New report outlines the most commonly used drugs at US music festivals
Pick your poison
The mutualism between music festivals and drugs is a glaring and semi-tolerated relationship that has existed for decades. Whether its smoking a blunt a Wu Tang Clan performance, popping a pinger at a Nina Kraviz showcase, eating a bag of shrooms for a Shpongle set or shotgunning a beer before The Chainsmokers take the stage, music festivals and mind-altering substances have become intrinsically linked.
The ticket selling platform TickPick commissioned a study to find out what substances were the most common amongst US festival-goers. Surveying 1,000 festival attendees, the site created graphics to outline the most common festival drugs, the difference of use between various ticket holders and which events are most closely associated with particular types of substances.
Check out the graphics below.
Mixmag asked the question "Do you need drugs to enjoy dance music?" Learn more here
Substance of Choice
General Admission vs. VIP
Substance popularity by Festival
Top festival for each substance
Methodology
We collected 1,015 responses from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. 52.2% of our participants were female and 47.8% were male. Participants ranged in age from 18 to 74 with a mean of 32.4. We excluded any respondent that had not attended at least one of the music festivals we asked about.
The data we are presenting rely on self-report. There are many issues with self-reported data. These issues include, but are not limited to: selective memory, telescoping, attribution, and exaggeration.
No statistical testing was performed, so the claims listed above are based on means alone. As such, this content is purely exploratory and future research should approach this topic in a more rigorous way.