Help Wanted--Drug Safety 101: Important things any drug user should know

[Heretic.Ape.]

I have an idea for a nice thread. As you may have noticed by my posts I'm a big fan of "____101" or "_____for Noobs" type threads. It can be hard and take long hours wandering through threads to come up with some of the finest and most pragmatic information on things. In my experience, a lot of the most fundamental things are scattered within threads, brought up when somebody elaborates on what the original poster and others have taken for granted.

I think in a site where harm reduction is the focus, we should be try to create a very simple and concise starting place for general harm reduction or safe drug use, each part linked to more in depth and elaborate knowledge.

I think it is a habit of some of our wonderful members to talk over the heads of those who need pragmatic advice the most, not sharing a sense of pharmacology, psychology, and other fundamental elements that many people here take for granted that people will just know is important.

I think it would be a good idea to gather up peoples opinions of, for instance, the top 10 or top 20 things ANY drug user should know--whether prescription or illicit or a combination of the two.

The first example that comes to my mind would be something along the lines of:

Always search for information on counterindications or other aspects of how drugs react when taken together.
This includes combos, such as things like "speedballs", "hippyflipping", etc, as well as how ANY drug one takes might interact with perscriptions one is currently or has recently been on.

And then it would go on to discuss the very broad strokes of pharmacology and interactions, maybe mentioning the major systems--dopamine, serotonin, etc--that drugs affect, subdivided into links to threads dealing with various combonations.

Then maybe the second tip would be something like "understand what you're getting yourself into" and talk about reading experience reports, and the importance of researching a substance beforehand, etc

Or perhaps "be sure to understand the concepts and appplication of 'set and setting'" with a brief description and links to good threads dealing with the issue.

Would some people be interested in working on such a project? If so please add suggestions here or add further information to others suggestions.

As though helping to create a nice little simple tool for harm reduction is not motivation in itself, I will also give high rep to anyone who helps out a lot with this project because I want to do it but lack the time to actually see it through right now.

Peace,
h.a.

Reputation Comments on this post:

	Great idea. Thanks for taking the initiative!
	Great idea.
	This would be very helpful to a lot of people. Thanks for mentioning it.
	the only good experiances are safe ones.