Josie Kins

British scientist From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Josie Kins is a British–American psychoactive drug researcher and content creator.^[2]^[3]^[4]^[5]^[1]^[6]

Born~1994 (age ~31–32)^[1]

OthernamesJosikins; Josikinz; Josikinzz

OccupationsPsychoactive drug researcher and content creator

Quick facts Born, Other names ...

Josie Kins
Born	~1994 (age ~31–32)^[1]
Other names	Josikins; Josikinz; Josikinzz
Occupations	Psychoactive drug researcher and content creator
Organization	Mindstate Design Labs^[2]
Notable work	PsychonautWiki, r/Replications, Subjective Effect Index, Disregard Everything I Say, AI-generated psychedelic replications, PsyAI, Dose.Wiki
Website	josiekins.xyz youtube.com/@josikinz

Kins created the Subjective Effect Index (SEI), a website comprehensively documenting and classifying the effects of hallucinogenic drugs, in 2011.^[2]^[7]^[3]^[1]^[8]^[9] She founded PsychonautWiki, a wiki and encyclopedia covering psychoactive drugs, in 2013.^[8]^[6]^[10] This site is among the largest psychoactive drug encyclopedias on the Internet.^[8]^[6]^[10] However, Kins ceased involvement with PsychonautWiki in 2017.^[6]

Kins created the r/Replications subreddit on the social media website Reddit in 2015, in which psychedelic replications are posted and collected.^[3]^[10]^[6]^[11] In addition, Kins and collaborators developed an artificial intelligence (AI) model using StyleGAN to create rigorous and highly realistic replications of psychedelic visual effects in 2022, for instance "breakthrough" dimethyltryptamine (DMT) experiences.^[3]^[12]^[4]^[5]^[13] The model was trained on a dataset of more than 4,000 works of psychedelic art from the Internet.^[3]^[5]^[13] Kins started a YouTube channel in 2022 and periodically posts her team's replications on the channel, with these videos having received popular media attention.^[2]^[3]^[7]^[12]^[4]^[5]

Kins has worked at the American psychedelic pharmaceutical company Mindstate Design Labs studying and documenting the effects of psychedelics since 2021.^[7]^[2]^[8] She has been described as a "psychonaut turned scientific researcher", and has personally tried over 200 different psychedelics, but says that she no longer takes them herself as she has already explored them thoroughly.^[7]^[5]^[1] Kins identifies as a materialist.^[5]

References

[1]
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. [...] There are now people who've made actual careers out of psychedelic replications, like Loka Vision and Symmetric Vision, and their work is pretty incredible. For open-eye stuff, it's typically standard video editing. For high-level stuff like breakthrough geometry, these artists use 3D modeling and animation. And increasingly, I've been using generative AI to replicate high-level states, because it can do things that simply aren't practical otherwise.
[2]
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.).
[3]
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. [...] The mesmerizing video features a reel of computer-generated images of faces and "entities" that strongly resemble the beings many people report encountering after taking DMT. These images were produced by an AI model that Kins and a team of collaborators created using the StyleGAN v2 network. [...] The team "trained" this model by feeding it a data set of more than 4,000 works of psychedelic and visionary art sourced from all over the Internet. [...] StyleGan v2, the machine learning network Kins' team used to create this DMT art, was superseded by StyleGan v3 in November 2021. The team is already hard at work on building a new model with this updated framework, which Kins expects to be an "exponentially" more powerful tool for generating replications.
[4]
Rosa, Tomáš (25 November 2022). "Jak člověk vidí svět pod vlivem halucinogenů? Vědkyně vytvořila přesná videa" [How does a person see the world under the influence of hallucinogens? Scientist creates accurate videos]. Deník.cz (in Czech). [Translated:] American Josie Kins is a professional researcher into psychedelic substances. In her work, she uses subjective effective documentation to create visual images that correspond to psychedelic experiences. That is, a situation when a person is under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs. She then publishes the videos publicly on her YouTube channel. In one of her latest videos, she sought to create a comprehensive intensity scale to measure seven different levels of psychedelic experience, all in accordance with the terminology established within the scientific Subjective Effect Index and in collaboration with artists from the replication community.
[5]
Brown, D.J.; Huntley, S.P. (2025). The Illustrated Field Guide to DMT Entities: Machine Elves, Tricksters, Teachers, and Other Interdimensional Beings. Inner Traditions/Bear. pp. 32–33, 35, 44–45, 108, 110, 113. ISBN 978-1-64411-920-4. Retrieved 3 February 2026. According to DMT researcher Josie Kins, whom I interviewed for this book: [...] In Kins's video "The 6 Levels of DMT," she describes these levels of the DMT experience [...] However, when I interviewed Josie Kins and asked her about this, she replied: I'm very much a materialist, despite all the psychedelics I've tried. In fact, the more I've tripped, the more certain I've become that these things are produced by the mind. That doesn't reduce the significance of it for me. [...] There's even an artificial intelligence (AI) program now that solely generates DMT visuals and entities, with incredible, uncanny accuracy. Josie Kins and a team of programmers trained an AI program "by feeding it a data set of more than 4,000 works of psychedelic and visionary art sourced from all over the Internet. After processing this art and identifying its common features and patterns, the AI—which initially only seemed to output geometric and patterned visuals—began creating artwork with facial features resembling DMT entities.24 Kins created a wonderful video showcasing these extraordinary images: "AI-Generated DMT Entities."25
[6]
Taylor Sterling (18 September 2025). "#22: Mapping the Ineffable: Josie Kins on Documenting Psychedelic States". Tripsitter Podcast (Podcast). Tripsitter.
[7]
French, Kristen (2 June 2023). "What Hallucinogens Will Make You See". Nautilus. Psychonaut turned scientific researcher Josie Kins has personally tried over 200 psychedelic compounds and had hundreds of psychedelic experiences. But she no longer takes them herself. "I've already explored them so thoroughly," she says. 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.
[8]
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.
[9]
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).
[10]
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." Psychonaut Wiki has the standard drawbacks of wikis: articles are works in progress; anyone can create or edit them; they can be vandalized. Nevertheless, it is closely monitored and has two advantages that most academic studies lack. First, it is ambitious, aspiring not only to study as wide a range of psychoactive substances as possible but also to capture what it feels like to use those substances. It synthesizes far-flung accounts of non-ordinary states, including trip reports on websites like Erowid. Second, 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
[11]
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.
[12]
Poppy Bilderbeck (23 November 2022). "Video shows 'most accurate' representation of what psychedelic visuals look like". UNILAD. 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'. Viewers have been left astounded by the video and have flooded to the comments to say how accurate it is. 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'.
[13]
Kins J, DiNardo D (2025). AI Models Driving the Next Generation of Psychedelics. SXSW. The explorations of consciousness that started in the 1960s with early psychonauts' attempts to articulate the psychedelic experience have now been rocketed into something entirely new with frontier AI models. Artists are using image and video models to express the ineffable frontiers of human experience, and biotech researchers are using large language models to calculate psychonauts' "trip reports" and create novel altered states of consciousness that are now being tested in human trials. AI is now pushing the boundaries at the cutting edge of human experience.

Josie Kins

References

External links

Related Articles