GERM
00:00:09.520 – 00:00:11.600
Happy Burn. My name is Germ.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:00:11.600 – 00:00:12.480
I’m Worm.

GERM
00:00:12.560 – 00:00:28.240
Welcome to episode 120 of the Germ Worm Travel Health Podcast. Dr. Dust: Chris Sanford discusses volunteering at a Burning man clinic. It’s a big planet. See it in good health.

I’m Dr. Paul Pottinger, also called Germ. I’m an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Washington.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:00:28.480 – 00:00:34.000
I’m Dr. Chris Sanford, also known as Worm, family medicine doctor, also at the University of Washington.

GERM
00:00:34.240 – 00:01:54.700
Chris, this is a special episode of our very special podcast.

So here at Germ and Worm, we typically receive questions from our listeners across the country and around the world, asking questions about how they can stay safe and have fun when they travel domestically and overseas. We’re not doing that today. Today I’m asking you questions about this incredible experience you had at Burning Man.

And some of our listeners will be intimately, maybe too intimately familiar with what goes on at Burning Man. For others, they have no idea or just be burning curious.

So I’m going to ask you all about this because so many of our listeners are interested in traveling to these festivals, either as volunteers or to take a trip, so to speak, when they get there. Before we get to that, I want to start with our medical disclaimer.

This podcast is designed to inform, inspire and entertain, but it does not establish a doctor patient relationship. And so please see a qualified healthcare professional for recommendations specific to you and to your itinerary.

Lots of travel in both of our lives now, Chris. It’s an interesting time. Here we are, September 2026, and my friend, you just got back from Burning Man.

I know this is true because when I came over to your place to record a recent episode, the dust was still settling off your physical person and off all your belongings, the playa sand. So I have all kinds of questions. For me as a burgeon, someone who’s never been to Burning Man, I want you to tell me a little bit about this.

First of all, tell me, please, about Burning man in general. What is it and how did it get started?

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:01:55.070 – 00:02:51.960
You bet. This is a huge festival. Happens in the Nevada desert once a year. Started with a small number of people.

Half a dozen people in San Francisco in the 1980s got together on a beach and had a bit of a party. And at the end, they burned this small effigy and they kind of liked it. So they did it year after year.

And jumping forward several decades now, it is an annual event in a place called Black Rock City in the Nevada desert, about 120 miles north of Reno. Before the Burn. There’s nothing there. It is flat, what’s called playa. Just dust and nothing else.

And over the course of a small number of days, a lot of people show up. The peak was about 2019 when 80,000 people showed up. Now it’s closer to 60,000 people. Still a very big crowd.

And these are people from around the world and around the US and they set up camps with. Which we’ll talk about in a few minutes.

GERM
00:02:52.520 – 00:03:05.400
It’s pretty incredible. And so the vibe, the purpose of this, first of all, the name Burning man, where the hell does that come from? Are you the guy who got burned?

Did you get sunburned? What’s that about? And what’s the overall vibe of the place?

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:03:06.600 – 00:03:55.230
It’s a very ethical place. It tries to adhere to what are called the ten principles. And this is starting to sound a little cult like.

And it’s not a cult, but if you look at the 10 principles, they’re things like radical inclusion and gifting. It’s not a bartering economy, it’s not a capitalist. People give things away. They give away food and other things there.

Decommodification is one radical self reliance, radical self expression, communal efforts, civil responsibility and leaving no trace. So basically it’s a lot of people who are creative and get together once a year to do what they want to do.

It’s a party, it’s a festival, it is an art display, it’s a piece of performance art. It’s sort of like a parade, except instead of having start and stop hours, it goes on for nine days.

GERM
00:03:55.870 – 00:04:11.310
Holy smoke. I would just point out that the first sign of being in a cult is not knowing that you’re in a cult. I’m just going to put that out there.

So anyway, I’m glad to hear that you have not been fully indoctrinated or maybe you were. How did you get connected with it this time and what did you do?

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:04:11.310 – 00:05:30.050
Yeah, a couple different ways. One is I’ve been hearing about it for decades and I’ve been curious and I thought, well, I’m not getting any younger.

And I partially retired recently, so I have time. And I found when I travel that it’s always more interesting if I do something versus being a pure tourist.

So, you know, for example, I went to Italy recently with my wife for a month and it was very fun. But we didn’t volunteer, we didn’t teach, we didn’t take a class and maybe that detracted a little.

We didn’t talk to that many Italians versus when my wife And I took our two boys to Ethiopia for a month, decade or so ago, and we both taught and that made the whole experience markedly better. So I’ve always enjoyed things more when I’ve done something I’ve had a better experience. Also, luckily, I’ve had a mentor.

I’m in a band in Seattle called Dad Band Karaoke. And the bass player is this nice guy named Brian.

He’s been going to Burning man for a decade and he encouraged me and took me under his wing and gave me some really helpful advice. And so then armed with that, I just went online and there is a place where they ask for volunteers. They need a ton of volunteers.

There’s 300 medical volunteers alone, which gives you an idea of the scale. And you have to prove that you’re really a medical person and have a license and do some other minor paperwork.

But then I signed up for shifts and that was that.

GERM
00:05:30.370 – 00:05:41.570
Okay, so I don’t want to detract too much from Burning man, but we have to do at least a little side quest here. Dbk, Dadband Karaoke. What’s your role in that band and how can people follow you and check you out?

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:05:41.570 – 00:06:35.380
Well, this again is my friend Brian. He’s been bass player for this band and it’s very fun. I’m the keyboard player. I don’t sing, Brian sings.

And we have a list of maybe 150 songs and you can choose any song from that when we perform. And we are your live band, so we’re roughly a five to seven person band. You are the vocalist, you’re given the lyrics.

And people are finding that it’s more fun to sing karaoke with a live band as opposed to a recording. It’s super fun. I haven’t been in a band since I was a teenager and it’s rock and roll. It’s dad rock.

So think Rolling Stones, Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Creedence Clearwater Revival. But we’re learning new stuff because a lot of our folks younger.

So I just learned how to play Red Wine Supernova and Pink Pony Club and other pieces that were unknown to me until recently. Anyway, super fun. There’s a website, dad Band Karaoke in Seattle.

GERM
00:06:35.380 – 00:06:40.340
I think Chapel Roan is super stoked to know that band karaoke has got her back.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:06:40.340 – 00:06:43.700
Okay. People love her song. She’s one of our most popular tunes.

GERM
00:06:43.700 – 00:07:01.070
I can well imagine because she’s amazing. All right, so anyway, back to Burning Man. Okay, so you came at this because of the connection with friends and the community through music.

It sounds like music is A big part of the Burning man experience. And in fact, how did music feature into your experience down there?

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:07:01.150 – 00:08:21.230
Right. In a very fundamental way.

So ordinarily, had I not known Brian, I would have ended up at one of the medical camps because there’s places where firefighters and medical people stay. But Brian very kindly invited me to be in his camp, which is called the Black Rock Piano Lounge. And a couple facets of that.

In most of these camps, there’s about a thousand camps, maybe 50 people on average in each one, each with a different theme. So it’s surreal, creative. You know, there’s bars, there’s lounges, there’s mini golf courses, there’s coffee bars. Anyway, blackrock Piano lounge.

There’s a grand piano and musical instruments. Every camp gives something. Some will give you free food, free drinks. We gave free music.

So grand piano generator, amplifiers, electric guitars, other instruments. People came and played, or we had people who were members of the camp play.

Also at Black rock piano Lounge, it’s affiliated with the vast two story Milton John, which is a mutant vehicle, Another facet of Burning man. These big two story modified RVs that drive around in different themes.

And Milton John has on the second story, a grand piano and a bunch of other instruments. So they’re able to light it up and drive around at night and provide music.

And one thing they did was go at dusk to the periphery of Burning man, where there were weddings. And they would be the free wedding band, which people appreciated.

GERM
00:08:21.310 – 00:08:23.670
Huh. That’s. So people got married at Burning Man.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:08:23.670 – 00:08:24.910
Yeah. It’s not rare.

GERM
00:08:25.150 – 00:08:30.990
Do you have any data on the track record of these marriages? I’m sure they’re as strong as can be.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:08:31.310 – 00:08:42.830
None now. However this ties in, though, to my one, my biggest difficulty, perhaps my only difficulty with Burning man, the music.

But we’ll talk about that in a minute.

GERM
00:08:43.090 – 00:08:47.970
Okay. So this is it sounds like an incredible system giving away instruments. I hope you got them back.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:08:48.050 – 00:08:49.170
Oh, yeah. Oh yeah.
And my shifts. So also I was a doc there in the clinic. I signed up to be a doc.

GERM
00:08:54.490 – 00:08:54.850
Right.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:08:55.170 – 00:10:32.010
And the medical system there is really well organized. They’ve been doing this for a while. And this is not a place you can go and do anything you want.

There’s a heck of a lot of rules which of course is necessary. You can’t have 60 or 80,000 people just doing what they want.

You basically can do what you want as long as you don’t pose any kind of harm to somebody else. There’s four medical facilities on Site. And the site is huge. I took the burner bus, Reno special dedicated bus.

Got there two and a half hours away and it’s just overwhelming. It’s three miles across, roughly.

You’ve got a central one mile relatively empty area except for all the art installations and for the man who burns at the end, and then about a mile ring of camps all the way around. So you get there, you go to your camp, you check in the medical facilities. Three are stations and these are the three that I worked at.

And they’re really not really clinics so much as first aid stations. So really they don’t have a lot. You’re seeing people with relatively minor issues.

If they have a major issue, something where you can’t finish the encounter, you send them to the one central higher level camp called Rampart.

So there is a higher level and it’s basically just several tents attached, but they have electricity and they have X ray and they can do a few basic labs. If they can’t deal with you there, then they ship you off either by helicopter or ambulance. Burns went to UC Davis.

Other injuries went to a trauma center in Reno. But I worked at each of the three peripheral first aid stations doing different shifts.

Because I signed up late, all of my shifts were graveyards starting at 11pm So I was the graveyard guy at Burning Man.

GERM
00:10:32.010 – 00:10:36.450
Oh, I’m sure it was totally quiet and civilized. You probably slept the whole shift, didn’t you?

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:10:38.050 – 00:11:38.700
No, no, no. Nor during the day, nor in the evening did I sleep. So super fun. People were nice. People were sober, by and large.

And I’ll tell you a little bit about the people who I saw, but they were not the typical person. Typical person arrives healthy, stays healthy, doesn’t do anything real dumb, leaves healthy.

So the small number of people who we saw certainly were not typical of who was there. It was either too hot or too cold. So you don’t go to Burning man for comfort. Also really dusty. Really dusty.

It’s sort of a rock hard dirt clod surface covered with an inch of dust. And it’s not sand, it’s dust. It’s dust as fine as granulated or powdered sugar.

So when you step every step or bicycle, this little cloud comes up except when it rains and it rained when I was there. And then it is this pseudo concrete mud that if you walk on it, you’re instantly three inches taller because of this mud will adhere to your boots.

GERM
00:11:39.250 – 00:11:44.250
I seem to recall a few years ago they had a lot of rain during Burning Man. Did you hear about that?

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:11:44.250 – 00:13:05.900
I sure did. Yeah. It was fun to hear from the veterans because this, you know, in a disclaimer, I’ve only been there once, so I’m going to share my experience.

One of the first questions you ask, kind of like in college, you say, what’s your major? Burning Man. You say, is this your third burn, your fifth burn? Everyone shares, and about a third of the people, it was their first burn.

But I talked to a lot of people who’d been there 25 times over the last 30 years, and they volunteered to be a doc. 20 Years. So a lot of people had a lot more experience. Experience than me.

And yeah, just like war veterans, people would say, ah, you should have been here in 23. That was Mudman.

And in Mudman, not only was there mud that slowed down everybody getting out, but the trucks couldn’t drive, which meant they couldn’t empty the sewage trucks, couldn’t get to the porta potties or the RVs. So it was an unhappy, malodorous situation. Or in about 2015 or 2016, there was Bugman, where, I kid you not, it rained before Burning Man.

So all these little shrimp, like trilobite, trillions of insects came up and climbed on everybody. So, yeah, there’s mud and there’s other natural things. It’s windy. There were dust storms. I sent Paul a picture of me.

You can’t even really tell I’m a person because I’ve got goggles and a bandana and mask and it’s cold and it’s windy and it’s at night. So, yeah, I’m glad I went. But one doesn’t go there for, you know, because it’s like the Ritz.

GERM
00:13:06.700 – 00:13:20.520
I’m getting these memories of that cruise that broke down in the Gulf of Mexico, AKA Gulf of America, the poop cruise, where people just had no sanitation availability for that cruise. Maybe this would be like instead of the Burning man, the pooping man.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:13:20.520 – 00:13:29.560
There you go.

Well, when I went, it did rain and there was mud for a day or so, but it wasn’t to the point of delaying the exit or, thank goodness, blocking the sewage trucks.

GERM
00:13:30.440 – 00:13:34.440
So sanitation seemed to work pretty well.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:13:34.440 – 00:13:36.200
A bazillion porta potties.

GERM
00:13:36.200 – 00:13:37.760
A bazillion porta potties.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:13:37.760 – 00:13:53.340
And I’ll tell you how intimate I got with them. You know, when you use a porta potty for nine days. I came to develop my favorite porta potty.

One of them, I discovered, smelled less bad and had superior graffiti to the others. So after five or six days, I started going to My favorite, Porta Potty.

GERM
00:13:53.340 – 00:14:03.140
That’s so interesting. And in terms of sanitation, in general hand hygiene, just general hygiene, getting the dust off you.

I mean, is there any way to wash hands, take a shower, anything like that?

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:14:03.700 – 00:14:42.320
Here and there, yes. I mean, it’s dusty. You’re covered in dust from the minute you go in.

And in fact, there’s a tradition for virgins, a new person like me, where they say, okay, who’s here for the first time? I raised my hand when the bus dropped me off.

They cordon you off to one side, and you are then encouraged to lay on your back and then on your abdomen in the dust and then make a dust angel, which I did. And of course, from that time on, you are coated in dust. So there’s a few showers if you bring one. I had one because Black Rock Piano Lounge had one.

Then later, Fire Camp had one. But no, if you don’t bring one or if you don’t know someone who has one, no, you can go the entire time and not wash anything.

GERM
00:14:42.400 – 00:14:43.920
How many days are we talking about?

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:14:44.160 – 00:14:44.800
Nine days.

GERM
00:14:45.120 – 00:14:46.520
Holy smokes.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:14:46.520 – 00:15:18.550
And it’s hot by day and really cold and windy and dusty at night. The creativity was off the scale. There are all these. You walk along, someone says, do you want pancakes? And you say, yes.

And then there’s men in tutus and women in fishnet stockings and naked people. And these art cars drive by at night, and they’re all lit up and they’re spouting flames and they’re blasting this house music.

So it was just fun to see all of these people who prepare all year for these incredibly creative shows.

GERM
00:15:18.790 – 00:15:28.750
That should get my attention. But I’m going back to the. To the toilets again. So tell me about hand hygiene. Was there even possibility of washing hands? Was all done with Purell.

How did you do that coming out of the commode?

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:15:28.750 – 00:15:39.840
If you brought Purell. There was Purell. Wow.

And I think, actually, now that I think about it, by some rows of Porta Potties, there was a stand with a alcoholic soap dispenser.

GERM
00:15:39.920 – 00:15:40.400
Wow.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:15:41.120 – 00:15:48.880
But it got a little grody after a while with just stuff stuck to the post. Kind of like you thought maybe you’d be worse if you used it.

GERM
00:15:49.440 – 00:16:09.750
Yeah. I mean, here we are. Just. So I’m painting a vivid and fresh bouquet of a picture in my mind. 50,000 People, no running water, and for nine days. Okay.

Yeah, you had me at. This is one for Chris to do. And I’m just gonna follow up with you this way. So I’M moving vicariously through you.

Okay, so tell us more, please, about the daily experience as a medical volunteer.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:16:09.750 – 00:19:21.490
What did you see? You bet. It was fascinating. First, before I go into that, let me just go into a little bit on sort of physical comfort or discomfort.

I did fine with almost every aspect of it. So it was cold at night, so you put a lot of layers on.

Although the clinics were kind of open, so if there’s a dust storm outside, there’s also a dust storm inside your medical station. It was hot, but it was less hot than usual. So we really only had one hot day. I did okay. I got used to the porta potties.

I did have one issue the first three days because I was staying at a music camp and I didn’t quite realize that that meant music. And it wasn’t just at night. It was morning, night, evening, and late night. And we were adjacent to an electronic dance place called Xoxo Zozo.

And they had speakers as big as about three people put together. And they played those things close to 24 7. So I would get off my shift at 7 in the morning and really want to go to bed.

And all I would hear was this thump, thump, thump music. And wax earplugs would block the treble, but I could feel that bass vibrate my guts. So I’ll get into sort of my 72 hour altered consciousness thing.

In answer to your question, most stuff we saw was minor. You know, splinters, sprains, head colds, maybe a couple cases of food poisoning. And then we saw some trauma.

One thing I may never get on again after Burning man is a trampoline.

Because a lot of people got on trampolines, some of them sober, some of them less so, and sprained ankles or smacked their knee against their forehead, or they were wearing a metal thermos and they did a backflip and they smashed the thermos against their forehead. And then we saw some trauma related to altered consciousness. The most common recreational drug we saw there was Ketamine, actually.

And the second is one called ghb, which I had to read about. It’s a dissociative drug. A depressant can cause euphoria, can cause some bad things in overdose. I thought I would be using Narcan.

I didn’t give Narcan once the whole time there. So actually opiates, things in the codeine, morphine, heroin, fentanyl family are not that popular there and didn’t see any meth use there.

But a lot of folks do in mushrooms Pot, lsd, Ecstasy, ghb, ketamine. But people would do those. A small number of people, the people we saw, and then climb a 40 foot art structure.

And some of those people had bad outcomes? Oh yeah, some people fell and really hurt themselves. Seriously. Not too many, but a few.

And then there were some people I didn’t see because the crews, these vehicles go out called QRVs, Quick Response Vehicles. They would pick people up, but if someone had a pelvic fracture or facial fractures from falling off a sculpture, they wouldn’t bring them to me.

They would take them straight to Rampart, the higher level of care place. But a few just came to us by happenstance.

So in summary, in answer to your question, mostly minor stuff, some drug related stuff, some trauma related stuff, but again, don’t think from that that it’s some wild bacchanal where everybody’s bombed. The great majority of people acted in a responsible way.

And if they were doing psychedelics, did just a reasonable AM and still acted in a very polite manner, was your sense.

GERM
00:19:21.490 – 00:19:34.770
It sounds like what happens at Burning man, stays at Burning man and substances were there. There was not a big law enforcement presence to try to root out the use of. I was going to say illegal drugs. Are drugs illegal in Nevada?

Actually, I don’t even know.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:19:34.770 – 00:19:38.090
Yes. And they’re illegal at Burning Man. And yes, there was a legal presence there.

GERM
00:19:38.090 – 00:19:38.850
Oh, okay, okay.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:19:38.850 – 00:20:17.900
It wasn’t huge, but there were county people, there were Department of Fish and Wildlife people there with guns on their hips. Not very many, a few dozen.

They had peripheral stations there and actually it was good they were there because if someone’s acting in a violent way, you want to be able to call the police to do something about it. They were not actively seeking out drug abuse or they weren’t trying to write people up.

I think potentially if they happened to see that you were doing something illegal, they might indeed do something like arrest you. But it wasn’t a big issue there.

And my impression actually talking to them is they were there to support people like for medical emergencies and their primary role was not to enforce drug laws.

GERM
00:20:17.900 – 00:20:44.150
Got it, got it. And okay, it’s crazy substances for us as medical doctors.

You know, for me, and I don’t do this work primarily anymore, but for me a huge challenge was always what did this person take? Do I have a countermeasure? A way to support someone based on what they’ve consumed? If it’s more than one thing, that becomes much more difficult.

Do you think there was polysubstance Use at the Burning Man.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:20:44.310 – 00:20:44.790
Yes.

GERM
00:20:45.590 – 00:20:47.350
He didn’t hesitate at all to say that.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:20:47.670 – 00:21:22.050
And it was tough because our medical people already know this. But just for non medical people, Narcan only works on opiates. So Narcan only works if it’s codeine, morphine, fentanyl, heroin, something like that.

Doesn’t work on all of the others. Lsd, Ecstasy, ghb, ketamine.

And as I say, I mean, I heard anecdotally there were whole camps where people would do ketamine and then go dance for 24 hours. But yeah, people did. Or people would get drunk rarely. And again, this was the 1 in 100 who sort of didn’t make good decisions.

But of course, those were the people who I tended to see.

GERM
00:21:22.210 – 00:21:36.450
Got it. Got it. And so substance use and the trauma that flows there from 50,000 people, there might also be just good old medical issues that come up.

Were there any serious medical. There were.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:21:36.450 – 00:21:40.610
I heard at least three people died and the number may be higher than that while I was there.

GERM
00:21:40.690 – 00:21:41.490
Holy smokes.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:21:41.570 – 00:21:42.950
One person died of an mi.

GERM
00:21:43.100 – 00:21:45.500
I heard this is a myocardial infarction or heart attack.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:21:45.500 – 00:21:48.860
Yes. And. And that with that many people, you would expect some of that.

GERM
00:21:48.940 – 00:21:49.700
Holy smokes.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:21:49.700 – 00:22:11.200
But people were there. I thought I might be older than everybody, but I was only older than most people. And over recent decades, the age of your average burner is going up.

So a few decades ago, a lot of people in their 20s and 30s, now a lot of people in their 30s to 60s. So a lot of gray ponytails. As I say, I talked to a lot of people who’d been there way more than 20 times. Got it.

GERM
00:22:11.200 – 00:22:23.760
It’s interesting. I would sense that some of the vibe, the ethos and the attraction might be there for folks who had been.

Who had been to Woodstock, for example, but maybe those folks are now aging out of this. You didn’t have a lot of octogenarian.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:22:24.000 – 00:22:56.000
A few. We had a retired nurse who was over 80. She did great. Claire Isabelle really contributed quite a bit.

And there were people there in their 70s and 80s also who were just kind of rocking out and enjoying all the music. Let me talk about the music. So this is just me. Perhaps you would love the music, but. And I did like it for 40 to 60 minutes. And even at 24 hours.

But as I say, I couldn’t sleep. And I’m a light sleeper, I’ll admit. But by hour 72, I hadn’t slept more than 30 minutes.

GERM
00:22:56.080 – 00:22:56.960
Holy cow.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:22:56.960 – 00:24:13.830
And I had an eight hour shift coming up. And I actually started. I mean, the people at my camp were super nice. I don’t mean to disparage anyone there. And they were kind to invite me.

And they had good food and it was good music, but the music isn’t good, even if it’s good if you want to sleep at 72 hours. Actually, when I knew I had to change camps was when I started having, I think, for the first time in my life, visual hallucinations.

At hour 72, I started to see gold and white squares forming into little Phoenician men on a boat, on a lake, landing on a shore. And I wasn’t psychotic. I knew they weren’t real, but I thought, okay, I’m seeing this. Whether I open or close my eyes. I think I need.

I think I really need sleep. So I went over way across the playa, and I threw myself on the mercy of these nice people at the firemen’s and EMT camp, which was quieter.

And I’m not sure if it’s because they were nice or because I looked crazy, but they said, yeah, you can sleep here. Which was great, because then I got part of a container. It was a little like a container you put on a back of a truck.

And they had built seven bunks into it, and it was much better. It was noisy because, you know, you got seven bunks, you got firemen coming in and out and radios.

But at least I could sleep two or three hours there. So my last several days at Burning Man, I was at the fire camp, which, given that I wanted to sleep during the day, was a better place for me.

GERM
00:24:14.310 – 00:24:22.310
Wow. And so, again, little golden Phoenician man, how much GHB did you take to get to that level of hallucination?

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:24:22.310 – 00:25:26.130
You know, zero. Which actually is going to. Reminds me of a related thing I want to touch on, but zero.

I did caffeine in my morning, and that was my only psychotropic drug while I was there. However, 72 hours of sleep deprivation will approach a, you know, hallucinatory state.

Now, that takes us to the question, is it safe to take food from strangers at Burning Man? And I asked a lot of the medical staff who’d been there, and the answer is usually yes. I was a little paranoid when I arrived.

They didn’t want someone to say, here’s a cup of coffee and get LSD or what have you. The camps are all inspected and licensed and certified.

And so if you go to one of the roughly 1,000 camps, it is very unlikely someone’s going to slip you something. So I took orange juice and water and donut holes and donuts and pancakes from dozens of strangers at camps.

There were no surprises, nor did I hear of any. This is opposed to someone just wandering out in the playa randomly not associated with the camp. Then there might be a chance of that.

But during my nine days, I didn’t talk to a single person who did something psychedelic that they didn’t know they were getting.

GERM
00:25:26.530 – 00:25:35.540
Okay, that’s really interesting. So I was going to ask about cuisine, sustenance. Is there a central cafeteria? How does the food scene generally work in general?

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:25:35.540 – 00:25:38.820
You bring your own or you rely off the camps.

GERM
00:25:38.820 – 00:25:39.260
Okay.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:25:39.260 – 00:26:03.620
There is a commissary for the medical people. Like the camp I was at. I paid a certain fee in advance and then I got access to their kitchen.

Similarly, at the fire camp, for very minimal dues, I got access to good food. But no, there’s nothing you can buy there. You can’t even buy water. I don’t think so. There’s no restaurant, there’s no common commissary.

A lot of people will come by tents and rv. Most people come by tents and RV and they bring nine days of food.

GERM
00:26:04.100 – 00:26:21.220
Got it, Got it. Okay. So there’s some self sustaining, self reliance there. That seems like a good thing.

And as medical doctors, we think about this piece, of course, how to stay safe when people are doing this. What interests me is the fact that if I heard you correctly, two thirds of participants come back.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:26:21.220 – 00:26:21.700
Yes.

GERM
00:26:22.100 – 00:26:28.820
So there must be something that draws them in. And it sounds like those tend to be benign things and not malign things.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:26:28.820 – 00:28:05.440
Yes, very much so. People get a special look in their eye.

It’s sort of like if you have a friend who likes to go to Africa and it’s his or her special place, they just sort of look mystical and they have trouble putting it in words. And similarly, people love Burning Man. It’s a central. Maybe the thing they look forward to most in their entire life.

I think it’s the people being so friendly. I got hundreds of hugs from strangers. People tell their life story when there was a lull at the clinic.

We would huddle around this propane fire trying to stay warm. And I was telling my life story to strangers and they were telling me theirs.

And also you do new stuff and just an example of the whimsy of Burning Man. So I take the burner bus from Reno to Burning Man. I get there, I go to my camp and there’s a band playing. There was always a band playing music.

It was Good electric guitars and piano. And in front of the piano, there was a nude woman on a table, just kind of looking at the ceiling.

And surrounding her were 20 or 30 people with clipboards and sketch pads. And this was nude modeling. So I just happened to arrive during nude modeling. So. Well, I hadn’t sketched before, but I thought when in Rome.

So I got one of the clipboards and for two hours I drew drawings of naked people, which I’d never done before. And it was kind of fun. And I kind of got into it and I thought, maybe I’ll start sketching, but in dozens of different ways.

This encourages you to make stuff, do performance, dress up in a unique way, take on a new role. And I think people just appreciate this place. And two, look at those 10 principles that I listed off early in the interview.

Those are really positive ethical rules. And to go to a place where essentially everyone is nice is really a welcome respite from the real world.

GERM
00:28:06.000 – 00:28:15.200
The location is so remote. How would you characterize the draw? The participants? Was it mostly west coast and Nevada people, or was it bigger than that?

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:28:15.360 – 00:28:31.290
Bigger than that. It was certainly the entire US And I don’t know the numbers, but I talked to people from Iran and Korea and all over the world.

So at least a significant number of people come from abroad, from Canada, from elsewhere, but certainly all over the U.S. fascinating.

GERM
00:28:31.290 – 00:28:35.730
And then you know the name the Burning Man. Tell me about that. What’s that?

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:28:36.130 – 00:29:34.540
Yeah, so at the end of it, you burn the man. And the man is a physical effigy of a man made out of wood this year, built on this huge, I don’t know, 50, 60 foot structure made out of wood.

And at the end, everybody gathers around, I don’t know, 60,000 people in a big circle. And the man first shoots fireworks, which is pretty entertaining.

And there’s all these performers who were twirling sticks with fire at either end, and then they burn the man. So you have this hundred foot flame, and from 2 or 300ft away, you can feel the heat of this thing. And it’s kind of in an atavistic way.

It’s kind of satisfying to watch this huge thing burn as everybody listens to music and cheers. And also a lot of the mobile vehicles, the art vehicles, or the mutant vehicles shot flames, which is kind of kind of cool.

Mutant vehicles, that’s the generic term for all of these two story art cars that drive around in different Viking pirates. Cowboy, space alien.

GERM
00:29:35.340 – 00:29:43.260
Okay, so if Mad Max was reframed as New Age art and drug scene. Maybe that’s what this would look like. That’s the vibe I’m getting.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:29:43.260 – 00:29:56.640
There’s overlap. You know how in Mad Max a lot of people were like wrapped in rags and tassels and tatters, kind of like a Tuscan Raider.

It was sort of like Tuscan Raiders meets Captain Jack Sparrow.

GERM
00:29:58.720 – 00:30:17.070
I think that’s a, that’s a nice vibe. Well, you know, for our listeners.

First of all, many people may have seen things on YouTube or on the Internet, but they probably haven’t seen Dr. Chris Sanford, aka Dr. Dust. And we’re going to make that happen. So let’s post some photos on GermanWorm.com so people can and get a look at who they’re listening to right now.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:30:17.230 – 00:31:49.940
Another fun part of it was just all of the people who had done so much there. You talk to someone, they look normal.

Like I was talking to this one paramedic who was driving the vehicles around and he said, yeah, I do a little social media. And I said, oh, I do a podcast. So we’re chatting a bit. And then I looked up his website. He’s called the Electric Medic.

He’s based in New York and he’s got over a million followers on his various social platforms. Real nice guy, Jack Rao. In fact, we may be interviewing him in coming weeks.

And that got me into talking him and his buddy Dave and they do concert and festival medicine around the world. So I have discovered yet another sub, sub specialty.

They will go to Europe to this huge death metal three day thing where they blast music for 72 hours and they will be the medical team. So they will take care of the trauma, the drugs, whatever goes on there. And it’s a whole little subculture.

In fact, I got a invitation maybe to start going to some of these, but they all play that music super, super loud. I think my ears are still ringing. So people were nice at this place. Now you ask Paul, am I going to go back to Burning Man?

You know, what I’ve decided to do is not to decide. So there were aspects I loved and I went back and forth every day between euphoria and misery, charismatic people and great stories.

The damn music hasn’t stopped for eight days. Went back and forth. So I’m not going to decide. I may go back. I feel like I could do it better now. I wouldn’t sign up for so many graveyard shifts.

I would stay in a quieter camp. But the quality of the people I met there was super encouraging and actually kind of optimism.

GERM
00:31:49.940 – 00:32:11.660
Making this is really interesting. It’s Clearly a very creative group. In fact, sort of like the thru hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail. It sounds like people pick up Burning man names.

Any member, the electric medic may be one of those. I think you now need to be dubbed as Dr. Dust. But were there other fun names that come to mind? People you liked and admired?

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:32:11.660 – 00:32:50.960
Yeah, everybody after their first burn is given a burner name. And I haven’t quite received mine yet, but I’m expecting it momentarily. But yeah, the woman who gave us the orientation at the gate was Trash Bitch.

Very nice young woman. Brian is known as Nuts and Bolts because he has this MacGyver like ability to fix anything electrical or mechanical. Another woman I met was Cat Bite.

Very charming young woman. Everybody had a name. Some of them a little salacious, some of them funny, some of them bizarre, some inexplicable. And the camps had good names too.

The camps all had clever names, off color names, creative names. That was very fun to see that it’s really interesting.

GERM
00:32:50.960 – 00:32:58.520
So yeah, I think we need to call you Dr. Dust. I’ll be curious to hear what name they dubbed to you. You definitely have me burning. Curious.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:32:59.760 – 00:33:00.880
Are you burning adjacent?

GERM
00:33:00.880 – 00:33:14.160
I think I might be burning in parallel. My wife is the author of a book and one of the most famous lines is I burn for you.

So maybe this is another way we could bring the world of Bridgerton down to Burning Man.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:33:14.320 – 00:33:20.640
I’ll show you the website. You’d be welcome to get there. You might be a little horrified at the sanitary conditions.

GERM
00:33:21.040 – 00:33:29.860
Oh, I’m already horrified. That part alone is enough. But if I had my own rv, my own little kingdom way to get to a quiet space, yeah, maybe it would be worth the scene.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:33:30.020 – 00:33:45.540
And you know, my favorite part was just talking to the people there. I had dozens and dozens of really good conversations with other medical staff and firemen and EMTs and paramedics and just people attending.

Everyone is really open and I met so many charismatic people.

GERM
00:33:45.700 – 00:33:59.600
Let me ask you one more thing. If we have people who are listening, who are interested and maybe going, but they have respiratory concerns, COPD or asthma. You mentioned the Dust.

Was it a thing? Would it give somebody a flare of asthma if they breathed in all this playa dust?

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:34:00.080 – 00:34:20.320
Usually not. Most people with asthma don’t get worse with dust. Look at your past life.

If dust has made you bad before, then yeah, it’s not the best place for you and it’s really fine dust. So maybe you could wear a mask and get away from it that way. Maybe run it by your doc.

Have your doc do some pulmonary function tests, but I wouldn’t think that would be an absolute reason not to go.

GERM
00:34:20.320 – 00:34:22.789
It’s always good advice and and I appreciate it.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:34:22.789 – 00:34:23.709
Yeah, a bit of a hedge.

GERM
00:34:32.429 – 00:35:03.990
Everyone, thanks so much for joining us here on episode 120 of Germ and Worm with Dr. Dust, aka Dr. Chris Sanford. As always, we would love to hear your questions about travel health. Just send them along.

Or if you have tips for success something you want to hear more about, we’d love to hear from you. Send us an email germandwormmail@gmailcom or visit us online germandworm.com.

If you like this episode, we would be so grateful if you would subscribe, give us a favorable rating on your device and spread the word with friends, family and share on the social media. Those are totally free ways to support this podcast. I’m Germ.

WORM / Dr. Dust
00:35:04.070 – 00:35:07.310
I’m Dr. Dust. It’s a big planet. See you in good health.

GERM
00:35:07.310 – 00:35:28.640
We look forward to seeing you next time.

This podcast is designed to inform, inspire and entertain, but it does not establish a doctor patient relationship and so it should not replace your conversation with a qualified healthcare professional. Please see one before your next adventure.

The opinions you hear in this podcast belong to Dr. Sanford and Dr. Pottinger alone and do not necessarily represent the opinions of University of Washington or UW Medicine.