Dionysus Reloaded makes a simple claim with uncomfortable consequences: that the right to determine the contents of your own consciousness is a fundamental human right, and that prohibition — not the substances it targets — is the primary engine of harm.
The organisations below are doing that work in the world. Some test substances and publish warnings that save lives on a given weekend. Some answer the phone at three in the morning. Some argue the case in parliaments, courtrooms and at the United Nations.
I do not agree with all of them about everything, and I have said so where it matters. None of them is affiliated with this book, and none has endorsed it. They are listed here because their work is good and because you may need it.
Several of these resources serve German-speaking Europe and publish in German. These are marked DE.
If a substance is illegal, nobody guarantees what is in it. That is not a fact about drugs; it is a fact about prohibition. The services below exist to close that gap — by analysing what is actually circulating, publishing it, and telling people the truth without a lecture attached.
Zurich's municipal harm reduction service, running one of the longest-established drug checking programmes in the world. The Drug Information Centre analyses substances submitted anonymously and publishes the results — including photographs of pills and their actual composition — as public warnings. Their model has been the template much of Europe has since copied.
Bavaria's safer-nightlife project, run by the youth organisation Condrobs. Its Pillenwarnungen section collects warnings about dangerously dosed or adulterated substances circulating in Germany, drawing on testing data from across Europe. Practical, non-moralising, and written for people who are going out this weekend rather than for policymakers.
Berlin's publicly funded drug checking model project — the first of its kind in Germany, run jointly by three addiction services. Anyone can submit a substance anonymously for laboratory analysis and receive the result together with a consultation. Proof that a service long declared legally impossible in Germany can in fact be built.
A grassroots association founded in the techno scene of the 1990s, long before harm reduction was respectable. Offers substance information, on-site testing at events, and a substantial documentation archive. One of the original European examples of users organising to look after each other.
The German sister organisation, based in Münster. Maintains a large open archive of drug-related literature, legal documents and analysis results, and campaigns for drug checking in North Rhine-Westphalia. Particularly valuable if you want primary sources rather than summaries.
Vienna's municipal drug checking and information service, part of the city health authority. Free on-site substance analysis at clubs and festivals plus a walk-in service, always combined with a confidential consultation. Publishes warnings on substances of concern in the Austrian market.
The Bernese counterpart to Zurich's service, with mobile drug checking at events and a permanent walk-in laboratory. Combines substance-by-substance information sheets with current market warnings, aimed squarely at people who use rather than at professionals.
The German federal association for safer nightlife — an umbrella connecting the individual party projects, drug checking initiatives and outreach teams working in club and festival settings. A good entry point for finding a local project, and a coordinated political voice for the sector.
The UK's first and only Home Office–licensed drug checking charity, running festival and community services where people surrender substances for on-site laboratory analysis and receive tailored advice. Roughly one in five substances turns out to be mis-sold; two thirds of people dispose of a substance once they know what it actually is. That statistic is the entire argument for drug checking.
The pioneering American harm reduction organisation for the electronic music community, founded in 1998. Provides reagent testing kits, fentanyl test strips, naloxone and detailed substance information sheets, alongside on-site services at events. Its factsheets are among the most widely used plain-language drug information resources in English.
A Spanish harm reduction project running one of Europe's most respected drug checking laboratories, including an international mail-in analysis service. Combines street-level outreach with published market monitoring, giving an unusually detailed picture of what is actually circulating in the European supply.
An open, searchable database of laboratory results from anonymously submitted samples, operated by Erowid. Every entry shows what a sample was sold as, what it actually contained, and in what proportions. An indispensable reality check on the illicit market — and a quiet, cumulative indictment of the policy that created it.
The foundational archive of the internet-era drug literature, online since 1995 and run as a non-profit. Tens of thousands of first-person experience reports alongside pharmacology, legal status, history and health information for hundreds of substances. Whatever the question, Erowid has documented it without judgement for three decades.
A collaboratively written encyclopaedia documenting psychoactive substances and, in unusual depth, the phenomenology of altered states themselves. Its subjective effect index is an attempt to build shared vocabulary for experiences that ordinary language fails. Entries include dosage, duration, interaction and harm potential data.
A volunteer-run service offering live chat support to people in the middle of a difficult experience, plus practical tools — most famously a drug combination chart showing which pairings are dangerous. Immediate, human, and available when clinical services are not.
A free, non-commercial smartphone app gathering drug checking results and pill warnings from testing services across Europe into a single location-filtered feed. Also includes substance information and combination warnings. The most practical way to carry current market data in your pocket.
A non-profit running the Psychedelic Support Line — free, confidential, non-clinical emotional support by phone and text for people during a psychedelic experience, processing a past one, or supporting someone else. Peer-reviewed research on its callers found two thirds were de-escalated from psychological distress, and that a substantial proportion would otherwise have called emergency services.
US telephone line, operating daily. No European equivalent currently exists.
Provides psychedelic peer support at festivals and events worldwide, and trains volunteers, medics, security and event staff to sit with someone having a difficult experience rather than sedating or arresting them. Its Four Principles of Psychedelic Care are published as a free introductory course. Over a decade of practice in exactly the settings where difficulty actually occurs.
Policy, law and regulation — and an honest account of how far each of these organisations is prepared to go.
Most of the organisations in this section are arguing for decriminalisation — removing criminal penalties from people who possess or use drugs. That is necessary, overdue, and it is not enough.
Decriminalisation stops the state from punishing you. It does nothing about what you are actually buying. The supply stays in the hands of an illicit market, which means adulteration, unknown dose, no quality control, no age limits, no recourse and no tax — and it means the criminal economy that prohibition created stays exactly where it is.
A policy that decriminalises use while criminalising supply tells people they may take the risk but must remain unable to reduce it.
This book argues for the legal regulation of all psychoactive substances, with the model calibrated substance by substance: what is sold, at what potency, through which outlets, with what information attached.
And regulation must avoid the second trap. Replacing the police officer with the physician is not liberty. A system that spares you prosecution on condition that you accept treatment you did not ask for has not recognised your autonomy; it has relabelled its custody. Cognitive liberty means the right to make a decision others consider unwise, and to be given honest information rather than a diagnosis.
So read this section as a map of a movement, not a list of endorsements. These are fellow travellers on a road this book follows further than most of them do. Where an organisation's stated position stops short of legally regulated supply, I have marked it. That is a description, not a criticism — every one of them has saved lives that prohibition would otherwise have taken.
The German federal association for accepting drug work and humane drug policy, founded in Bremen in 1990. The professional home of the "acceptance" tradition — meeting people who use drugs where they are, rather than making abstinence a condition of care. Publishes the annual Alternativer Drogen- und Suchtbericht, the civil-society counterweight to the government's official report.
Position: decriminalisation, harm reduction and cannabis regulation.
A network of criminologists, physicians, lawyers and social scientists arguing for the decriminalisation of drug use in Germany — from within the professions that administer prohibition. Its resolution, signed by more than a hundred German criminal law professors, forced the question into the Bundestag. Rigorous, sober, and unusually hard to dismiss.
Position: full decriminalisation of possession; regulation of the cannabis market.
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition: serving and retired police officers, judges, prosecutors and customs officials who concluded from their own working lives that the drug war has failed. Chaired by a former police president. When the people who enforced the law say it cannot work, the argument changes shape.
Position: ending prohibition and moving to legally regulated markets.
Germany's cannabis policy lobby, and the most professionalised drug reform organisation in the country. Provides legal information for consumers, tracks legislation in detail, and was central to the campaign behind Germany's 2024 partial legalisation.
Position: legal regulation — cannabis only.
Junkies, Ehemalige, Substituierte — the German self-organisation of people who use or have used drugs, and of people in substitution treatment. One of the very few organisations in this field where the affected are the authors rather than the subject. Campaigns on consumption rooms, naloxone access and the dignity of people who use drugs.
Position: decriminalisation, harm reduction and user self-determination.
Germany's federal HIV/AIDS organisation, and historically one of the country's most consequential harm reduction actors — syringe programmes, consumption rooms and substitution treatment all owe much to its advocacy. Publishes substantial research on drug consumption rooms.
Position: decriminalisation and harm reduction.
The organisation that moved the debate from whether to end prohibition to how. After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation and its successor volumes set out, market by market, what legally regulated supply would look like — pricing, packaging, outlets, potency limits, points of sale. If you want the practical answer to "but what would you replace it with?", this is where it lives.
Position: legal regulation of all drugs. The closest match to this book's argument.
The independent scientific body founded by Professor David Nutt after he was dismissed as the UK government's chief drugs adviser for stating that the evidence did not support the law. Produces evidence-based harm rankings and research free of political interference. Nutt's work is cited throughout Dionysus Reloaded.
Position: evidence-led classification and regulated legal access.
The UK's national centre of expertise on drugs and drug law, founded in 1967 — free, confidential legal advice for people who use drugs alongside serious policy research. Its work documenting racial disparity in drug policing has been particularly influential. Practical legal help and structural critique in one organisation.
Position: decriminalisation; supportive of regulation models.
The leading American organisation working to end the drug war, campaigning for decriminalisation, legal regulation and the dismantling of drug-war infrastructure. Documents the racialised enforcement of US drug law in detail, and has been behind many of the state-level reform measures of the past two decades.
Position: decriminalisation of use; legal regulation for some substances.
A research and advocacy NGO holding governments to account on the human rights consequences of drug control — including the use of the death penalty for drug offences. Its Global State of Harm Reduction report is the standard reference on what services exist, and where they do not.
Position: harm reduction and decriminalisation; human rights framing.
A global network of more than 190 NGOs promoting open, evidence-based debate on drug policy at national, regional and UN level. Functions as the movement's shared infrastructure — coordinating civil society engagement with the UN drug control system and running the Support. Don't Punish global campaign.
Position: decriminalisation, described by IDPC itself as the "gold standard".
This is where this book parts company most clearly. Decriminalisation is a step in the right direction, not a destination. Removing the penalty while leaving supply criminalised leaves the market untouched — and only legalisation makes a market regulable at all. Everything that matters in practice, from potency limits to age controls to product information, becomes possible only once supply is legal.
Former heads of state and government, UN officials and public figures — among them Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Ruth Dreifuss and Kofi Annan — who concluded that the global war on drugs has failed and said so publicly. Its 2018 report went further than most reform bodies dare, calling for responsible legal regulation of drug markets.
Position: legal regulation of drug markets.
An independent news platform reporting on drug policy and drug use worldwide, with particular attention to regions the mainstream press ignores. Publishes in several languages and gives space to writers who use drugs. A useful antidote to a debate dominated by North American and Western European framings.
Position: independent journalism; no single policy line.
The International Network of People who Use Drugs — the global peer-led body representing drug users in international policy forums. Its founding premise is "nothing about us without us". If this book's argument is that consumers deserve agency rather than management, INPUD is that principle organised.
Position: decriminalisation, user rights and an end to stigma.
The European Coalition for Just and Effective Drug Policies, a network of citizens and organisations lobbying EU institutions since 1993. Long-standing advocate for cannabis social clubs and for a European drug policy grounded in human rights rather than enforcement targets.
Position: legal regulation, with an emphasis on non-commercial models.
An international, student-led network campaigning against the drug war and for harm reduction on campuses and beyond. Notable for training a generation of organisers and for pushing peer education and overdose response into institutions that had only ever run abstinence programmes.
Position: ending the drug war; specific models vary by chapter.
This is the argument beneath the argument. Drug policy is usually debated as a question of public health or crime. It is more fundamentally a question about who owns your consciousness. The organisations here take that question seriously — some philosophically, some in actual courtrooms.
A German civil-society initiative active since 2017, campaigning for the decriminalisation of people who use illegal drugs and for an end to the drug war. Its work centres on stigma and language — including a widely used guide to non-stigmatising terminology — and on representing the perspectives of people who use drugs in policy debates.
The clearest German-language expression of the principle this book argues from. The name says it.
The International Center for Ethnobotanical Education, Research and Service works on the integration of ayahuasca, iboga and other traditional plants into contemporary society, and on the rights of the Indigenous cultures that have used them for millennia.
Its Ayahuasca Defense Fund provides legal support to people prosecuted for ceremonial plant use — cognitive and religious liberty defended where it is actually contested.
A research and education organisation focused on the cultural, ethical and legal dimensions of plant medicines, with sustained attention to reciprocity with Indigenous communities, religious freedom, and the risks of extractive capitalism in the psychedelic field. Publishes accessible scholarship and runs the annual Psychedelic Culture conference.
An academic centre at the University of Essex, and co-author of the International Guidelines on Human Rights and Drug Policy — now used by governments, UN bodies and NGOs worldwide to assess drug laws against human rights obligations.
Its work on compulsory detention for "drug treatment" is the most rigorous existing critique of coercive care. Where this book argues from conviction, HR-DP argues from international law.
This directory is offered for information. It is not medical or legal advice, and inclusion does not imply that any organisation endorses this book, its author or its conclusions — in several cases they explicitly would not. External sites are the responsibility of their operators.
If you believe a link should be corrected or removed, please write to contact@dombrowe.berlin.
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