Inside the Ketamine Spoon Economy at Raves

“Got spoons?” asks a message scrawled in pink on a chalkboard enveloped by fluorescent LED lighting. I’m outside a stall in the corner of the vendor village at Shambhala in western Canada, the county’s largest electronic music weekender. It’s early on Friday afternoon and the store, Bits and Keys’, has already sold 500 snuff-style spoons, small spatulas which are typically worn as necklaces and used to sniff ketamine.

“We put them out and they’re gone,” says Mike Nelson, who is working in the Bits and Keys’ booth in the baking British Columbia summer heat on the paradisiacal woodland festival site several kilometers from any road. “We just can’t make them fast enough.” Behind him, two colleagues hurriedly assemble a diverse range of spoons, from simple scoopers for CA$10 to gigantic brass utensils, including one enormous sunflower-shaped spoon, for as much as $40. “A few guys who have brought the big spoons and I’m like, that’s the Sunday spoon, I guess,” Nelson adds, alluding to how the festivalgoers’ tolerance to ketamine will likely be far higher in two days' time.

Ketamine is entering its bling era. The pocket-sized spoon is steadily becoming an underground countercultural symbol, as recreational consumers push back against a mainstream narrative that largely dismisses the drug. Despite its reputation as a horse tranquilizer, many have found everyday transcendence in it.

“I wouldn’t wear this in my everyday life, but I find it really freeing to be able to [wear it] here,” says Robert, who has just brought a spoon with an owl on it. “You need to keep it hidden in the real world.” 

An OG ketamine spoon operation is also incognito at Shambhala. I hear whispers that a rogue organization called the “Dark Side of the Spoon” has set up shop in the campsite, unwilling to pay vendor fees in excess of $10,000 for an official booth. 

In the artist lounge, a DJ informs me that a Dark Side-branded spoon was dropped into his pocket the night before. One of the organizers of a stage tells me that he was also just given a Dark Side of the Spoon gift with engravings paying homage to that very stage. “There’s something about Shambhala that makes ketamine just perfect,” the DJ tells me, referring to a distinct blend of inclusive, silly, and wonky vibes that the social lubricant ketamine appears to help cultivate. “Everyone does it.” 

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