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Who's the Crew
People who make Erowid.org happen
Erowid Center is made possible by a crew of five staff members and dozens of active volunteers who help process incoming data, seek out new resources, and/or help to update Erowid.org. Some of these people are listed below. If you'd like to contribute your time and energy to this project, please fill out the volunteering form.


fire Fire Erowid is Executive Director of Erowid Center and Head Archivist of Erowid.org. She is the site's primary information architect, designer, and editor as well as being responsible for fundraising and budget management. Fire has more than 20 years experience studying psychoactive plants and drugs. She has written thousands of pages of information about these materials, authored numerous articles, received multiple awards, spoken at academic and professional conferences, and has had her work cited by newspapers, education programs, college classes, and seminars around the world.

earth Earth Erowid is Erowid Center's Technical Director and the Chief Software Engineer of Erowid.org. He designs and implements the custom software systems necessary for managing the large flow of information through the site and is the lead editor responsible for scientific information published by Erowid. Earth has worked in the field of psychoactive information distribution for more than 18 years and has written extensively on the topic. He has co-authored academic posters, been published in both large and small publications, and been interviewed by major news organizations about his work.

jl JL is the primary systems administrator on three of Erowid's servers, keeps the security of Erowid servers up to date, and provides the main Erowid archive mirror and repository, de1.erowid.org. Aside from being one of the site's key sysadmins, JL is a full-time programmer and systems designer and is involved with European drug policy reform. Read his article about life as an Erowid sysadmin from our newsletter.

blake Bläk is Erowid Center's Mistress of Shipping. She is a para-educator (third and fourth grades), an avid gardener, and a collector of fine cats.

sylvia Sylvia has over 20 years of experience in nonprofit educational work and volunteer management. In 2003, and again in 2006, she was a recipient of the Women's Entheogen Fund Award, for her work in the field of progressive drug education. As Managing Editor of Erowid from 2001 through 2012, and from late 2015 to the present, her focus has been on raising awareness of how the language used to describe psychoactive drugs and experiences can deeply affect the thoughts and actions of others, with a significant impact on individual and societal understandings of drug use, misuse, and abuse.


Currently Active

arpana Bananaskin is currently working on the Shulgin Lab Books project and checking links for Erowid. She resides in England and is interested in all things psychoactive, especially LSD, MDMA, and marijuana. A firm believer that Knowledge Is Power, she is an avid supporter of free information for all, and harm reduction through education and knowledge. She believes that psychedelics and empathogens can be beneficial in therapy, but that they must be treated with great respect.

david_b David Bey threw away a bright future in biochemistry to run off to China in search of adventure. He was last in his class at circus school, but ended up the first foreigner ever to serve as ringmaster of a big top in India. He believes himself to be the world's only Jewish performer of stand-up comedy in Mandarin and once taught the abbot of a Shaolin monastery how to juggle. He holds a fine arts degree in creative writing, and is currently pursuing graduate studies in the philosophy of comic books.

no borax Borax works closely with several harm reduction projects online and in the UK including Reagent Tests UK, TripSit, The Loop and Kosmicare UK. He has a formal background in chemistry with a keen interest in novel substances and drug analysis. His contributions to Erowid include tracking new psychoactive substances and working on the EcstasyData.org project.

erik Erik Davis graduated magna cum laude from Yale and is now an author, teacher, and independent scholar. One of his core interests is the history of the counterculture and its involvement with spirituality and visionary experience. His most recent books include, The Visionary State: A Journey through California's Spiritual Landscape, and Nomad Codes: Adventures in Modern Esoterica. He posts regularly to www.techgnosis.com, and he hosts the show Expanding Mind on the Progressive Radio Network. Erik has written for Erowid Extracts and assists from time to time as an Associate Editor.

no image ErichZann lives in Los Angeles and works as a welder, chef and musician (composer/drummer). He is also an amateur organic gardener locked in an eternal struggle with the neighborhood rats. He initially joined the Erowid crew in 2016 to aid in the Shulgin lab note transcription process but quickly found that triaging is also a wonderful way to volunteer and now splits his time between both.

jon Jon Hanna is the author of the Psychedelic Resource List and producer of the Mind States conference series. He holds a B.A. in Art, and has lectured worldwide on the topics of entheogens and art. He worked as a Senior Editor for Erowid Center from 2008 through 2013.

harmony Harmony is a Canadian who has been a regular visitor to Erowid since 2002. She decided to start volunteering in 2008. She holds a BA in psychology, and plans to continue her education in clinical psychology. Her passions include the outdoors, good friends, reading, dancing, music, and perceiving the world through different lenses in healthy ways. Her heroes include Laura Huxley, the Shulgins, and Stephen Lewis.

jonathan Jonathan Taylor is a professor of Geography at California State University, Fullerton, and one of the few geographers in the United States conducting research and teaching on the geography of illegal drugs. He has been working as a researcher/editor for Erowid since running into some of the Erowid crew at a party, uh... junket, uh... conference in 2008.

trout Keeper of the Trout is an independent scholar, author, and photographer, trained in chemistry and microbiology, who has been studying altered states of consciousness for over two decades. He has written and published numerous densely informative pamphlets and books on these topics, as part of his "Trout's Notes" series. He is a member of the Erowid Expert Network and has volunteered as an Associate Editor for Erowid Extracts.

lizard Lizard Lizard is a graduate of the University of Virginia with a double major in Anthropology and Environmental Science and a minor in Religious Studies. Her interests include shamanism and healing as well as educating others about the effects of psychoactive substances. She firmly believes in the communitas created by the open sharing of personal experiences. She has triaged experience reports since 2006.

no image lotn lives in Los Angeles, works with dogs, and can occasionally be found placing hooks into people engaging in the ritual of body suspension. As a triager since 2009, lotn has triaged over 7K reports.
no image Plutonic is an electrician from Vancouver, BC. He is Project Leader for the Shulgin Lab Book transcription team. He enjoys particle physics, all things psychoactive drugs (in particular tryptamines) and is a collector of electronic music. He has an insatiable thirst for knowledge, has been coming to Erowid for information for over a decade, and considers it to be one of the greatest resources on the internet. He believes teaching the truth about psychoactive drugs is the best way to reduce people's fear of them.

psilo Psilo has his PhD in the molecular pharmacology of hallucinogens and is currently working as a post-doctoral research fellow in computational chemistry/molecular pharmacology of neurotransmitter transporters. Psilo is passionate about science education and harm reduction; he has contributed to the site as a technical consultant in the areas of biology, chemistry and pharmacology since the late 1990s.

no image Robert Falltab is a self taught sysadmin and manages our email server reputation and monitors our outgoing and incoming email logs to watch for spam and related problems. Robert started helping out in 2014.

no image Rev. MeO has a BA in messing with words. Since 1995, he has been active with numerous ethnobotanical groups. He founded (and closed) The Entheogen Explorer website and the original Xenopharmacophilia.com (no relation to what currently resides there). He makes a living manipulating the English language while writing for business/professional media and an international assortment of commercial publications. He has been triaging experience reports for Erowid since 2006.

no image Roger Falltabelle has BA in computer science from the University of California, Berkeley, JD from Davis. Volunteer sysadmin and intellectual property attorney for Erowid.

scab13 Scab13 is a South African human being fascinated by nature, technology and music. Currently he works as a sub-editor at a magazine covering the dry bulk industry. He spends his free time fiddling with music recordings, band practice, animating in Flash, brewing beer and, since 2007, triaging experience reports on Erowid.

scruff Scruff holds a BS in Computer Science, has been happily married for over 20 years, and is the father of twin sons. Scruff came to Erowid in 2000 to review experience reports -- 5000+ reports later, he stepped away from that role and now consults on legislative activity at the state and federal level by sharing over two decades of systems engineering experience, 11 years of it in the state legislative arena. His primary interest in Erowid is the dissemination of objective information previously unavailable to the general public.

sellieg SellieG A mountain man with a mountain plan.

spoon Spoon There is no spoon.

no image Stu has been contributing software expertise, obscure bits of knowledge, and benevolent heckling to Erowid since 2000. He is a senior software architect, and is generally regarded as a raconteur without peer. By himself. Stu was instrumental in cheerleading the adoption of Eclipse for version control on the site.

no image Sugarmagnoliagirl has been triaging experience reports since 2004.

tehsaccade TehSaccade is an individual of successive, discontinuous movement, trying to see the bigger picture. Does, has done and will continue to do a lot of stuff. His primary function at Erowid is as triage and de facto researcher of unimportant things. Provides necessary irritation. For a different perspective, occasionally wears glasses. One of the few people rumoured to have met SWIM in person.

teafaerie The Teafaerie writes the Teatime column for Erowid.

zachawry Zachawry lives in Japan, where he spends his time translating in the biomedical field and raising his children. He also plays shakuhachi and is on track to finish his novel by 2019. Twice a year he's on-call as an Associate Editor for Erowid Extracts, providing expert feedback on article drafts in progress.


Past Years' Crew

abrad Abrad, a long-time volunteer based in Dublin, Ireland, died unexpectedly at age 30 in May 2014. During seven years with the Erowid crew, he triaged over 2,700 Experience Reports and reviewed 620. He also led efforts to track new drugs that had become commercially available. His first article "Novel Drug Briefs" was published in the December 2013 issue of Erowid Extracts and he was working on upcoming articles about emerging research chemicals.

no image Antheia has an MS in Physics and extensive experience with and knowledge of altered states of consciousness through her work as a Wiccan High Priestess. Antheia reviewed Erowid experience reports from April 2006 to 2016. Her primary interest is in the use of psychoactives for spiritual and therapeutic purposes, but she often finds reports of recreational use to be just as enlightening. She believes that experience reports provide an important outlet for individuals to process their experiences and understand them in light of others'.

aqua Aqua was originally trained as a pharmacist, but currently works in software engineering. He has triaged experience reports since 2005 and resides in the Netherlands. Aqua has a continuing interest in psychopharmacology, neuroscience, and the implications of those fields in the way human societies function.

no image Katherine Frey Rochlin is a long time supporter of Erowid Center. She is a member of Erowid's Council of Electors, which elects the Board of Directors, and has been since Erowid gained non-profit status in 2007. She has provided financial support, assisted with fundraising, contributed as associate editor for Erowid Extracts, and co-organized a gala event in 2008.

kernel Kernel holds degrees in both engineering and business administration. He triaged and reviewed experience reports for Erowid from 2005 to 2015 and drafted pages for multiple research chemical vaults. Kernel has a passionate interest in the therapeutic potential of psychedelic medicines, and believes in the preservation of human rights and freedoms through free availability of information.

smash Smash has been a triager and experience report reviewer, and assisted Erowid with Portuguese-language resources and translation. At the time, he was a pharmacy student in Portugal.

no image roi is based in the EU, and active in several online communities. An Erowid crew member with expertise in chemistry, pharmacology, and documentation, he specialized in information about new psychoactive substances and was instrumental in getting lab analysis results published on EcstasyData for several years.

suave Suave offered Erowid a window onto Scandinavian-language information resources from 2007 to 2009, by cheerfully providing translation and interpretation at the drop of a hat. She also triaged and reviewed experience reports.

no image Xorkoth has been instrumental in recruiting new volunteers for Erowid and also triaged experience reports in 2006-2009.

no image Zetetic was with the Erowid project in 2005-2008. He was one of the first experience report triagers, and one of the first triagers to become a report reviewer. He is a novelist and resides in the Midwestern United States.

no image Alexander Cochran helps with copyright and trademark issues for Erowid Center.

zhah Zhah does gadgety things like programming the automagic generation of printable experience report pdfs and ecstasy data pdfs (in the works...) and scripting the 3D chemistry compare page. Zhah also enjoys making printable pdf booklets of classic underground writings, contributing to faqs and being generally knowledgeable about plant tryptamines. Zhah's alter ego has master's degrees in Physics, Mathematics and Education, and is a public schools Math and Physics teacher.

no image Volunteers who have contributed transcribing to the Shulgin Lab Books project: bananaskin, brian, dante, jason, jessica, marvin, saucer, zelig, zero

no image Volunteers who have triaged or reviewed over 5000 reports: antheia, scruff, zetetic, lotn, blinkidiot, kernel

no image Volunteers who have triaged or reviewed 1000-4000 reports: biglo, survival, yucatanboy, scab13, tehsaccade, raoul, oliver, revmeo, sparrow, lamalice, sugarmagnonoliagirl, ratt, ben, dreamstudy, mujolila, sii, suave, elmar, smash, crayon, canaana

no image Volunteers who have triaged or reviewed 334-999 reports: adlai, borax, catskills, aqua, revelator, nightnine, uil, peregrine, dendron, morninggloryseed, kalle, sellieg, aetherolea, killfoot, buttaz, jsublimed, optic, william, aria, hazzy, node, drwild, wank, ted99, psycompuk, hux, azgaza, shiitake, psykey, metasyn, jvoris, akhenaten, prometheus, flowgnome, toaster, tepictoton, ssc, baron, moetsukiru, veek, roxanne, nickflyer, fractals, harmony, xorkoth, gazman, murple

no image Volunteers who have triaged or reviewed 125-333 reports: roi, spacesheep, erichzann, spent, pskoactv, fnord, bak0r, namaste, caliban, keith, catfish, bdoodle mantra, israelite7, noelle, magiktreez, Water, polaris, destroyfx, jaggerjack, reflex, vivifica, mercilly, reality, danger, arpana, convergence, fisherman, exedelic, adolfo, ether, rain, ismic1, cinnamon, naggiej, hippieD9, atheist, yggdrasil, bluedolphin, jhaven, pearl, fancypants, pocketwatch, brendle, grizzly, hammilton, fnord, cutepuppy, bicyclephysics, agathos, cactushead, spaced

no image Volunteers who have triaged 25-125 reports: reality, vera, ydl, jhoppa, theo, tolpero, koepke, willy, link_S, metcalf, bilz0r, netbususer, sirius, confucious, melane123, chuangtzu, bennett, kensho, pharmakeus, pendulums, neibma, garden, nightwatch, teilhard, faustus, whiterook, rainysky, chronular, complex, nilgiri, joebro, leevion, then, deranged, strathmore, acidcat, seraph, utlagi