Glowing Experience or Bad Trip? A Quantitative Analysis of User Reported Drug Experiences on Erowid.org
Angelina Mooseder, M. Malik, Hemank Lamba, E. Erowid, Sylvia Thyssen, Juergen Pfeffer Bavarian School Of Public Policy, T. U. Munich, Berkman Klein Center For Internetsociety At Harvard University, School Of Materials Science, C. University, Grass Valley, United States
International Conference on Web and Social Media January 31, 2022 Peer reviewed DOI: 10.1609/icwsm.v16i1.19325 via Semantic Scholar
Summary
Over 36,000 user-submitted drug experience reports from Erowid.org were analyzed to understand characteristic experiences with psychoactive substances. Quantitative analysis examined relationships between substances, user variables, and experiences like addiction or bad trips. Classifying positive and negative experiences and reported addiction using consumer, substance, context, and location information showed that objective characteristics alone yield poor predictive performance. Subjective reports identified new patterns, including a positive association between addiction experiences and dextromethorphan, a substance with largely unknown withdrawal effects. This work aids sociological understanding of drug consumption and demonstrates ethical use of non-mainstream social media for studying human behavior.
Study at a glance
| Design | observational study |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 36,000 |
| Population | user-submitted drug experience reports on Erowid.org |
| Key finding | Subjective user reports can identify patterns in drug experiences, including a positive association between addiction experiences and dextromethorphan. |
Abstract
Erowid.org is a website dedicated to documenting information about psychoactive substances, with over 36,000 user-submitted drug Experience Reports. We study the potential of these reports to provide information about characteristic experiences with drugs. First, we assess different kinds of drug experiences, such as 'addiction' or 'bad trips'. We quantitatively analyze how such experiences are related to substances and user variables. Furthermore, we classify positive and negative experiences as well as reported addiction using information about the consumer, substance, context and location of the drug experience. While variables based only on objective characteristics yield poor predictive performance for subjective experiences, we find subjective user reports can help to identify new patterns and impact factors on drug experiences. In particular, we found a positive association between addiction experiences and dextromethorphan, a substance with largely unknown withdrawal effects. Our research can help to gain a deeper sociological understanding of drug consumption and to identify relationships which may have clinical relevance. Moreover, it can show how non-mainstream social media platforms can be utilized to study characteristics of human behavior and how this can be done in an ethical way in collaboration with the platform providers.