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The Subjective Effect Index (SEI), or simply Effect Index, is a formalized documentation and granular classification system of the subjective effects of hallucinogens, for instance of serotonergic psychedelics like LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and dimethyltryptamine (DMT).[1][2][3][4][5][6] It has the aim of developing a universal terminology set for discussing and describing these effects.[1][7][6] In addition to text descriptions, the SEI also includes image, video, and audio replications of hallucinogen effects.[6][8]

The SEI contains 233 different effects in total, including 52 different visual effects.[2][3] The effects are divided into three groups: physical effects, sensory effects, and cognitive effects.[9][1] The visual effects in the SEI have been described as more rigorous, whereas cognitive and emotional effects have been harder to define.[2] Some examples of specific SEI effects include diffraction, increased pareidolia, double vision, texture liquidation, ego dissolution, sedation, tactile enhancement, spontaneous bodily sensations, changes in felt gravity, nausea, appetite suppression, and increased heart rate, among others.[2][1][3][10]

The SEI was developed by Josie Kins starting in 2011 and was publicly launched as a dedicated website in 2017.[1][2][11][4][12][6] It has been described as an informal classification system and “citizen science” project.[13] According to Kins, the effects in the SEI were essentially based on her own experiences and those of her friends, and hence are anecdotal in nature.[7][5][10] She began working on the SEI after having her first psychedelic experience and wanting to learn more about the effects of psychedelics, but discovering, to her surprise, that nothing satisfactory and comprehensive in systematically describing these effects existed.[7][4]

Subsequent to its original version, Kins began working at the psychedelic pharmaceutical company Mindstate Design Labs in 2021 and professionally developed an expanded and more rigorous version of the SEI.[2][7][8] This is known as the Emergent Subjective Effect Index (ESEI) and was developed around 2023.[7] It is intended to be more precise and comprehensive than the SEI, including over 600 distinct effects.[7][2][14][15][12] In addition, the project incorporates other classification systems of hallucinogenic effects and inter-translates all of the different terms in these systems.[7] It was developed in part through artificial intelligence (AI)-based processing of tens of thousands of trip reports.[14][16] The EEI is said to be confidential and company property of Mindstate Design Labs, having yet to be released, but is said to be non-patentable and will eventually be open-sourced.[7]

The SEI is integrated into PsychonautWiki, an online encyclopedia of psychoactive drugs that was also founded by Kins.[3][7][17][5][18] She has also used the SEI to inform creation of psychedelic replications and in the development of an informal psychedelic experience intensity scale.[19] The SEI has been used and cited as a reference in the formal scientific literature as well.[20][5][18][13][10][21] The EEI is used at Mindstate Design Labs for purposes of assisting in correlation of different psychedelic effects with specific receptor interactions.[14][22][16][23][24][12]

Another notable approach to investigating the effects of hallucinogens besides classification systems like the SEI is through the use of psychometric scales, such as the Altered States of Consciousness Scale (ASC) and the Hallucinogen Rating Scale (HRS).[7][25][26][27][28][29]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e Blacker, David J. (1 June 2024). Deeper Learning with Psychedelics: Philosophical Pathways through Altered States. State University of New York Press. pp. 14, 112–114, 117–118. doi:10.1515/9781438498140. ISBN 978-1-4384-9814-0. Along these same lines, there are publicly accessible ongoing analyses of a wide range of psychedelic compounds, such as that provided by Mindstate Design Labs (UK) psychedelics researcher (and YouTuber) Josie Kins, who has developed a helpful Subjective Effects Index (EffectIndex.com), “which features a granular taxonomy of the subjective psychedelic experience” aimed at “developing a universal terminology set for discussing and describing that which was previously ineffable.”52 Kins’s ongoing experiential database and associated frameworks are the most comprehensive currently available (I utilize her work in chapter 2).52 […] Also based on online self-reports, Kins’s online SEI compilation goes into further helpful detail, providing a more nuanced typology of reported ego-dissolution experiences.27 SEI is “a resource containing formalised documentation of the vast number of distinct subjective states that may occur under the influence of hallucinogens” whose purpose is “to comprehensively document and describe the wide variety of potenual hallucinogenic experiences.”28 Ego dissolution is just one of many categories represented in the SEI, which includes copious examples of perceptual distortions, bodily effects, psychological states, suppressions’ amplifications, types of geometric patterns perceived, transpersonal states’ and many others (each with several subcategories.).
  2. ^ a b c d e f g French, Kristen (1 June 2023). “What Hallucinogens Will Make You See”. Nautilus. Retrieved 29 March 2026. Over the past 12 years, Kins has compiled a list of 233 effects people experience under the influence of psychedelic drugs, drawn from online accounts and her own experience, called the Subjective Effect Index. In 2021, she began working for a startup drug company called Mindstate Design Labs to make the classification system more precise and comprehensive, under the advisement of renowned psychedelic researchers Thomas Ray and Andy Newburg. That work could double the total number of entries on the list, she says. But it’s the cognitive and emotional effects that seem to elude categorization and need the most refining. “The visual effects are already rigorous,” says Kins. Below, a selection of some of the 52 visual effects on her list. Diffraction […] Increased pareidolia […] Machinescapes […] Object activation […] Scenery slicing […] Texture liquidation […] Unspeakable horrors […] Visual exposure to inner mechanics of consciousness […]
  3. ^ a b c d Singh, Manvir (20 May 2025). Shamanism: The Timeless Religion. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. p. 77. ISBN 978-0-593-53755-8. Retrieved 9 March 2026. One of the best resources for comparing the effects of drugs is PsychonautWiki, a self-described “community-driven online encyclopedia that aims to document the emerging field of psychonautics (i.e., the exploration of altered states of consciousness) in a comprehensive, scientifically-grounded manner.” […] it characterizes each substance using a standard list of subjective effects—called, quite fittingly, the Subjective Effect Index, or SEI. The SEI is huge. As of March 2023, it comprised some 240 subjective effects and included everything from “double vision” to “orgasm depression.” Combined with the website’s scope and careful editing, the SEI makes PsychonautWiki ideal for our purposes. Using it, we can investigate what, if anything, is shared across shamanic trance states. 10
  4. ^ a b c Winslow, Henry (1 March 2026). “🫠 Psychonaut POV: [5-min read] Q&A with Josie Kins, Phenomenologist & Engineer”. Tricycle Day. Retrieved 27 March 2026. Josie Kins has tried more psychoactive substances than most people know exist. (For science, obviously.) With her project, the Subjective Effect Index, she’s built the de facto encyclopedia of altered states of consciousness, where the ineffable is, err, effed in plain language anyone can understand. […] I was looking for something with individual effects, leveling systems, and descriptions of each one. So I was like, oh, someone should do that then. From there, I founded the Subjective Effect Index and rapidly gained a following, and that escalated over the next decade until I ended up working in the industry. […] Text is helpful for describing the behavior of the visual experience, but to actually show what it looks like, you need to replicate it. The concept of “replications” existed long before I put a term to it. […]
  5. ^ a b c d Kohek, Maja; Ohren, Maurice; Hornby, Paul; Alcázar‐Córcoles, Miguel Ángel; Bouso, José Carlos (2020). “The Ibogaine Experience: A Qualitative Study on the Acute Subjective Effects of Ibogaine”. Anthropology of Consciousness. 31 (1): 91–119. doi:10.1111/anoc.12119. ISSN 1053-4202. At first six categories and eight subcategories of the subjective acute effects were created. Those were then compared to the categories from the Subjective Effects Index (SEI) and served as an orientation for the selection of final categories. The SEI is an extensive and elaborated database of potential effects that might be experienced under the influence of any psychoactive compound (PsychonautWiki 2017). It is part of an online community-driven platform, documenting objective and technical descriptions of subjective effects based on the experiences of the contributors. […] PsychonautWiki contributors. 2017. Subjective Effect Index (SEI). PsychonautWiki. Accessed April 5, 2017. [psychonautwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Subjective_effect_index&oldid=94175].
  6. ^ a b c d “Effects Archives”. UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics. 27 March 2026. Retrieved 29 March 2026. Effect Index: Effect Index serves as the platform for the Subjective Effect Index (SEI), a resource containing formalised documentation of the vast number of distinct subjective states that may occur under the influence of hallucinogens. We strive to comprehensively document and describe the wide variety of potential hallucinogenic experiences. The SEI is presented in an easily readable format that contains not only descriptions, but also image, video, and audio replications of these effects. We believe that in pioneering formalised subjective effect documentation, we may demystify the psychedelic experience. This has the potential to allow hallucinogen usage to become more culturally acceptable, better understood, and create a platform on top of which these substances may be more easily studied. Effect Index was initially founded as a side project on 30 June, 2017 by Josie Kins, the founder of PsychonautWiki and DisregardEverythingISay. It serves as a platform for content that has been in constant development for the previous six years on these sites. However, the aforementioned content is now hosted on its own dedicated platform with the hope of further spreading the documentation and creating a universal terminology set that gives people the vernacular to fully describe experiences that were previously considered ineffable.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Taylor Sterling (18 September 2025). “#22: Mapping the Ineffable: Josie Kins on Documenting Psychedelic States”. Tripsitter Podcast (Podcast). Tripsitter. [Kins:] I work full-time for a biotech company founded by a friend of the Shulgin’s, called Mind State Design Labs. […] [Sterling:] Back to the Subjective Effect Index, one thing I saw you talk about in one of your videos was kind of comparing the different effect indexes. I don’t know how many were present when you had your first trip back in the day, but now there’s, what, three or four different psychedelic effect index used in research, like the Altered States of Consciousness, Hallucinogenic Rating Scale, Phenomenology of Consciousness did have those did those come into being at the same time you were working on your subjective effect scale or what were you basing it on I guess is my question? [Kins:] I mean, in regards to, I guess I call them altered states of consciousness classification systems, because I’ve had to work with all of the pre-existing ones in my professional life. There are actually quite a lot. […] But there are, I don’t know, a half dozen different factor analysis, validated psychometric scales that they use in various different studies. None of them are particularly good or go into much detail at all. And then there are several… I guess I call them informal classification systems, which the subjective effect index would fall under, such as the DMT Nexus’s hyperspace lexicon. There’s kind of one on Erowid, which isn’t that good. I can’t remember what it’s called right now. And then the subjective effect index and just a couple of others floating around on the internet, all of varying degrees of quality detail and wackiness. With the Subjective Effect Index in particular, the primary version that was publicly available online was based on my own experiences and the experiences of my friends, essentially. [Sterling:] That’s what I was curious about was it seemed like it was something that you had built on your own experiences and the people around you, which is, I think, for me, like what has made it more accurate, like… than any other tools I’ve used because it’s still used by Psychonaut Wiki too, correct? Or at least some of it. [Kins:] Yeah, it’s an older version. I mean, the version on Effect Index is outdated at this point. We have a better version, but it’s not publicly available yet. [Sterling:] Is that the emergent effect index that you’re working on at MindState? [Kins:] Yes, I built it out a couple of years ago. It incorporates every other classification system, sort of inter-translates all of the different terms, but it’s still somewhat confidential as a company property. It will be put out there as open source, though, because it’s not even patentable, and we want it to be a universal terminology set eventually.
  8. ^ a b Paul F. Austin (26 February 2024). “[Episode 236:] Designing States of Consciousness: Unique Approaches to Psychedelic Drug Development”. The Psychedelic Podcast (Podcast). ThirdWave. [Dillan DiNardo:] In our system, we have, I think, something like 56 categories of visual effects, and we have definitions for those effects and for almost all of them I think we have replication, so actual artistic replications of exactly what those visuals look like. So I use the visuals as an example, the visual effects are not necessarily the most therapeutically relevant aspect of altered state of consciousness, but we’ve done the same thing to these cognitive effects and the mood effects, and all of these things that psychedelics do, the weird ways that they change perception, and so developing that language and developing the system, the hierarchy of categories here was a crucial and unavoidable step to being able to do what we’re doing.
  9. ^ Termonen, Tomi (3 June 2024). “Interactions and activity of lysergol derivatives at 5 HT1A and 5-HT2A–C receptors”. UTUPub (in Finnish). Retrieved 29 March 2026. Psychedelic experiences consist of having different effects in the body. The biological effects of psychedelics can be divided into three groups: physical effects, sensory effects, and cognitive effects, as described in Subjective Effect Index (Kins, 2017). The physical effects are divided into enhancements, suppression, and alterations. […]
  10. ^ a b c Nasibulin, Alfred (2022). “Theseus: The Nuances Of Cannabis Legalization”. Theseus (in Finnish). Retrieved 29 March 2026. To understand the effects of cannabis intoxication, the list below cites the subjective effects index, which is open access research literature based on anecdotal user experience. […]
  11. ^ Friedler, Delilah (15 June 2022). “AI Can Now Generate DMT Visuals, Thanks To This Online Community”. DoubleBlind Mag. In recent years, a Reddit community called /r/Replications has coalesced around the goal of “replicating” such visuals and sensory experiences with the aid of modern technology. These efforts reached new heights with a video uploaded this year by Josie Kins, a psychedelic researcher who is an administrator of /r/Replications, and founded a related project called the Subjective Effect Index.
  12. ^ a b c DiNardo, Dillan (5 November 2022). Intentional Design of Novel Modified Conscious States / Mapping the Biological Basis of the Psychedelic Experience. Wonderland Conference (Wonderland 2022). Miami, Florida. Event occurs at 13:30–14:12. Archived from the original on 29 May 2023. [DiNardo of Mindstate Design Labs:] We also brought on board Josie Kins. Josie was the founder of psychonautwiki.org, effectindex.com, and some of the largest online psychonaut communities. She’s devoted her life to looking at and documenting and concretizing and categorizing and defining all of these different psychedelic effects in these various obscure molecules, taking the drug-induced ravings, the fantastic metaphors, and putting them into discernible, discrete categories that are defined and can be used again extending the realm of what can be said. At this point we have over 500 distinct aspects or qualia of the psychedelic experience.
  13. ^ a b Gładziejewski, Paweł (19 December 2024). “Experiencing timelessness and the phenomenology of temporal flow”. Philosophical Psychology: 1–30. doi:10.1080/09515089.2024.2444508. ISSN 0951-5089. Retrieved 29 March 2026. The Subjective Effect Index catalogs types of subjective effects induced by psychedelic substances. It is a result of a “citizen” science project led by Josie Kins.
  14. ^ a b c Briggs, Saga (3 April 2025). “The next era of psychedelics may be precision-designed states of consciousness”. Big Think. […] Osmanthus’s diet includes two types of data sets: pharmacological and subjective. The platform’s core innovation is connecting those two layers — linking how a drug behaves in the body with how people describe its effects. Osmanthus maps subjective experiences using “semantic embedding models” (machine learning tools that extract meaning from language) trained on language from trip reports, while its pharmacological data includes thousands of receptor binding assays. Together, these datasets have allowed Mindstate to build what the company describes as a catalog of over 600 distinct psychedelic effects, each tied to the brain sites likely responsible.
  15. ^ Dimitropoulos S (12 June 2025). “Science Has a Powerful New Tool to Unlock the Mysteries of Consciousness—And Even Help You Reach Transcendence”. Popular Mechanics. Retrieved 7 August 2025. Mindstate has cataloged over 600 distinct effects so far, that are specific, repeatable shifts in perception, mood, and thought. Different compounds trigger each effect.
  16. ^ a b Bayer, Max (13 March 2024). “After crunching 70k ‘trip reports’, Mindstate looks to test first AI-derived psychedelic on humans”. Fierce Biotech. Retrieved 29 March 2026.
  17. ^ Reed, Graham (23 April 2019). “Hallucinations and the Psychedelic Visual Experience”. Psychedelic Science Review. There is a wealth of gathered scientific research available on PsychonautWiki and EffectIndex regarding visual phenomena. EffectIndex, in charge of Reddit’s /r/replications, exists to serve as a collection of artistic recreations of the hallucinogenic experience.
  18. ^ a b Boardman, Alexander (2024). Relationships Between Personality and the Psychedelic Experience (Thesis). University of Otago. Retrieved 29 March 2026. The range of effects induced by psychedelics is exceedingly wide and highly variable between and within persons. Where one individual may experience a state of self-transcendence, interconnectedness and unity (Carhart-Harris et al., 2018; Preller & Vollenweider, 2018), another might experience paranoia, delusions, and confusion (Barret et al., 2017). Despite this diversity, there exist several features of the acute psychedelic state that are frequently reported or identified (Sessa, 2008). For example, an online subjective effect index on a popular psychedelic forum lists over 200 items as reported features of the acute experience (Josikins, 2023). […] These features were selected (based on relevance and personal interest) from over 200 subjective effects listed on the Psychonaut.wiki “Psychedelic Subjective Effect Index” (Josikins, 2023). […] Josikins. (2023, September 6). Subjective effects index. PsychonautWiki. [psychonautwiki.org/wiki/Subjective_effects_index]
  19. ^ Bilderbeck, Poppy (23 November 2022). “What do psychedelic visuals look like?”. UNILAD. Retrieved 29 March 2026. Within her research, Josie Kins uses subjective effective documentation to create visual imagery to make sense of the psychedelic experience. In one of her latest videos, she tries to ‘establish a comprehensive intensity scale for measuring the seven distinct levels of the psychedelic experience, in accordance with the terminology laid out within the Subjective Effect Index and in collaboration with various artists from the ‘replications community’. […] Kins explains she’s created the video in order to try and describe the ‘intensity of psychedelic experiences ranging from sub-perceptual micro-dose to the complete obliteration of your ability to remain conscious and process information’. […]
  20. ^ Kaup KK, Vasser M, Tulver K, Munk M, Pikamäe J, Aru J (2023). “Psychedelic replications in virtual reality and their potential as a therapeutic instrument: an open-label feasibility study”. Front Psychiatry. 14 1088896. doi:10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1088896. PMC 10022432. PMID 36937731. The phenomenological elements and concepts used in the experience (Table 1 and Supplementary material 7) were selected after careful study of the available literature on psychedelic (57, 58, 64–74), meditative (82–85), awe-inducing (86– 89), and mystical (29, 72, 75–81) experiences, written reports (58, 59, 68, 76, 90–92) and visual replications (66, 68, 93) of such experiences. […] 68. Kins, J. Subjective Effect Index. (n.d.). Available online at: [effectindex.com] (accessed on May 10, 2022).
  21. ^ Fradkin, Denis (10 April 2024). “Breaking through the doors of perception, consciousness, and existence: to what extent does psychedelic phenomenology ontologically depend on external factors?”. Journal of Psychedelic Studies. 8 (1): 122–141. doi:10.1556/2054.2022.00168. ISSN 2559-9283. Retrieved 29 March 2026.
  22. ^ Mullin, Emily (24 September 2025). “A Startup Used AI to Make a Psychedelic Without the Trip”. WIRED. Retrieved 29 March 2026.
  23. ^ Meissen, Andrew (20 September 2024). “Mindstate Uses AI to Design “Next-Gen” Psychedelics Combined With 5-MeO-MiPT”. Lucid News – Psychedelics. Retrieved 29 March 2026.
  24. ^ Dunne, Rowan (17 June 2025). “Mindstate Design Labs uses AI to provide customized psychedelic experiences”. Mugglehead Investment Magazine. Retrieved 4 March 2026.
  25. ^ Herrmann Z, Earleywine M, De Leo J, Slabaugh S, Kenny T, Rush AJ (2023). “Scoping Review of Experiential Measures from Psychedelic Research and Clinical Trials”. J Psychoactive Drugs. 55 (4): 501–517. doi:10.1080/02791072.2022.2125467. PMID 36127639.
  26. ^ Prugger J, Derdiyok E, Dinkelacker J, Costines C, Schmidt TT (November 2022). “The Altered States Database: Psychometric data from a systematic literature review”. Sci Data. 9 (1): 720. doi:10.1038/s41597-022-01822-4. PMC 9684144. PMID 36418335.
  27. ^ Hovmand OR, Poulsen ED, Arnfred S (January 2024). “Assessment of the acute subjective psychedelic experience: A review of patient-reported outcome measures in clinical research on classical psychedelics”. J Psychopharmacol. 38 (1): 19–32. doi:10.1177/02698811231200019. PMC 10851631. PMID 37969069.
  28. ^ de Deus Pontual AA, Senhorini HG, Corradi-Webster CM, Tófoli LF, Daldegan-Bueno D (2023). “Systematic Review of Psychometric Instruments Used in Research with Psychedelics”. J Psychoactive Drugs. 55 (3): 359–368. doi:10.1080/02791072.2022.2079108. PMID 35616606.
  29. ^ Preller KH, Vollenweider FX (2018). “Phenomenology, Structure, and Dynamic of Psychedelic States”. Curr Top Behav Neurosci. 36: 221–256. doi:10.1007/7854_2016_459. PMID 28025814.