“I even saw four deer grazing”: online-offline entanglements in the psilocybin pluriverse

An analysis of approximately 3,000 posts from a Polish online drug forum (mid-2000s–2023) shows that after 2020, discussions about psilocybin mushrooms shifted from immersive, metaphysical narratives toward predictive, scientifically informed, and risk-managed practices. Forum users increasingly integrated digital tools like mapping and smartphone verification with environmental field observations, reflecting online-offline entanglements and more-than-human relations of foraging. The forum functions as an apparatus within a psychedelic pluriverse, where different versions of psilocybin coexist, negotiate legitimacy, and sustain themselves. The study demonstrates how digital platforms and embodied ecological practices jointly shape contemporary psychedelic practices, highlighting their relational, contingent, and ethically informed character.

Study at a glance

Abstract

PurposeThis paper aims to examine evolving practices and discourses surrounding psilocybin mushrooms on an online drug forum. Situating use within hybrid digital and ecological contexts, it traces shifts in user engagement before and after the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic to contextualize localized realities of the contemporary psychedelic renaissance.Design/methodology/approachUsing an agential cut framework, the authors conducted a thematic analysis of approximately 3,000 qualitative posts from the largest Polish forum (mid-2000s–2023). The study tracks how forum users integrate digital tools (mapping, smartphone verification) with environmental field observations, mapping the online-offline entanglements and more-than-human relations of foraging.FindingsAnalysis reveals a post-2020 shift from immersive, metaphysical narratives toward predictive, scientifically informed and risk-managed practices. Building directly on critical drug scholarship regarding assemblage thinking and ontological multiplicity, the authors conceptualize the forum as an apparatus within a psychedelic pluriverse, where radically different versions of psilocybin simultaneously coexist, negotiate legitimacy and sustain themselves.Originality/valueBy integrating longitudinal forum analysis with a multispecies and pluriverse perspective, the study shows how digital platforms and embodied ecological practices jointly shape contemporary psychedelic practices, highlighting their relational, contingent and ethically informed character and demonstrating how shifts in discursive framings coincide with changing modes of ecological attention and risk reflexivity.