Flowers is an interactive data visualization that transforms the subjective experience of psychoactive substances into animated botanical forms. Each flower represents a drug’s full experience timeline — from onset through come-up, peak, offset, and after-effects — compressed into a real-time animation.

How It Works

Every visual property of a flower maps to a pharmacological characteristic:

• Petals encode cognitive complexity — more petals mean a richer, more layered headspace with distinct thought patterns and altered perceptions
• Shape represents drug class — rounded for depressants/entactogens, pointed for stimulants, wavy for psychedelics, wispy for dissociatives, trumpet for deliriants, serrated leaf for cannabinoids
• Color follows drug class — warm reds/yellows for stimulants, cool blues for depressants, purples/greens for psychedelics, grays for dissociatives
• Size reflects intensity
• Sway indicates body load — heavier sway means more physical effects
• Center visualizes ego dissolution — during peak, the center expands outward and its boundaries dissolve into soft rings as the sense of self dissolves
• Stem represents total duration
• Glow marks the peak phase
• Background shows hallucination intensity with class-specific visual effects

Features

• Solo view: Click any flower to watch its full timeline with phase indicators, hallucination backgrounds, and generative audio
• Compare mode: Place two flowers side-by-side to see how their timelines and effects differ, with documented pharmacological interaction data and a hybrid flower showing the predicted combined experience
• Dose scaling: Adjust dose from low to high and watch the flower respond in real-time
• Generative audio: Each drug class has unique timbres — resonant harmonics for psychedelics, hollow metallic for dissociatives, percussive for stimulants, warm bass for depressants
• 100+ substances sourced from PsychonautWiki’s evidence-based data

A garden of drug experience flowers — each one unique to its substance

Try it: artificialnouveau.github.io/flowers

Data sourced from PsychonautWiki. This project is for educational and harm reduction purposes only.