According to Billboard, DrugAbuse.com did a study about drug use in music festivals, based on Instagram posts. I haven’t found the original study, so I don’t know if they are making this up or not, but Instagram posts,… really? Can they be trusted? Are you going to post hard drugs on Instagram, at the risk to be caught?
DrugAbuse, a website dedicated to addiction and drug treatment, collected an enormous amount of data, as they analyzed 3,622,365 Instagram posts to determine which drug(s) were used the most in 15 different music festivals, from Coachella, to Bonnaroo, Burning Man, Glastonbury, Lollapalooza, Marley Fest, Summerfest, Chili Cook-Off and a bunch of dance-oriented or purely EDM events like Life in Color, Mad Decent Block Party, Camp Bisco, Electric Daisy Carnival, Tomorrowland, Ultra Music Festival and Holy Ship!
And the results are in, summed up in the picture above, but I really wonder if looking through these 3 millions of Instagrams was worth it. Some of these results are so obvious that I could have made them up during sleep. 82% of the Marley Fest posts mention Marijuana? What a surprise! Alcohol is mentioned in 90% and 87% of the posts of Chili Cook-Off (Brad Paisley is headlining this year) or Summerfest (the Rolling Stones are headlining). Again not really surprising since the population must be much older and getting drunk or applying for AA. The larger mention of MDMA applies to Electric Daisy Carnival or Ultra Music Festival, and it was again very expected, whereas Burning Man is more into psychedelic drugs, like mushrooms, DMT and LSD, because they need all their creative potential. Otherwise Coachella go-ers are not that stoned after all, but they are the first cocaine users, just followed by Mad Decent Block Party attendees. Other hard drugs like opioids and crack cocaine are not prominent although Diplo’s party and Bonnaroo are starting a trend.
But what about people who want to impress their followers and are faking it? Plus drug dealers are not going to post their deals on Instagram, and it’s obvious that alcohol and marijuana are much more represented because they are much more socially acceptable that the rest. So I am not sure we can really conclude anything from this Instagram ‘study’.