Bluelight.org

Hi everyone!

Bluelight is bidding a fond farewell to alasdairm who has decided after many years to step down from heading BL's Admin team. It is no secret that he has contributed more than could possibly be condensed within a single post. Ali has been the role model for generations of BL staff of all levels. His positive energies superseded mere staffing, and indeed his guiding hand and sound thinking stretched to all corners of the community. My personal indebtedness to his character both goes very far and runs very deep.

Bluelight will miss having you in its repertoire. As a community, we can be grateful that you're not leaving the site itself!

Au revoir...


Despite Ali's departure, it is with great optimism and gratitude that Bluelight announces its three newest additions to the Administrative Staff!
Please join us in welcoming ebola?, sekio and baooozs to the team!

It's been a short while since Bluelight has had a full-sized team at the administrative level...

Bluelight is seeking volunteers for a couple of positions. We need a research assistant and graphics designers. You can find full details here:

Research Assistant

Graphics Designers

Follow instructions in the posts to apply for either position. Any member can apply, this is not restricted to current staff. We're excited to expand the Bluelight family with these new additions.

BLUELIGHT.ORG: Reducing Harm by Educating the Individual

Bluelight is an international, online harm-reduction community, committed to reducing the harm associated with drug use.

Bluelight neither condones nor condemns the use of drugs. Rather, we accept that drug use will always exist irrespective of legal status or societal norms. While there is no truly safe way to use drugs, we understand that prohibition and abstinence are not realistic or desirable solutions for everyone, nor have they been adequate in addressing the serious public health concerns associated with drug use.

While there is no universal definition of drug-related harm reduction, Bluelight believes that through frank and open discussion we are able to deliver accurate information, eliminate misinformation and empower individuals to make wiser, more responsible choices.

Bluelight understands that drug use encompasses a broad range of behaviors, some safer than others, and that drug use can progress...

Have you ever wondered how Bluelight stays online?

Bluelight co-owners have ensured the survival of the website after our benefactor passed away. There were a few options for us to establish our own revenue streams:

1. Constantly run donation drives (annoying to members, diverts from our focus, extremely time consuming for senior staff, and probably wouldn't be sufficient to pay our bills)

2. Sell advertising to the highest bidder (even more annoying to our members, clutters the site, diverts from our focus)

3. Paid memberships: defeats the purpose of providing harm reduction to the masses and would likely fail, anyway

4. Collaborate with researchers: (May have some hypothetical/theoretical drawbacks, but has many practical benefits, not the least of which includes going Bluelight an opportunity to directly contribute to the growing body of scientific research)

For many reasons we believe the last option provides Bluelight with the most benefit and least...

Excellent news!
A first, at least!

I wish we could have everyone get on board with this. It won't fix much in the grand scheme of how fucked up the US is, but it's a compassionate start.

April 9 at 12:30 am
By Lindsey Bever / The Washington Post - Morning Mix

Please note: bluelight was not affected by this security breach, as we run on a dedicated server with ssl disabled. Thus there is no need to change your password here, however, our intention in posting is to alert you that other sites you frequent might have been endangered.
A newly discovered security bug nicknamed Heartbleed has exposed millions of usernames, passwords and reportedly credit card numbers — a major problem that hackers could have exploited during the more than two years it went undetected.

That’s why some experts were calling Heartbleed the worst bug yet, something that should worry everyone who frequents the Internet or does business on it.

April 3, 2014
By Sandy Walsh / FDA NEWS RELEASE

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today approved a prescription treatment that can be used by family members or caregivers to treat a person known or suspected to have had an opioid overdose. Evzio (naloxone hydrochloride injection) rapidly delivers a single dose of the drug naloxone via a hand-held auto-injector that can be carried in a pocket or stored in a medicine cabinet.
It is intended for the emergency treatment of known or suspected opioid overdose, characterized by decreased breathing or heart rates, or loss of consciousness.

Drug overdose deaths, driven largely by prescription drug overdose deaths, are now the leading cause of injury death in the United States – surpassing motor vehicle crashes. In 2013, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the number of drug overdose deaths had steadily increased for more than a decade.

Naloxone is a medication that rapidly reverses the effects of opioid overdose and is the standard treatment for overdose. However, existing naloxone drugs require administration via syringe and are most commonly used by trained medical personnel in emergency departments and ambulances.

“Overdose and death resulting from misuse and abuse of both prescription and illicit opioids has become a major public health concern in the United States,” said Bob Rappaport, M.D., director of the Division of Anesthesia, Analgesia, and Addiction Products in the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “Evzio is the first combination drug-device product designed to deliver a dose of naloxone for administration outside of a health care setting. Making this product available could save lives by facilitating earlier use of the drug in emergency situations.”

I dont know about you guys but that vehicle makes me smile from ear to ear

Vice magazine recently interviewed bluelight owner, Sebastians_Ghost for as piece on how internet communities are increasingly serving as sources of information for a wide spectrum of drug users: In a World of Opiate Addicts, the Internet Plays Doctor and Therapist