The Most Popular Drugs At Music Festivals Are...

Festival season is approaching, and you know what that means — a newsfeed full of blurry concert photos and thinly-veiled references to drugs. It's not exactly a secret that music festivals are full of illicit activities, but the most popular drugs at music festivals may surprise you anyway. Apparently, MDMA is much less popular than Instagram makes it seem, and I had no idea that people even did DMT anymore. Who knew?The list was compiled by drug addiction treatment website DrugAbuse.com, the Independent reports. The website looked at more than 3.5 million Instagram posts from a variety of music festivals, analyzing the social media for any mention of substance use during the event. The website freely admits that it's not the most rigorously scientific method, but the researchers wrote that the information provides a "glimpse into which substances and festivals were most popular."Unsurprisingly, festivals like Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC) and Ultra led the pack in terms of both Instagram posts and substance use. As DrugAbuse.com points out, EDM festivals tend to attract a younger crowd, so attendees are more likely to use social media during the concerts. In contrast, festivals like Burning Man take place in the middle of nowhere, and it's hard to post that super cute glowstick selfie when everyone is fighting for signal.

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In terms of percentages, however, EDC was ousted by Marley Fest. Although it had one of the fewest posts about substances overall, almost 12 percent of the posts about Marley Fest mentioned drugs, followed by Chili Cook-Off (six percent) and Summerfest (3.6 percent).

Alcohol was the most popular substance by far with almost 32,000 mentions, but MDMA came close with more than 25,000 posts. In terms of percentage, however, the story changes once again. MDMA is popular numbers-wise, but it was only widely-used at festivals like Ultra or EDC. Marley Fest, as you can imagine, was dominated by marijuana use, and the attendees of Chili Cook-Off outdrank pretty much everyone. Surprisingly, Burning Man showed a variety of drugs despite its reputation for psychedelics.

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In fact, mushrooms and DMT, aka the "spirit molecule," appear to be more popular at Burning Man than LSD in this next graphic. The researchers ranked the top music festivals per substance, and according to the results, people get up to all kinds of stuff at Bonnaroo, which ranked in the top three for marijuana, mushrooms, and crack, of all things. Also noteworthy is the fact that more than 90 percent of posts about Chili Cook-Off mention alcohol. If you're planning on attending, you may want to start preparing your liver now.

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Images: DrugAbuse.com (3)