It’s safe to say that cocaine is having a bit of a cultural moment. Despite being banned from appearing on the cover of Brat, Charli xcx’s omnipresent album, the class A has managed to permeate this summer, with coke-fuelled lyrics dominating the airwaves. But has Charli really made coke cool again? Are we – supposedly ‘Generation Sensible’ – really getting bags in every weekend?
Professor Harry Sumnall, a professor in substance use at the Public Health Institute at Liverpool John Moores University, refutes that cocaine, which has been around for decades, is having ‘a moment’. Instead, he says that cocaine use hasn’t actually increased, it’s just more visible now. “There’s a perception that use has increased, and that’s just as important as actual increases in use, because that contributes to perceptions of normalisation,” he tells Dazed. “I think there’s probably an issue about an increased visibility, and then increased public discussion about the use of cocaine, which might also feed into this perception that everybody’s doing it.” This creeping normalisation isn’t new either: as Vice reported in 2021, cocaine influencers are all over Reels and TikTok, depending on your algorithm.
Last year we had rat girl summer, this year it’s brat summer, but both suggest that culture is moving towards rejecting the idea of clean living: that the young women of today are ditching peace for chaos; wholesomeness for hedonism. But it depends where you look: some people prefer to party and others prefer pilates, and that’s how it’s always been. Still, while cocaine use has largely remained stable for the last two decades, figures suggest that young people who take drugs are opting for cocaine over other party drugs like MDMA.
This, says Martin*, a 23-year-old from London, is because it’s less intense. “I prefer MDMA but find it takes more of a mental toll or feels like more of an event, so I do it less often,” he tells Dazed. “Cocaine is a bit easier, but I also am not a huge fan.” Leah*, 25, from Merseyside, agrees: “It’s more sociable than ketamine, and you get less of a comedown than with MDMA.”
The prevalence of cocaine among your social circles is going to largely depend on what you do and who you do it with. Despite its old reputation as glamorous, cocaine is more likely to be used in “mundane settings,” says Sumnall, like in pubs, back gardens, or someone’s kitchen at 5am, than it is at a rave. For young people like Leah, who live in suburban towns that don’t have much of a cultural scene or a rave scene, he says, it makes sense that cocaine might be more prevalent than other drugs.
It’s also true that cocaine has never been more pure, affordable or available, according to Sumnall. Citing the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) World Drug Report for 2024, he says: “Data suggests that global production [of cocaine] increased by 22 per cent between 2021 and 2022, and there’s never been more cocaine being produced. It’s entering the UK through new routes and international organised crime groups are now targeting European trafficking routes, such as in the Netherlands.” Cocaine, essentially, is cheaper, better and easier to get hold of.
While Sumnall warns against comparing the harms of drugs like MDMA to cocaine, which are used in different contexts, more people present to treatment services with problematic use patterns of cocaine compared with ecstasy. Plus, on a neurochemical level, cocaine is “more potent” than MDMA because of how it interacts with the brain’s reward centre, where dopamine is produced.
Leah does coke “most weekends” if there’s a social event, but admits to having somewhat of a problematic relationship with it. “If I’m in a group setting and someone suggests it, I struggle to say no,” she says. “More often than not I will say yes even if I didn’t actually want to do it, It’s the fear of missing out.” The same goes for Callum*, a 23-year-old from Manchester. “I feel like it’s way too easy to get and my mind always wanders to it when I’ve had a drink,” he tells us. The link between cocaine and alcohol use is also a big one – and the two often facilitate each other.
“This is a learned behaviour,” says Sumnall. “If people are frequently using these two drugs together, and both of them are used in particular social situations and circumstances as well, we tend to associate them together.” The brain, he says, becomes “primed” to associate one drug with the other, particularly because both alcohol and cocaine cause your brain to release dopamine, which affects your motivation. In the same vein, people who frequently use cocaine with certain people, at certain events or certain places, may begin to crave it from a social and environmental perspective. If these environments are more accessible than raves or festivals, again it makes sense why cocaine would be used more prevalently.
Still, there are many young people who are rejecting coke entirely. Gee, 24, from South Yorkshire, prefers psychedelics and MDMA “because they don’t make me as angry and agitated,” while 25-year-old Olivia says “too much coke is the one thing that makes me entirely and uncontrollably emotionally ruined for days afterwards.” And, of course, the majority of young people don’t do drugs at all. So while it might look and feel like cocaine is everywhere, it really isn’t.
But perhaps brat summer’s love affair with cocaine has nothing to do with taking drugs at all. Perhaps it is about letting go, being wild and accepting the duality of being a young adult in modern Britain. And while brat summer is technically over and the clean girls are attempting to usher in a new, “mindful and demure” movement, it’s not surprising that many of us still want to be feral 365. God knows we need it.
