There’s something magic about music festivals… these experiences that crack open our hearts, strip us of pretense, and connect us in ways that words rarely can. If you’ve ever found yourself barefoot in front of the stage, hugging a neighbor you just met, or watching the sun rise after a late-night set, you may also know that cannabis often plays a quiet but powerful role in this communion.
Cannabis & Music: The Perfect Partners
Cannabis and music have always danced together. From the lyrics that nod knowingly to the plant’s power to the joints passed hand to hand in the crowd, cannabis and festival cultures are deeply intertwined. They share roots in rebellion, healing, creativity, and togetherness. As songs rise in the air, so does the feeling that we’re part of something sacred. The high isn’t just chemical; it’s collective.
Surrounding the stages at a festival is a whole ecosystem where campsites transform into cute little pop-up villages and every tent is someone’s home address. Neighbors become friends quickly in a way we don’t often see in the outside world.
But it’s not easy. Setting up a tent in the hot July sun, trekking through mud down long winding paths in the woods to the nearest port-o-let, surviving on granola and good vibes—it’s not comfortable, but it’s real. And it’s really healing. Camping at a festival is an important reminder that the very best things in life take effort. And that we’re capable and strong, even among the elements.
Like camping, cannabis reform is hard work that pays off. The movement to make better laws for those who use the plant has been very long, sometimes messy, and filled with difficult conversations. But the payoff comes when this once-taboo substance is embraced as part of the shared human experience.
Music Festivals: Sanctuaries of Nature’s Medicines
Beyond the pulsing stages and late-night jams, music festivals have quietly evolved into sanctuaries for natural healing—spaces where mind, body, and spirit can reset in rhythm with the earth. Between vendor booths and food trucks, you’ll often find oases of wellness tucked under canopies: jam and drum circles, yoga, sound baths, and wellness practitioners offering quiet, restorative touch.
Drum circles, in particular, are the original festival group therapy. You don’t need to be a trained musician to join in or have any talent at all. As the rhythms layer and build, something primal awakens. It’s no coincidence that many ancient cultures used drumming for ceremony and healing. There’s a release that comes with syncing up to something bigger than yourself, especially surrounded by others doing the same.
Sound baths offer a more meditative counterpart to festivals. As crystal singing bowls, gongs, and chimes fill the space with vibration, participants lie back and simply receive. The frequencies move through you, quieting the mind, relaxing the nervous system, and sometimes stirring up emotion for release. It’s a gentle, immersive way to reset from the overstimulation of modern life—or even the festival itself.
Then there are reiki practitioners, herbalists, massage therapists, yoga instructors and other natural hearers offering their gifts to weary festival-goers. These holistic practices remind us that comfort doesn’t need to come in pill bottles. It can be found in energy exchange, plant medicine, movement, and breath.
Cannabis Opens Your Heart
Like music festivals, cannabis brings people together not just to get high, but to feel more joy, more connection, and more presence. While we can’t yet prove it scientifically, most who use it already know that it softens the edges and opens the heart. And when that openness meets vibrating soundwaves, something magical happens. You don’t just hear the music. You feel it. You’re not just in a crowd—you are the crowd. Grateful Dead guitarist Phil Lesh referred to the concept as gestalt—a German word meaning that the sum is greater than the whole of its parts.
Music is Medicine
At MedicateOH, we’ve been busy with two huge summer festivals, Dark Star Jubilee at Legend Valley and ComFest in downtown Columbus. In talking with the thousands of attendees at these fests, we’re so proud to be resonating with the community around the concept that the best medicine is found in some of the places you’d least expect it— in plant medicines, in music, in nature, in gratitude, in finding self-love.
Ohio’s cannabis community has worked so hard these past months and years building a culture where you don’t have to look over your back for a cop for simply enjoying the plant that nature gave us. And now, at least for this summer, we get a chance to relax a little.
Feel the Music
This summer, I urge you to do what I’m doing during this tumultuous time in our nation. Give yourself the gift of music. Whether it’s a big-name festival or a local gathering in a park, say HELL YEAH to music. Say HELL YEAH to the freedom to be yourself, feel deeply, and heal publicly. Bring your friends. Bring your open heart. And if it’s in a space that’s legal and right for you, bring your favorite strain to share.
See you out there in the crowd.
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