Different Festivals Call For Different Drugs, Survey Finds

BEVERLY HILLS, CA – Music festivals are magical environments where people can let go of their inhibitions, experience child-like wonder among larger-than-life art installations, have fun, and dance to the music of some of the world's biggest, funkiest stars. Although a majority of festivals preach safety and moderation to festivalgoers, these huge parties can also be grounds for some drug use.

In a survey of 1,000 attendees of well-known music festivals nationwide, TickPick found out about festivalgoers' substance habits. When broken down by festival, TickPick found alcohol and marijuana were the two most popular choices at all major festivals. However, the third most popular drugs are where it starts to get interesting. At Bonnaroo, Coachella, Electric Daisy Carnival, Hangout, and Lollapalooza, MDMA is the top pick aside from alcohol and marijuana. At Austin City Limits and Burning Man, it's mushrooms; and at Governors Ball, cocaine was the preference after booze and weed.

Burning Man had some of the highest rates of drug use – perhaps due to the festival's "gift economy," where food, supplies, and even drugs are shared openly and without cost.

Overall, the timeless approach of drinking alcohol while grooving to the music was the most popular. Three out of four people said they've had alcohol at a festival, and 38.8 percent said they've smoked marijuana. MDMA, also known as "Molly" or Ecstasy, was used by 13 percent of festivalgoers. The less popular substances included mushrooms (8.5 percent), LSD (8 percent), cocaine (7.3 percent), opioids (3.8 percent), "other" (2.7 percent), and lastly, DMT (1.3 percent).

To read more about the study and to see results of specific festivals, visit TickPick.

TickPick's Methodology

TickPick 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. Tick Pick excluded any respondent that had not attended at least one of the music festivals the website asked about.

The data TickPick is 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.

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