Burning Man: A New Religion, with Drug and Alcohol Risk
Burning Man started in 1986 as a group of friends meeting on a beach to burn an eight foot wooden structure, as a kind of New Year’s resolution ritual, but on Labor Day. It has evolved into an art festival without parallel, bringing together thousands of people from all over the United States and other countries. Participants begin planning in the spring, saving for tickets, identifying rides to the week-long festival in the Nevada desert, and connecting with groups to camp or cook with during the week. Once at the festival, after getting in with a ticket, no money transactions are allowed. No “buying” or “selling” of any kind occur. Yet giving gifts is a central tenet of the festival culture, and sharing is a way of survival for the whole week, allowing free giving and receiving of art, food, drinks, and drugs.
For many people, Burning Man is an amazing counterculture experience. A group of tens of thousands of people (thirty to forty thousand are expected in 2009) set up a tent city that is clean, organized, and functional, in a matter of days. People bring amazing art installations, vehicles that are themselves mobile art, and colorful costumes. Then, after the festival, a dedicated volunteer crew cleans up, and leaves the area “without a trace”. Not surprisingly, FEMA has sent representatives to learn from their organizational expertise.
Art, fantastical, extreme, participatory, and extraordinary, takes place as vehicle decoration, mobile sculptures, body art, parades, costumes, and more, beginning with entry into the festival. A kind of artists’ paradise combined with Mardi Gras follows, with events both planned and spontaneous. Many people go just for the art, the music, the shared cultural experience, and the chance to make new friends and networks. But a core group of regulars go each year for a quasi-religious experience based on the original philosophy of the creator of Burning Man. They go to purge themselves of the past year, of experiences both bad and good, so that they can purify their lives and move on to a new year of fresh possibilities. “Burning the Man” late in the week is both vivid and symbolic – a religious ritual that allows participants to feel cleansed, and reborn for the next year, in a way that is strikingly parallel to religious confession and communion.
Unfortunately for many people, the association of this purging and purifying with excessive use of drugs and alcohol is not uncommon. Drugs ranging from marijuana to LSD to MDMA or ecstasy are available, and some people use large amounts in cathartic events. A number of mistaken assumptions circulating among the drug and alcohol users fuel dangerously high levels of consumption for some people. These are just a few of the assumptions:
• “It’s okay to use drugs like LSD, MDMA, or mushrooms because I only do it once a year at Burning Man. It won’t affect me the rest of the year.” Unfortunately, this is far from true. Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder (HPPD) can occur months after even a single use of any of these. HPPD can cause anxiety and depression, an inability to control moods, and frightening flashbacks, even when the original “trip” was pleasurable.
• “The setting is really protective and safe – I’m around good friends who won’t let anything bad happen to me and we all trust each other, so the effects of the drugs will just be positive.” In fact, the “safe” setting lures some users into taking higher and/or more frequent doses than they otherwise might take, putting them at even greater risk for schizophrenia, depression, and other mental health disorders later on, as well as the higher risk of HPPD. And just because they trust others does not mean that everyone is trustworthy. A number of sexual encounters with new partners take place at Burning Man, and not all of it is “safe sex” or protected by any means.
• “ I have to settle down and work hard the rest of the year, so this is my one chance to have fun and party with friends – it won’t affect the more serious part of my life.” Actually, many new networks of friends are formed at Burning Man, some healthy, some not. Young adults in particular may be vulnerable to new friendships with people who are regular drug users or who are heavy drinkers the rest of the year as well, and who model and encourage these inappropriate behaviors. Some adults, young and older, discover that the urge to party hard does not just go away, and longer term addictions form. Others may successfully avoid regular use of drugs and alcohol, but find themselves drawn into other large festival settings, such as Mardi Gras celebrations, where drugs and alcohol are freely available and the social constraints temporarily removed.
While large art festivals and art installations, concerts, partying, and bingeing on substances from food to drugs to alcohol, have been a part of the human experience for thousands of years (think: Stonehenge), there is an unfettered limitlessness to the experiences that many are having at Burning Man that mimics moments in history when extreme excess was a part of the demise of a civilization. The festival has extraordinary and positive aspects — its support for art, culture independent of corporate spending, and positive social networking bring hope for the future to many creative and thoughtful individuals. Yet if it cannot rein in the excesses of risk taking and health-threatening behavior, the dark side of Burning Man may overwhelm both individuals and the positive spiritual event and alternative culture it seeks to create.
Author Catherine Knott, Ph.D., teaches Anthropology and Sociology for the University of Alaska on the Kenai Peninsula. She has a Ph.D. in Anthropology, Natural Resources, and Education from Cornell University and a B.A. from Yale University.
