How High Can You Get At TRYP Expo?
A weekend at Berlin's new psychedelic expo, where stalls sell LSD, mushroom and 2CB derivatives. Strictly for research purposes.
I’m sitting in a grand concert hall watching a middle aged German man with terrifyingly blue eyes inject a microchip into another man’s hand. “Welcome to the club,” he says to his stoic-looking victim. “Du bist ein echter Biohacker.” The room erupts into applause. I check the speaker’s Instagram, and discover he feeds his dog methylene blue dye to support the pet’s “cellpower”. I’ve only been at TRYP Expo for 15 minutes.
In the last few weeks, the eagle-eyed in Berlin may have spotted some intriguing flyers posted around the city: a white rabbit in a car with the caption “On my way to TRYP”; an older man in a butterfly costume asking “Have you tried shrooms?”. While they look like they could be advertising a trendy clothing company, they were promoting a wholly new offering in the city’s cultural calendar – TRYP Expo, Europe’s biggest event for psychedelic science and “Human Flourishing”. On the weekend of May 15, I followed the white rabbit to the former DDR radio broadcast centre Funkhaus to spend the weekend among the best, worst and downright bizarre of the alternative wellness community.
Did I slip you any drugs? Are you on mushrooms right now?” “Yes,” reply two of his subjects.