Methodology

This platform combines two different kinds of information that must never be confused: what people report experiencing, and what scientific research has found.

The four content layers

Layer	Label	What it contains
1. Personal Experience	PERSONAL EXPERIENCE	De-identified, structured reports from community members
2. Community Pattern	COMMUNITY PATTERN	Observations that recur across many independent experiences
3. Scientific Evidence	RESEARCH EVIDENCE	Peer-reviewed research, systematic reviews, clinical guidelines
4. Clinical / Professional Info	CLINICAL INFORMATION	Information from professional and clinical sources
Uncertain	UNCERTAIN	Topics where evidence is missing, mixed, or debated

Where community experiences come from

Experiences are extracted from publicly accessible community discussions (for example, Chinese-language recovery communities such as Jiese Ba). Extraction follows strict rules:

De-identification — no usernames, IDs, avatars, contact info, or locations
Redaction — sexual details are reduced to what is necessary to understand the experience
Rewrite — long posts are condensed into structured records, never copied verbatim
Labeling — every record is labeled as community-reported personal experience

Evidence standards

Scientific content is sourced independently from community experience, using authoritative tiers: WHO / ICD-11, systematic reviews and meta-analyses, peer-reviewed journals, and professional organizations. Community material is never used as scientific evidence. When evidence is missing or mixed, the site says so.

Data interpretation framework

All statistics and pattern analyses built on this platform's experience dataset are interpreted under explicit constraints:

Sample size and source population. Statistics report the number of processed records; counts are stated plainly (for example, "62 of 124 records").
Selection bias. People post when they relapse or reach milestones; the dataset is self-selected and cannot represent any general population.
Reporting bias. Posts reflect what people choose to share, not a complete account of their experience.
Survivorship bias. Success stories are more visible than quiet non-posters; absence from the dataset is not evidence of absence.
Coding methodology. Records are manually structured from source posts with de-identification; counts reflect records mentioning each item, not prevalence in any population.
What frequency means. A frequency count means "this was mentioned often," nothing more.
What frequency does NOT mean. It does not mean the item is common, effective, causal, or important.

In short: community dataset ≠ general population, and community experience ≠ clinical evidence. Analysis pieces repeat these constraints and label opinions as opinions.

Research process

The evidence layer is built by locating published studies through academic databases, recording source identifiers (DOI/PMID where verified), and summarizing them with explicit evidence-strength ratings. Where a source identifier cannot be verified, it is left unstated rather than guessed. Summaries are paraphrases, not reproductions of publisher text. See the evidence standards.

What this platform is not

This is not a medical site, not a diagnosis tool, and not a treatment program. Content does not establish that any specific strategy "works" — it reports what people tried and what evidence exists.