A government survey of Berlin nightclubs and bars has found that half of partygoers take amphetamines and MDMA fairly regularly. It was the first comprehensive study of the use of club drugs in the German capital.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/J. Eisele
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Berlin's reputation as a party hub is long-established, but for the first time on Wednesday the city's government released a study on the consumption of party drugs throughout the city. The report from the city's public health office and Berlin's prestigious Charite Hospital shone a light on just how much heavy drug use permeates the city's club scene.
Of Berlin's partygoers, more than half (50.3 percent) admitted to using amphetamines and almost half ecstasy/MDMA (49.1 percent) within the last 30 days. The next most popular party drugs were cocaine (36 percent) and ketamine (32.3 percent).
About 12 percent of clubbers said they used the hallucinogen LSD, while 9.4 percent reported using GHB, which is meant for use in treating narcolepsy.
The study found that other substances are also consumed in abundance. It found 87.7 percent of respondents said they had imbibed alcohol in the past month, 72.3 percent had smoked cigarettes and 62.3 percent had ingested some form of cannabis.
One of the more surprising revelations in the study was that the drug abuse was not carried out by pleasure-seekers coming to the German capital for a weekend of fun. Some 85 percent of those surveyed lived in Berlin, and nearly 40 percent had a university degree. There was a relatively even split along gender lines – 55.3 percent male and 42.8 percent female.
Despite the high levels of drug use, almost no one in the survey identified as an addict. Instead, they said, they took drugs to influence their mood, stimulate their physicality or stay awake throughout the night.
Berlin's partygoers stayed away from the hardest drugs available; almost no one admitted to using heroin or crystal meth.
"I do not want to demonize clubs and club visitors. But we should not blind ourselves to the high consumption of risky drugs in the party scene," Berlin's chief health official Dilek Kolat said.
The study surveyed people inside Berlin's nightclubs and bars or standing in queues outside them.
Germany, the original drug lab
Many recreational drugs cooked in hidden labs around the world today were origianlly desigend by German chemists, the military and German firms.
Off to war
The Nazis sent doped-up soldiers to the front in Poland in 1939 and to France the following year. During the invasion of France, a whopping 35 million tablets of the methamphetamine Pervitin were distributed to soldiers, who named the miracle pill "Panzerschokolade" ("tank chocolate"). It wasn't just the Germans, however: the Allies gave their troops drugs, too.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa-Bildarchiv
Alert and fearless
A Japanese chemist created a liquid version of what was to become the German Wehrmacht's miracle pill. The Berlin-based drug firm Temmler refined the drug and took out a patent in 1937. A year later, Pervitin was sold over the counter. It left people alert, fearless, and without need of food or drink. Pervitin is still on the market - illegally - and under a different name: Crystal Meth.
His own best customer?
Historians disagree over whether the Führer himself was addicted to Pervitin. Files kept by Hitler's personal doctor, Theo Morell, show a scribbled "x" in reference to a cocktail of medication he was given on any given day - but it isn't exactly clear what it refers to. We do know, though, that Hitler was on a mix of powerful drugs.
German chemists' inventive talents go back even further than the Nazi era, however. "No cough thanks to heroin," was the ad slogan for a cough medicine produced by the German drug company Bayer in the late 19th century. Heroin was prescribed to patients - adults and children - suffering from epilepsy, asthma, schizophrenia and heart disease. Any side effects? Bayer listed constipation.
Creative Chemists
Felix Hoffmann is perhaps best known for inventing Aspirin. But that's not all. He also developed heroin while experimenting with acetic acid. Hoffmann combined the acid with morphine, an extract from the poppy pod. Heroin was legal in Germany until 1971 when it was finally outlawed.
Cocaine for opthamologists
In 1862, the Darmstadt-based firm Merck started producing large amounts of cocaine as a local anesthetic for ophthalmologists. German chemist, Albert Niemann, had previously isolated an alkaloid he named cocaine from South American coca leaves. Niemann died shortly after discovering cocaine - of lung problems.
Image: Merck Corporate History
Euphoria and vitality
Sigmund Freud, an Austrian neurologist and the "father of psychoanalysis," consumed cocaine for scientific purposes. In his Cocaine Papers study, Freud described the drug as harmless. He observed "euphoria, more vitality and [a] capacity for work." His enthusiasm waned, however, after a friend died of an overdose. At that time doctors prescribed cocaine for headaches and stomach problems.
Image: Hans Casparius/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
MDMA patent
American chemist, Alexander Shulgin, is widely believed to have invented the party drug ecstasy. But in reality, he rediscovered the compound. The German firm Merck had originally developed and filed for a patent for a colorless oil under the name 3,4-Methylendioxymethamphetamine - MDMA - in 1912. Back then, chemists thought the substance had no commercial value.
Image: picture-alliance/epa/Barbara Walton
The past casts a long shadow
These German chemists' inventions are still having an impact today. According to estimates by the United Nations about 190,000 people died worldwide in 2013 because of illegal drug consumption. However, alcohol, a legal drug, is responsible for far more deaths. The WHO says 5.9 percent of all deaths in 2012 were due to alcohol consumption - that's 3.3 million people.
