August 2025). "Freedom of Recreation: A Critique of the Prohibition, Decriminalization, and Legal Regulation of Psychedelics for Recreational Use". Contemporary Drug Problems. doi:10.1177/00914509251371749. ISSN 0091-4509. Retrieved 9 March 2026. For decades already, local communities, non-profit organizations, as well as online forums and publications in the psychedelic subculture (such as DMT-Nexus and PsychonautWiki) have extensively developed harm reduction knowledge and practices as well as made them freely available to the public (Enghoff & Aldridge, 2019; Josikins, 2025). [...] Josikins. (2025). Welcome to PsychonautWiki. PsychonautWiki. [psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Main_Page]
  11. ^ Reed, Graham (23 April 2019). "Hallucinations and the Psychedelic Visual Experience". Psychedelic Science Review. There is a wealth of gathered scientific research available on PsychonautWiki and EffectIndex regarding visual phenomena. EffectIndex, in charge of Reddit's /r/replications, exists to serve as a collection of artistic recreations of the hallucinogenic experience.
  12. ^ French, Kristen (2 June 2023). "What Hallucinogens Will Make You See". Nautilus. In 2021, [Josie Kins] began working for a startup drug company called Mindstate Design Labs to make the classification system more precise and comprehensive, under the advisement of renowned psychedelic researchers Thomas Ray and Andy Newburg. That work could double the total number of entries on the list, she says. But it's the cognitive and emotional effects that seem to elude categorization and need the most refining. "The visual effects are already rigorous," says Kins.
  13. ^ Blacker, David J. (1 June 2024). Deeper Learning with Psychedelics: Philosophical Pathways through Altered States. State University of New York Press. pp. 14, 112–114, 117–118. doi:10.1515/9781438498140. ISBN 978-1-4384-9814-0. Along these same lines, there are publicly accessible ongoing analyses of a wide range of psychedelic compounds, such as that provided by Mindstate Design Labs (UK) psychedelics researcher (and YouTuber) Josie Kins, who has developed a helpful Subjective Effects Index (EffectIndex.com), "which features a granular taxonomy of the subjective psychedelic experience" aimed at "developing a universal terminology set for discussing and describing that which was previously ineffable."52 Kins's ongoing experiential database and associated frameworks are the most comprehensive currently available (I utilize her work in chapter 2).52 [...]
  14. ^ Engel, Liam B.; Thal, Sascha; Bright, Stephen J.; Low, Mitchell (17 July 2024). "Psychedelic trip sitting, dosages and intensities: Supplementing clinical studies with anecdotal reports". Journal of Psychedelic Studies. doi:10.1556/2054.2024.00377. ISSN 2559-9283. Retrieved 9 March 2026. Drug weight and intensity charts are a popular tool in online harm reduction discussion, estimating the weight of a dosage required to produce either threshold, light, common, strong or heavy subjective effects. Most notably, PsychCombo, Erowid and PsychonautWiki have published these charts for most popular psychoactive substances (Engel, 2023; Erowid, 1998, PsychonautWiki).
  15. ^ a b Luethi D, Liechti ME (October 2018). "Monoamine Transporter and Receptor Interaction Profiles in Vitro Predict Reported Human Doses of Novel Psychoactive Stimulants and Psychedelics". Int J Neuropsychopharmacol. 21 (10): 926–931. doi:10.1093/ijnp/pyy047. PMC 6165951. PMID 29850881. Dose estimates for human psychoactive doses were based on information that is found on the websites erowid.org, psychonautwiki.org, and tripsit.me (accessed December 17, 2017) and in published books and other publications (Shulgin and Shulgin, 1995, 1997; Simmler et al., 2013; Trachsel et al., 2013).
  16. ^ a b McGovern HT, Bajo L, Hassed G, Hoefnagels R, Levey M, Rose N, De Foe A, Hutchinson BT (July 2025). "Deconstructing Psychedelic Phenomenology: A Thematic Analysis of Discrete Phases of the Psychedelic Experience". Brain Behav. 15 (7) e70687. doi:10.1002/brb3.70687. PMC 12277650. PMID 40685956. Twenty first-person written reports of psychedelic experiences from the online databases of Reddit1 , Shroomery, and Psychonaut Wiki were collected (three from Shroomery, 11 from Reddit, and six from Psychonaut Wiki).
  17. ^ a b Gibbs, Alan; Khan, Tanweer (3 November 2025). "Psychedelics‐Inspired Drug Discovery". Trends in CNS Drug Discovery. Wiley. p. 67–89. doi:10.1002/9783527844678.ch3. ISBN 978-3-527-35280-7. Retrieved 9 March 2026. Contemporary written report analysis is primarily focused on language classification and interpretation, a recent study using natural language processing (NLP) intends to develop a common framework between reported subjective effects and the compounds that produce them [15]. Various online resources are essential to enabling this broad area of research, including [erowid.org], [psychonautwiki.org], [bluelight.org], and various subreddits.
  18. ^ Friedman SF, Ballentine G (January 2024). "Trajectories of sentiment in 11,816 psychoactive narratives". Hum Psychopharmacol. 39 (1) e2889. doi:10.1002/hup.2889. PMID 38117133. The 10 pharmacologic classes and the 22 chemical classes were retrieved from the Psychonaut Wiki (Schifano et al., 2006).
  19. ^ Beharry S, Gibbons S (October 2016). "An overview of emerging and new psychoactive substances in the United Kingdom". Forensic Sci Int. 267: 25–34. doi:10.1016/j.forsciint.2016.08.013. PMID 27552699. Information was gathered from manufacturer's websites, drug forums such as Bluelight, UK Chemical Research, DrugsForum, Reddit, TripSit and PsychonautWiki.
  20. ^ Mallaroni P, Mason NL, Vinckenbosch FR, Ramaekers JG (June 2022). "The use patterns of novel psychedelics: experiential fingerprints of substituted phenethylamines, tryptamines and lysergamides". Psychopharmacology (Berl). 239 (6): 1783–1796. doi:10.1007/s00213-022-06142-4. PMC 9166850. PMID 35487983. The study employed an unincentivised, anonymous online survey, promoted as an investigation into the use and effects of novel psychedelic substances. Advertisements were placed on Internet fora related to psychedelic drug use, such as psychonautwiki.org and Open Foundation. The survey was regularly disseminated on discussion boards pertaining to NPS use including Bluelight.com, Reddit (R/ResearchChems, R/Psychedelics/ etc.) and Drugsforum.nl.
  21. ^ Way, Katie (1 June 2022). "Here's What Happens When You Mix Cocaine and Ketamine". VICE. Retrieved 9 March 2026. She recommended PsychonautWiki (it's the new Erowid!) as a hub for people who want to research drug interactions and read about other peoples' experiences taking and combining substances.
  22. ^ Jayasinha, B. G. A. V. (2024). Towards safer trips: Exploring harm reduction strategies for recreational psychedelic use in Aotearoa New Zealand (Doctoral dissertation, University of Otago). https://ourarchive.otago.ac.nz/esploro/outputs/graduate/Towards-Safer-Trips-Exploring-Harm-Reduction/9926550679501891 "Aligned with this, participants noted that of the limited information that is accessible, this is often not trustworthy "like, psychonaut wiki. Shit like that, I don't actually know who's like in charge of making sure that all of the information is legit" (B2) and "If it has a us.gov handle at the end of it, I don't trust it" (G3)"
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