Standards Without Labs: Drug Development in the Psychedelic Underground
Citizen Science Theory and Practice 2022 DOI: 10.5334/cstp.527 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Digital ethnography Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Clusterbusters, a non-profit organization representing an online network of people with cluster headache |
| Topics | Psilocybin |
| Keywords | Consistency knowledge bases Embodied cognition Protocol science Engineering ethics Alternative medicine Pathology Artificial intelligence |
| Citations | 4 |
| Key findings | Clusterbusters developed an "embodied standard" for dosage that combined mushroom weight and subjective experience, enabling a collective phenomenological understanding of a standard dosage without institutional scientific support. |
Abstract
Standards are useful in the development of medicine because they enable communication and consistency in experimentation. Standards, however, often require expensive tools like laboratories and clinical trials. How, then, might citizen scientists develop standards given the difficulty of obtaining these tools? This article provides one answer, by describing how Clusterbusters, a non-profit organization that represents an online network of people with cluster headache, developed a standardized protocol for using psychedelic mushrooms as a treatment for their disease without the assistance of laboratory equipment or institutional scientific support. In a multi-sited, digital ethnographic investigation of Clusterbusters, we find they used multiple strategies to standardize their experiments. Clusterbusters consumed their medicine in the form of homegrown psilocybe mushrooms because they lacked access to pharmaceutical-grade psilocybin. A dose of a mushroom cannot be standardized as easily as an isolated chemical, yet each individual experimenter needed to understand how much psychedelic they were about to consume. They solved their problem by developing an “embodied standard” for dosage that combined both the weight of the dried mushroom and the subjective experience the dosage produced. This hybrid measure enabled Clusterbusters to develop a collective phenomenological understanding of a standard dosage. Our discussion highlights how the pragmatic goals of knowledge production of citizen science differ from the institutionalized scientists’ need to legitimate their findings with academic journals, peers, and regulatory agencies. This insight may be useful not only for those who study citizen science, but also those who work with institutionalized protocols in other domains.
Comparable studies
Other qualitative studies on psilocybin, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Patients’ Accounts of Increased “Connectedness” and “Acceptance” After Psilocybin for Treatment-Resistant Depression Patients with treatment-resistant depression enrolled in an open-label trial of psilocybin | 2017 | Qualitative study | n = 20 |
| Patient Experiences of Psilocybin-Assisted Psychotherapy: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis Adults aged 22 to 69 with clinically elevated anxiety associated with a cancer diagnosis | 2017 | Qualitative study | n = 13 |
| Psychedelic therapy for smoking cessation: Qualitative analysis of participant accounts Participants who completed a psilocybin-facilitated smoking cessation pilot study | 2018 | Qualitative follow-up study using semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis | n = 12 |
| Response of cluster headache to psilocybin and LSD Cluster headache patients who used psilocybin or LSD | 2006 | Qualitative study | n = 53 |
| Cancer at the Dinner Table: Experiences of Psilocybin-Assisted Psychotherapy for the Treatment of Cancer-Related Distress Adult participants with clinically elevated anxiety associated with a cancer diagnosis | 2017 | Qualitative study using interpretative phenomenological analysis | n = 13 |
Citations in the library
Cited by 3
- Adapting psychedelic medicine for headache and chronic pain disorders. Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics 2023
- Comparing single‐ and repeat‐dose psilocybin with active placebo for migraine prevention in an exploratory randomized controlled clinical trial Headache: The Journal of Head and Face Pain December 29, 2025
- “Skin contains land and birds”: Understanding inner healing intelligence through critical vitalism and Indigenous thought Journal of Psychedelic Studies July 28, 2025
Cites 11
- Survey study of challenging experiences after ingesting psilocybin mushrooms: Acute and enduring positive and negative consequences Journal of Psychopharmacology August 31, 2016
- Response of cluster headache to psilocybin and LSD Neurology June 26, 2006
- The psychedelic renaissance and the limitations of a White-dominant medical framework: A call for indigenous and ethnic minority inclusion Journal of Psychedelic Studies July 1, 2019
- Ayahuasca healing beyond the Amazon: the globalization of a traditional indigenous entheogenic practice Global Networks December 9, 2008
- Indoleamine Hallucinogens in Cluster Headache: Results of the Clusterbusters Medication Use Survey Journal of Psychoactive Drugs October 20, 2015
and 6 more in the library