Berlin’s party scene is internationally renowned for its non-stop hedonism and permissive attitude towards substance abuse, but this shimmering, Techno-thundering nocturnal playland has a real dark side.
Drugs are everywhere in Berlin nightlife and while they seem magical, it’s the kind of fun that comes with a great risk and price to one’s mental and physical health, even in the short term.
On more occasions than I can count, I have seen people totally collapse on the dance floor from drugs.
From partying to medical emergency
I’ve witnessed a man having a psychotic break, screaming at an invisible person and flailing his hands in the air. I’ve seen a woman lifelessly carried to the bar where her partner slapped her and threw glasses of water in her face. I’ve seen clubbers being carried out to an ambulance. And I’ve seen so many people vomiting.
These are the people I don’t know. Several of my friends and colleagues in this scene have had what are often referred to as “medical emergencies,” aka overdoses. There’s my pal who, after partying for two days straight, had taken so much Mephedrone that his right arm went numb (major heart attack symptom). He collapsed, entering into a hallucinatory realm he described as a near death experience, where he met his deceased father who told him “it wasn’t his time” before he came to under the supervision of watchful club staff. There’s my friend who took too much ketamine at a club and woke up in the emergency room, not remembering how she got there.
While some formal info exists on fatalities from drug use in Berlin, near-deaths and overdoses are extremely underreported if reported at all. ODs often happen quietly and can be totally contained within the confines of the clubs themselves. And Berlin’s ERs aren’t keeping a tally of how many people are admitted due to club drugs, unlike in clubber destination Ibiza, where recent reporting from The Guardian states that currently one third of all ambulance calls are from clubs.
Ignorance kills
The majority of people I have met in this scene either know little to nothing about what they are actually ingesting, or are willfully ignorant. Tourists to Berlin clubs are especially clueless.
Below is a shortlist of the top three drugs that you are likely to find on the Berlin club scene. TL;DR: Don’t do them, it’s not worth it.
While I am in no place to judge anyone on their recreational substance use, this stuff is dangerous and straight up bad for you.
Known also as “Mephe,” short for “Mephedrone,” and part of a group of substances known as synthetic cathinones (derived from the khat plant) 3MMC is ubiquitous in Berlin clubs and the drug of choice for many. Its effects are sort of like a combination of MDMA, or E, and coke: increased alertness, empathy and euphoria but without the full on knockout punch of E.
3MMC is an absolutely terrible drug for your heart, not to mention very neurotoxic. A friend of mine who is an ER doctor reports she has regularly treated very young people (on one occasion as young as 20) for heart attack symptoms who came in after a night of clubbing and doing too much mephedrone. Due to the relatively short duration of the high (average 45 minutes) re-dosing is frequent, compounding the dangers to the heart.
Ketamine
Hugely popular, addictive and underestimated in its health risks, Keta is a go-to for many Berliner clubbers. A powerful dissociative anesthetic, the high lasts 30 to 45 minutes and is extremely toxic (even fatal) when combined with alcohol. Chronic users can expect severe kidney and bladder damage.
When I was raving in the late 1990s in Los Angeles, the main risk from Ecstasy was dehydration from dancing and come-down depression. Today’s pills (or crystals) are sometimes not your Grandma’s Es, with concentrations of MDMA higher than ever (in some cases more than double what is considered a normal dose) resulting in fatal overdose stories like the tragic death of two German teenagers in 2023.
Whereas in the past taking more than one pill was not unusual, drug harm reduction groups advise users to start with a half, or even a quarter of a pill, and wait 90 minutes. Without official testing of substances to be consumed beforehand, which is nowhere near as accessible as to even approach being practical for your average clubber, there is no way to know how strong a dose could be.
Pushing the limits from weekend to weekend
Berlin after dark is a wild and fun place with the very real potential for serious danger. For many, navigating Berlin’s party scene is like dancing on a razor blade’s edge over an abyss, pushing the limit ever farther from weekend to weekend, catching thrills from the substances but also from the risk itself.
I am reminded of the epilogue of Philip K Dick’s mind-altering detective story-slash-drug memoir “A Scanner Darkly”:
They wanted to have a good time, but they were like children playing in the street; they could see one car coming, and they knew they might get run over, but they thought that maybe they wouldn’t. And the car came. And they got run over. Some of them died. Some of them went insane. Some of them are now in institutions. And some of them will stay there forever.
A bartender colleague of mine and 16 year denizen of the Berlin club drug scene with a Ketamine habit so bad it led him to steal from his co-workers told me once: “So many of my friends died. Or lost their minds.” What starts as a fun weekend out can turn into too many fun weekends out which can often lead to straight up addiction, which isn’t a great party vibe. This is not to say that one can’t enjoy Berlin’s clubs safely: On the contrary there are many that abstain from substances entirely.
Of all the drugs out there, there’s always one that is totally non-toxic and risk free (as long you wear ear plugs): Music.
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