Stoned circle: Glastonbury Festival and drug culture

Amid the mud and the music, drugs have also been an ever-present – Emily Goddard looks at how the approach to illegal substances has changed among festival-goers

The 1994 Glastonbury is often considered the greatest ever (Martyn Goodacre/Getty)

In the height of summer, at the time of solstice – moon-mad, sun-begotten – we acclaim the glory of life with ungrudging senses. That was the quote by Llewelyn Powys sitting atop the 1994 Glastonbury Festival poster. The extraordinary line-up, including Johnny Cash, Oasis, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Bjork and Orbital, makes it crystal clear why some still consider it among the greatest Glastonbury ever.

For Emma*, who was 16 at the time, it was enchanting – she had just finished her GCSEs and describes being immersed alongside the 80,000 others at the bewitching Pilton site as one of the happiest moments of her life. “I remember walking, entering a magical kingdom,” says the writer from Margate. “You haven’t got lots and lots of experience of those kinds of things at that age, and walking into Glastonbury, it’s like myriad worlds and mad goings-on and happenings. It was just magical, I loved it.”

She imagines few 16-year-olds going to the festival today would share the experience she had a quarter of a century ago. “There was a group of us,” she says. “One of our mothers dropped us off and just said, ‘We’ll pick you up at 6pm on Sunday.’ I was in charge of my 14-year-old sister. That was that. I actually cannot believe my mum let my little sister come. That was naive but it wasn’t unusual at the time.”