As Dr. Banana ‘Still Flexin’ by Jamie Coins is running in his house mix, a blissful feeling seems to be taking a master of the ring, an ingenious and artistic stage on Horst Festival in the Flemish town of Vilvoorde. On a square with concrete blocks, between high walls full of graffiti, is a metal construction in the shape of a circle. The posts are bright yellow painted. Inside, in the radiant sun, hundreds of people are dancing. I am standing on an elevation with the sound man, and look out over a sea (half) bare bodies.
As Dr. Banana A remix of hip -hop classic ‘Put Your Handz Up’ from The Whooliganz is starting to steam it. This is the golden hour. The thick bass does not thunder, but does the audience softly, synchronously hosing. Yes, this is the true festival feeling. That feeling that you can go all the way in the now. Part of that festival feeling is also: eavesdropping out for a level higher, tastier, more intense. To that moment just after the golden hour, on which the plastic bags appear, the envelopes are folded open and the keys start to ring. The starting signal for a flaming night, given by a pill, a lick, a pinch.
Drugs belong to festivals like the night by the day. The attentive viewer sees the use of the chewing gum chewers, the ice cream slurers, the lip lickers, the sunglasses, the hands that are just a bit to grab on shoulders, the fried, restless fingers and the dancers. The ecstatic movements. The sweat, the tight jaws, the somewhat surprised glances. Today, just about everyone seems to surrender. But why do we love to use drugs at festivals? And what does it do with the festival experience?
Drug possession and use are prohibited in Belgium. In the Netherlands also officially, but a user quantity is tolerated. Yet in Belgium, about half of people who go out say they use illegal drugs. That percentage is a bit higher at dance festivals. In the Netherlands, almost three-quarters of all club and festival visitors (16-35 years) had used drugs in 2023, according to it Great entertainment research that the Trimbos Institute performs every four years (last in 2023). More than half of these outlets used Ecstasy and MDMA. Also very popular: cannabis, cocaine, ketamine and 3-mmc (a modern, so-called ‘designer drug’, which makes you euphoric and can continue for a long time).
There is a trend in the use of so -called stimulating agents – stuff that you are ‘on’. Most clear is that at 3MMC: in 2020 only 8.9% of the outlets 3-MMC used, in 2023 that was 33.7%. Outputors also use more cocaine than in 2022, while ketamine, which makes you get into a dreamy intoxication, stay at the same, relatively high level.
Drug users have behaved more reckless since the coronacrisis, according to prevention expert Martha de Jonge of the Trimbos: they use more drugs together, and also more in succession. According to De Jonge, they do this without being well aware of the operation and risks of the drugs themselves, or the effects of mixing. And so there are also more health incidents than a few years ago. Exiters themselves see many positive effects. According to the Trimbos, almost half of them use drugs at festivals and in night clubs to strengthen friendships and to reduce tensions from daily life. A great dealing with others is also a frequently mentioned reason for using drugs.
Sniffje Ketamine
J. (30), who does not want his name in the newspaper, not with his first name, takes a pinch of ketamine next to me. “I only stay 1 night, so don’t go crazy.” He has everything with him: half a gram of ketamine, half a gram of cocaine, half a gram of speed and half a gram of MDMA. “Whether I will use it all? No that is a lot. I just didn’t know what I felt like, so I took everything with me.”
In between the sweaty bodies, three girls stand around a tiny bag. One of them, with red hair, pushes her little finger in, the pink crystals stick to it. She puts her finger deep into her mouth and takes a large sip of beer right after it. Specialty beer. From a large, bulb glass. Duvel, we are in Belgium. Her friends do the same. Another one? No, I’m just as good now, I hear the redhead say. “Fancy a wine.” Alcohol is of course also a drug that is used by no less than 98.2% of the outlets.
A bit tucked away in a street with brick houses with studios and workshops on either side, on the edge of the site, is a stall, an ‘information stand’.
“Do you perhaps have such a card for me?” A sweaty boy in a white shirt asks the people of the stall. It is from non-profit organization Safe ‘n Sound, which, under the coordination of Flemish expertise center for alcohol and other drugs (VAD), provides information about drugs and focuses on limiting risks and damage to substance use. The organization also focuses on making broader welfare themes in the nightlife.
In between the sweaty bodies, three girls stand around a tiny bag. One of them, with red hair, pushes her little finger in, the pink crystals stick to it.
Tom Vandenhove, field worker at Safe ‘n Sound, says that, for example, cocaine users still sweep their lines together with their own bank card, and sniffing with a rolled up banknote. That is not very clean, and therefore, to limit the damage, Safe ‘n Sound offers a clean pass (a hood card), clean sniff tips and bottles of physiological water with which the nose can be flushed after sniffing. There are also a library of leaflets and flyers on the table with information about almost all drugs conceivable. There is also sunburn, condoms and earplugs, and there is an infographic on which the degree of danger of combining drugs is indicated in color code.
According to Vandenhove, the items are mainly intended as conversation starters. “We do not encourage drug use, on the contrary, we want to cultivate consciousness to prevent experimentation behavior. It is precisely to limit the damage. For many people, drugs simply belong to the nightlife, even though it is prohibited by law and it suffers to social indication. At a festival like Horst, many measures are already taken to use as little as possible.”
Dionysos
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche already saw the borders in 1872. In his book The birth of the tragedyhe states that there are two ways of consciousness: that of the God Apollo (of the sun and logic), and that of Dionysus (of the passion, the dance and wine). Apollinic consciousness stands for the use of reason, logical thinking and individuality. The Dionysic represents passion, ecstasy, chaos, the intoxication, and the merging of the individual in the collective.
Nietzsche saw music as the purest form of art. After all, music immediately speaks to the feeling, without the intervention of images or letters or symbolism. We are taken on music, her rhythm and cadence, her improvisation and structure, on her chaos and her order. If no other art form can make us temporarily escape from the tightly structured logic of Apollinic modern times, full of efficiency enforcement and performance pressure. Because of the music we may even be able to merge with the crowd, in the collective
At the Music Festival there is the chance of the merger of the Apollinian and the Dionysian great: the music is rhythmic and is collectively experienced, there is little ego, a lot of physicality, harmony, connection and intuition. Drugs help with that fusion, not as a goal in itself, but as a catalyst: because they stimulate feelings of shame, ego and individuality, and stimulate euphoria and empathy, drugs help break through the barrier between Apollo and Dionysus. Blowing off a weekend is not just something funny, but of essential (mental and social) importance.
Drugs help with that fusion, not as a goal in itself, but as a catalyst: because they stimulate feelings of shame, ego and individuality, and stimulating euphoria and empathy, drugs help break through the barrier between Apollo and Dionysus
Tom Vandenhove, who is also a prevention worker in addition to being a field worker at Safe ‘n Sound at the Center for Mental Health Care in Antwerp, sees a striking trend in that area: “People nowadays come to the festival for a total experience. The expectation that visitors have of a festival has changed enormously in recent years. People used to come to a Personal Dj’s Festival, now come for a Personal Food, the music, the music, the music, the music, the music, the music, the music, the music, the music, the music. Music, people want to catch up at a festival.
170 speakers
Since this year there has been a new internship on Horst, which looks at a large Mediterranean bus station: a walled square, with a roof on posts in the middle. That roof appears to be full with 170 speakers. “A roof of sound” and “the most democratic dance floor,” that’s what Mattias Dalens, organizer of Horst, calls it in an interview with the Flemish broadcaster VRT. “Everywhere you stand, the quality of the sound is the same.” Because that it is ultimately about that total experience, that is what Horst is aware of that festival with spaces for art, ‘hang outs’, performance art, theater, architectural internship designs and beautiful visuals projected on the large cooling towers on the edge of the site.
Unfortunately for the intoxication people there are also agents in Burger who are walking around on the site this weekend. Nietzsche would reject it, but the 55 agents, as it turns out, has been distributed to 123 festival -goers for more than 30,000 euros. Between 45 and 150 euros, which had to be tapped in one go without a settlement (without a criminal record). Well, 123 people at a festival where nearly 40,000 people come, is not so much, but still – you are shocked when you have just ended up in a intoxication, and suddenly a cop is in front of you. Anyway, balance, that’s what it’s all about, right?