Party Vibe

TBH all this means is pills are equally strong as they were in early 1990s (so we just need to reiterate the harm reduction already available then) and MDMA culture never really went away in the first place.

The MDMA culture in mainland Europe (outside the UK) is really not unlike the Schlager music scene (and there are clearly a few crossovers; all the young performers on Musikantenstadl during the early 90s all look especially happy :laugh_at: and I’ve seen clearly pilled up folk on youtube dancing to Hoch Tirol and other similar groups).

Schlager music was once an underground scene in itself as 1960s/70s/80s Europe was still dominated by socially conservative Christians (both Lutherans and Traditional Catholics) – although its lyrics are rarely sexually explicit and often have religious themes (similar to early 1980s house).

For example Drafi Deutscher composed a love song “Marmor, Stein und Eisen bricht” which was about getting and staying married and yet get it banned from German radio because there was an error of grammar in the title (a singular version of was used for plural nouns) so it became (and still is) a pirate radio anthem.

bear in mind even in the 90s and today folk in rural areas of many mainland European countries still live with or very nearby to their parents and other relatives well into their 40s and beyond; often work for local businesses or on the farms, and still go to church on Sundays. they are also less dependent on motor cars then in Britain. Holding unlicensed techno raves in your own village invites a great deal of shame and Angst (particularly if it is noted that the younger folk are absent from Mass (Lutherans also have this it is often an hour earlier on Sunday) and folk who do so can also get various fines for environment contamination, traffic violations, misuse of land, unpaid licensing fees which can amount to many thousands of Euros (that get automatically deducted from wages or benefits until paid). They are also more likely to get investigated for dealing. European law is not a free for all but “firm and fair” – if you are making money from dealing it gets all taken off you in fines and used to fund the harm reduction.

Whereas taking the xtc-pillen discreetly and moderately whilst playing the kind of stuff commonly heard on Musikantenlstadl is likely to go completely unnoticed even if those doing so are on a bit more than just beer and sausages. The European attitude seems to be “if you are going to make a din across the whole village then play music all the generations *enjoy” and Schlager also reminds older generations of their own youth…

I was at University in the same area then and discovered Es around the same time; although the high price per tablet discouraged excessive use.

Even so I got expelled in 1992 and very nearly arrested – not even for drug use itself but merely for downloading and distributing harm reduction info via the Internet as I bypassed the local firewalls to access a web server (the only one then in operation!) by manually routing to DE and CH – (thankfully German DBP-Telekom told the profs at my University that I had not committed any crime by accessing networks they supplied at low cost to their Universities and had deliberately left open, so if the UK profs had pressed charges it would have exposed how backward the UK was compared to mainland Europe even then).

Other students who did get into dealing were not so lucky and many got 2,5 years prison sentences even if they completed their degrees whilst inside (which is possible) they were blacklisted from employment. That fucked up far more intelligent people in the UK than drugs ever did and though the 90s fuelled harder drugs use as well as organised crime and even political extremism, also led to the issues with less safe substitutes and is completely pointless as even for moderate users the fun bits of MDMA use decrease as they get older anyway.

@tryptameanie 984386 wrote:

I planned on putting this in the original post but much of that article sounded like hysterical bullshit to me.

it is a combination of the Grauniad and De Volkskrant completely dumbing down an 84 page EU document (which is itself detailed, accurate and worthwhile, and is even available in if not all 28 EU languages and also credits sites like this for sharing harm reduction info) alongside some press releases from the NL Politie to fit into an “advertiser friendly” format without “too much bad news” in a way that ultimately benefits nobody anywhere in Europe.

This article is badly written, creates yet another false impression of the Netherlands and ends up equally bad as the bullshit the right wing newspapers might occasionally publish (ironically they tend to often just ignore reports like this). To interpret such a report correctly requires fairly in depth knowledge of Europe as a whole including where countries actually are, their neighbours and the individual cultures of nations and regions.

Across EU there is now a slightly increased risk of gross and potentially fatal overdoses from MDMA but the biggest reason IMO young people do not now take MDMA at EDM events in Europe is only because in many countries (even NL) they are less common and increasingly restricted to deprived coastal areas that have long standing hard drugs problems anyway.

Outside of the UK traffic laws are more strictly enforced as are laws against anti social behaviour in public places or overt drug use on public transport, so travelling 200km to an event isn’t always feasible and here in Britain it is increasingly the lower socio-economic groups and a limited age group who take part in EDM events especially the unlicensed ones causing a vicious circle of further restrictions (that is affecting the wider music industry).

The trend towards large multi day events in remote areas in countries like UK, DE etc is as much driven by prejudice against noise and a flawed strategy to try and limit demand for drugs but causes its own problems – FOMO (fear of missing out) and high ticket prices can cause people to use excessive amounts of stims to stay up for 3 days when previously they would have just gone to an event in their own area from late Saturday to early Sunday morning.

Compared to today young people are well educated and well behaved so don’t want to shame their families or get in trouble (parents are often my age group and more understanding); in Northern Europe a group of friends having access to a large room in a shared house or even a family home (with sufficient privacy / distance from parents) which contains good quality loudspeakers, DJ equipment, computers and other gadgets is relatively common – they can often have a “mini rave” in there with much less bother.

The rest of the report does flag up interesting and potentially worrying issues in various parts of EU but its no coincidence that in countries like DE and SE with harsher laws and drugs control than UK or NL they end up with a stubborn core of ageing hard drugs addicts and riskier behaviour such as injecting (to get the most of limited and expensive supplies).

As for harm reduction info it is all still there same as in the 1990s; the worst part of todays society is its buried by distractions such as online adverts and the culture of using small portable devices instead of full size computers which discourage people from reading longer articles.

@BaldEagle 984410 wrote:

G.L once again I am in awe of your understanding of almost any subject and the only other person who constantly makes me feel that way is His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama (not Buddhist just like what and how he says)

I cannot understand Chinese or Tibetan though (the Dalai Lama can, and even the dude running the goose paradise in the Netherlands speaks Dutch, German, English and Tibetan as he went there to be ordained as a monk).

Incidentally although I am of Asian ancestry all the Buddhists I know of are White European and there are a fair few in Ipswich and Suffolk