'Ketamine kills dancefloors, pills raise them'.
Photos taken by Kirsten at different rave events.
Experiencing a rave for the first time was like experiencing a new culture. The music itself had everyone magnetized to the dancefloor, waiting for that drop. So much love and admiration for the people behind the decks who had the whole audience in their focus. You have the beat pulsing through your body, lights beaming from every corner, and the pure serenity of DJs and their crowd when the perfect blend is put together - and then there’s the drugs.
Let’s start with Ketamine. The so-called ‘horse tranquiliser’ has become one of the most abused drugs in the UK. I’ve seen people on certain drugs, and I can usually identify the drug they’re on by their behaviour, and I’ve seen a lot of ketamine at raves. Especially at jump-up drum and bass events because that’s where people let themselves go and potentially give the rave industry a bad name. That’s where my curiosity began for why ketamine is such a popular drug to take at raves and how it affects the dancefloor.
Ketamine is one of those drugs that can completely change the vibe of a rave and create an erratic environment. It’s a dissociative anaesthetic which can alter perceptions of sight and sound while detaching people from their current environment. A few DJs I’ve spoken to are complaining about it being the prominent drug in raves because the audience is less in tune with the music and more dissociated.
I spoke to my friend Archie who’s also an upcoming DJ and has been raving for about 6 years and has never touched a drug in his life. He told me, ‘I don’t do drugs and I’ve never tried them but a lot of people around me do them. I personally think there are better alternatives, like alcohol.’ His whole friend group use drugs recreationally, but he never wanted to get involved because he’s seen how it changes people. ‘I’ve had a friend who went through a stage in his life where he was low and did Ketamine a bit too much. We were friends for years and basically went off the walls, and we got into a huge argument which had never happened before, and he’s never been the same since.’
In his point of view as a DJ, he said ‘We’re doing a job which is to make sure people are enjoying the music, but I guess there is the whole perception of raves where drugs are a massive part of it. I feel like they always have been. There’s been a whole stigma around raves and drugs, and it’s always been connected. It doesn’t affect me because if that’s what makes people go to raves then it is what it is’.
Then you have MDMA/ecstasy. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the effects of it include an enhanced sense of well-being, increased extroversion and an enhanced sensory perception’. These characteristics converge to form more of an ideal atmosphere for a rave, with an audience brimming with chemistry and love. It’s nicknamed ‘The love drug’ and stems from how people act when they’re on it.
‘The two came together like a match made in heaven’.
Photo of Kirk Field and his book - provided by him.
To understand the context of rave culture and the association with drugs, I went right back to the beginning of raves in the late 80s by talking to Kirk Field, rave reporter and Author of ‘Rave New World’. He witnessed the earliest accounts of raving and saw that ecstasy was a big part of the recognition of dance music. In his words, ‘Ecstasy was key to that explosion of house music and house music is like the Earth’s heartbeat. You can take house music which is soothing and rolling endless heartbeats, and ecstasy which promotes unity and empathy and the two came together like a match made in heaven’. The 1980s was referred to as the ‘Second Summer of Love’, named after the 60’s, due to its association with ecstasy. However, when talking to Kirk, he expressed it would have been more fitting to call it the ‘Summer of hugs’.
When comparing both the class A drugs, Kirk described ecstasy to be about ‘unity and euphoria’, whereas ketamine was something that takes you inside yourself and puts a barrier between you and everyone else.
Without the combination of drugs and dance music, I wondered whether drum and bass, house, garage etc would have as much of a place in the music industry as it does today. Ibiza is known for being the number 1 party place to go to in the Summer. It’s the home to house music and the ultimate hub of nightlife. When I looked into the drug intake in Ibiza, no shocker here – a significant 85.7% of British tourists use drugs during their stay. The number 1 drug in Ibiza is MDMA which blends well with the popularity of House music, but what would happen if you take drugs out of that scenario?
Photo's taken by Kirsten of Ibiza raves.
‘We can’t keep drugs out of prison so what makes you think we can keep it out of festivals’.
As someone who has a huge platform in the rave industry, Kirk uses it to fight for the license of drug testing at festivals for the charity ‘We Are the Loop’. He argues that as much as criminalising drugs may prevent people from dealing them, he said ‘Waging war on drugs is like waging war on the sea, the tide is always going to come in’.
‘Young people grow up and the advertisements and marketing are telling them to experience life to the full. Live the dream, taste the rainbow, just do it. It’s all these positive affirmations of exploring and living your best life but you can’t sell that ethos to people but ring-fence drugs. Because they’re all part of exploration and experimentation. They’re all part of growing up and being a human. People have always done it and people always will. This is why I’m subscribed to the view that we should be supporting testing.’
With festivals like Boomtown being all about dance music, there are more health and safety risks concerned which is why Kirk is pushing for the license.
Psycare UK is a charity that helps people who have had a bad trip or experience with drugs they’ve taken at a festival or dance music event. It was registered as an official charity in 2016 but with the expectations that these events had a 0 tolerance for drugs, it was a ‘major battle’ for them to be able to get an official license.
Amanda Guzinska is the senior manager of the charity and we spoke about the progression and increased acceptance of her charity over time.
‘Prior to us becoming an official charity we often had to really undercharge for our services and be there as an additional complimentary service to the official organisations that needed to be there like the medic tent or official welfare at the time’.
‘Festivals are becoming more and more aware of the negative fallout of not having support for these things because as much as you can be 0 tolerance, we can’t keep drugs out of prison so what makes you think we can keep it out of festivals when security isn’t even close to as high as it is in prison. I think festivals are becoming more aware of trying to protect people and create a safer environment for them to be in whatever their choices are’.
When I asked her about what drug she typically sees more of, she told me, ‘Ketamine is a bit of a pandemic at the moment’. She is also concerned about the physical damage that she’s been seeing a lot, such as ‘Bristol bladder’, which according to her is urinary cramps caused by the abuse of ketamine.
I asked her about the major effects of Ketamine that stood out to her, and she told me about a 19-year-old boy whom she’d met a few years prior to this specific festival she was working at, and when she met him again, she described him as a ‘different person’. Someone who was a ‘bright, chatty, lively character’ was now ‘completely drawn, very introverted’ and she could see the effect ketamine had had on his character, and not just his bodily functions.
Now that music events are becoming more aware of the drug culture associated with dance music, more people are recognising the benefits of promoting safer usage and harm reduction techniques to help people use drugs more carefully or find other ways to have fun. In this audio clip, I spoke to Amanda, Kirk and Peter McKiernan, a psychiatrist for child and adolescent mental health, about what legislation they want to see in the future and whether de-criminalising drugs is more beneficial to society.
'There's more control with MDMA'.
I conducted a survey on social media about what drugs people prefer to take at raves out of Ketamine and MDMA, and why. The majority, consisting of 58%, voted for Ketamine and the reasoning was because ‘It’s cheaper, there’s less of a comedown and not as many side effects as MDMA’. The feedback for taking MDMA was that ‘You have more control of what you’re doing, you’re more alert and it’s a better vibe for a rave’.
From my research it seemed like people were choosing Ketamine because it’s an easy way to get intoxicated without the side effects that come with MDMA like lack of sleep, bad comedowns and affected vision. There was nothing to suggest that people chose ketamine because it created a fun vibe at raves or made them enjoy the music more.
I delved deeper into more statistics online to find out the change of consumption patterns over the years. Usage of ecstasy reached 72% lower in people aged 16-24 compared to 2020 and was at its lowest level since 1995. On the flip side, data released by GOV.UK revealed that the ‘Police seized the largest quantity of cocaine and ketamine since records began’.
'I would've loved to have DJ'd in the 90's'.
Given that much of the audience in a rave is engaged in substance use at raves, with fewer DJs taking part in it, I wanted to speak to a DJ to hear their thoughts on the specific emergence of Ketamine and gain their perspective on how the audience behaves.
Alfie Scotting, also known as ‘Still Def’, is a DJ and resident of the DYNMCS drum and bass label. He mixes all genres of dance music such as house, garage and drum and bass and is aware of the drug culture within the industry.
‘Everyone gets it, that whole love for the beat and the sound and the gut feeling of it all – the fact that it reverberates through you being so close to the speaker. All that stuff you necessarily wouldn’t have without the drugs. But then it means that people are dissociated, and I think Ketamine is a big one’.
In his opinion, the mood of the dance floor feels ‘less magical’ than it would with an audience all on MDMA, and states ‘I would’ve loved to have DJ’d in the 90’s when ecstasy was the prominent drug, and everyone was happy and full of love’. When speaking to him about the increase in ketamine abuse, he noticed people in the audience who ‘bounce around’ and keep to themselves a bit more, but when I asked if it annoyed him he said that people are still having fun regardless of what they are or aren’t taking, and his fulfilment comes from being able to create an atmosphere where everyone can enjoy his music and fill the room with good energy.
‘I had a glimpse of Eutopia’.
Linking back to the 1980’s, Kirk Field wrote his book to bring rave culture to justice and correct the ‘inaccurate’ articles that he read, which he felt were not a true account of the events he witnessed. He said, ‘I don’t like when things are misrepresented that we’ve witnessed’.
‘I saw black people, gay people, Asian people and lesbian couples dancing together in one space for the first time, with no one misjudging anyone and everybody was just getting on and the security was on the perimeter keeping the police out, not in the actual crowd because we didn’t need any. We were all looking after each other and there were no gangs, no weapons or anything like that so I just saw this huge swell of positivity and I had a glimpse of Eutopia. And then when I read about this vision of hell on the Monday morning that they were propagating, I knew it was wrong.
When I spoke to another 'Gen Z' raver, Jack Delahunty, he told me ‘It was such a tense atmosphere, people were out of control, and I didn’t feel safe’.
With this, I fear that raving is becoming what Kirk Field was fighting so hard to prevent the papers from publishing.
I was told to be cautious when going to my first rave, because it isn’t like going to a club. There are more drugs involved. This seems to be more of a problem now, than it was when raving exploded in 1980’s, where the unity of drugs and raves were the perfect combination. With the prevelance of Ketamine now, I wondered what the future of raves would be, and whether the drug intake will change again.
As there are many risk factors involved with taking drugs, I spoke to Peter about his services when helping his clients who struggle with drug abuse.
‘We need to work on specific goals and realistic steps. It’s not realistic for someone to completely stop, some people can but many cant. It’s more harm reduction rather than complete abstinence. It’s about helping them workout themselves what the benefit is, what the harm is and help them identify reasonable methods’.
While the drug culture persists with its ongoing issue of substance abuse, the intake from MDMA to Ketamine has changed the mood of the dancefloor a substantial amount. That’s not to say people aren’t taking MDMA, as it is very much still relevant. However, it is apparent that Ketamine has gained prominence which has created some unease within people who either attend the raves, or DJ to this new generation of drum and bass lovers.
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