Mid-winter greetings from Northern California! As Terence's singularity came and went and 2013 settled on the lands, the Erowid crew has been working on 2012 accounting (yay! taxes!), thinking about old friends (Hail the goer. We'll miss you, Myron!), following research and legal updates, and filtering experience reports.

Over the next six months, we're going to be scaling back some of our usual work to focus on finishing up a couple of long-standing projects and new features, like making the site more mobile friendly.

As always, we welcome your input, suggestions, corrections, praise, and complaints.

-- Earth, Fire, Jon, and the Erowid Crew

Indian guru Meher Baba (Feb 25, 1894 - Jan 31, 1969), who encouraged his Western followers in the late 1960s to stop using psychedelics and other drugs, died 44 years ago today.

Spiritual Emergency: Embracing Unexpected Transformations
(Feb 3-8, 2013)
and
Shamanism: An Exploration of Traditional Wisdom
(Feb 10-15, 2013) in Joshua Tree, California
http://holotropic.com/schedule.shtml

Grof Transpersonal Training Holotropic Breathwork seminars with Stanislav Grof (Feb 3 & 4) and Diane Haug (Feb 5-8 & 10-15).

Little Planet, Big Island (Feb 13-25, 2013) on the Big Island of Hawaii
http://botanicaldimensions.org/2012/12/join-our-ethnobotany-intensive-in-hawaii-feb-2013/#/0/1

Kathleen Harrison and Momi Subiono teach botany, phytochemistry, herbal medicine, and shamanic healing.

Memories of Myron: The Passing of a Psychedelic Pioneer On January 6, Myron Stolaroff peacefully passed away in his sleep. Jon Hanna reflects on Stolaroff's contributions to the entheogen-interested community. Includes video of his 1997 talk, "The Trained User: Deepening Meditation Practice and Forestalling Aging".

Charting the Relatively Unknown: A Study of Four Cathinones Waleenstedt and Bbjornstrand describe their careful explorations and comparisons of 4-MMC, 4-FMC, ethcathinone, and 4-MEC after taking each substance orally and via insufflation multiple times over a period of months and in a variety of settings.

Short-Acting Entheogen Review author Lazar presents three techniques for shortening the duration of some phenethylamines while retaining their full-blown intensity of peak effects.

The past ten days we've been working on preparing Erowid Center's 2012 tax forms. Wheee! For the first time, in 2012, Erowid Center's total donations were less than its expenses, though our expenses stayed about the same as past years. It's a tough economy out there.

One of the benefits of the tax preparation process is that Earth and Fire repeatedly see all the names of contributors to the project. After doing this for ten days, it feels like you're all family. "Yeah, Kathleen is a nurse." "Oh look, Peter moved to Belgium!", etc.

Long-distance hugs to everyone.

Pioneers of the Virtual Underground: A History of Our Culture After a long absence, the Lycaeum Forums have recently come back online, and DoseNation editors have revived their blog following a 15-month hiatus. This confluence of activity inspired us to revisit a tale of an earlier time on the web, from the first issue of The Resonance Project magazine. Everything old is new again...

1. Lemon Balm Vault
   A new vault about Lemon Balm (Melissa officinalis) including photos and a few experiences reporting clear effects used as a tea or smoked. Although reports are inconsistent, they include sedation and euphoria.
2. A Conversation on LSD
   An hour of video-taped conversation and reflection from numerous early psychedelic researchers, including Myron Stolaroff, Sidney Cohen, Al Hubbard, Timothy Leary, Oscar Janiger, and Humphry Osmond.
3. A Conversation with George Greer and Myron Stolaroff
   Neal Goldsmith interviews Greer and Stolaroff about their work with MDMA and psychedelics, in this extensive conversation from 1998.
4. Converting iso-LSD into LSD
   A short excerpt from a 2008 chemistry book describing a simple method for converting iso-LSD into LSD.

• The Dragon and the Self (DMT), by The Wizard

EcstasyData is a project of Erowid Center that conducts laboratory testing of street ecstasy tablets and publishes these and other test results online.

• 
  Red Tablet (New York, NY)
  Contains alpha-PVP.
• 
  Stewie (San Francisco, CA)
  Contains Caffeine and 5-MeO-DiPT.
• 
  Pure Molly 12345 (San Francisco, CA)
  Contains MDMA, Methylsulfonylmethane, and Caffeine.

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