Inside the World of Hardcore VR Ravers: 60-Hour Dance Sessions, Simulated Sex, and Ketamine

It was one of O’Rourke’s first times doing drugs, but he didn’t hold back. Armed with cannabis edibles, cocaine, ketamine, and booze, he partied for nearly 12 nights consecutively last August, during which time he claims to have raved for 60 hours—all without ever leaving his apartment. (He did take bathroom breaks and managed to eat a steak.) In the past 18 months, the 38-year-old IT worker from Dublin, who did not want his first name used due to privacy reasons, has partied on virtual reality platform VRChat every weekend, often staying up until 8 am, suited up in goggles and a full set of motion trackers.

“There’s a lot of weird shit going on, and it can be hard to adjust, but if you do it's magical,” he tells WIRED. “If you're not able to self-moderate and police yourself, it’s endless. You're not going to win; you're not going to see the end of the party.” O’Rourke is one of many who may struggle with the fantastical, escapist allure of having access to a nearly nonstop, wild metaverse party from the comfort of their own homes. Especially when he normally doesn’t have plans with friends in the real world.

Before Covid-19 lockdowns, there had barely ever been more than 20,000 concurrent users on VRChat—but its popularity has since exploded. More than 130,000 people locked into VRChat on New Year’s Day this year, according to a VR culture blog, and there are dozens of weekly VR parties thanks to organizers across the US, Europe, and Asia. Once inside the VRChat metaverse, users—who describe it to WIRED as an immersive, futuristic utopia—can choose which “maps,” or parties, they wish to explore in the form of their avatars.

Meanwhile, traditional clubs in the US and the UK are closing at an alarming rate—casualties of rising costs, lower profits, and, in places, onerous regulations around noise levels, security requirements, and closing times. The infinite amount of space available on VR, plus the lack of regulation, allows creators to blissfully ignore the economic pressures that limit nightlife in many places today. VR venues don’t charge for entry, so the main cost is hardware, which can exceed $5,000 with a high-quality gaming PC and full-body tracking devices, although a simpler setup with just a Meta Quest headset can be procured for as little as $350. There are, however, often long lines to get into the most popular virtual club nights, since they are all capped to 80 people each due to the limits of the software on the VRChat platform, which is available through host Steam.

WIRED spoke to 12 people who are engrossed in the scene, from trans people who feel safer partying in VR to introverts and seniors who find it more welcoming. It’s even spawning underground VR sex and drug subcultures, with erotic club nights and venues meant to mimic the effect of psychedelics. O’Rourke and other enthusiasts say they’ve clocked up drug-fueled, marathon dance sessions all without many of the stressors of traditional club nights.

O’Rourke, an introvert who is self-conscious about his 5-foot-4 height, co-runs a party called Euro-Corp, which resembles a traditional club space, with a narrow, wooden-looking dance floor and a DJ booth overlooking it all. He says he is putting in so many hours—almost 1,800 at the time of writing—because he feels now is the “high-water-mark moment” for the scene. “When people look back in 10 or 20 years, they’ll say now was its peak. That’s why I’m partying so hard.”

But he admits he overdoes it sometimes. “I accidentally did a heroic dose [of mushrooms], and it was a bit of a mess,” he says of a March 2024 trip during which he could not distinguish between his hallucinations and the VR world. “I haven’t taken shrooms since because it was a bit heavy.” Since then, he has decided that ketamine “synergizes most with VR,” because it enhances the levels of immersion to render the virtual reality more real.

Others, like Heelix, a 61-year-old VR DJ from Berlin who has spent nearly 5,000 hours in VR—the equivalent of about 200 days—struggle to control their drinking. “I think it's a little bit dangerous,” he says. “I’ve seen people going overboard, and [their avatars] suddenly disappearing.” Another VR party promoter says, “Because of the headset, you don’t realize how drunk you are till you take it off.” One partier says he has had friends who have needed their stomachs to be pumped after marathon drinking sessions on VRChat.

But socially awkward individuals, homebodies, and LGBT people tell WIRED that VR raves are secure and surreal spaces where, through their avatars, folks can metamorphose into whatever form they wish.

Ru, a trans woman from rural Ohio who works as a hospice nurse, says VRChat provides her a safer environment than she might find in real life. “I get sexually assaulted far less often,” says Ru, 48, who didn’t want to use her real name for professional reasons. “I'm a trans woman, and I live in the middle of a red state. Sometimes you don't want to go to that local place and deal with all of that shit.” Plus, she says that the music that DJs on VRChat play is just better than at the clubs in Ohio she has been to. “The music is unbelievable,” she says. “Go listen to your local people, and then come to any random club in VR; you're going to be shocked that your local DJs suck ass.” Ru’s virtual club, Kaleidosky, looks like the inside of a shape-shifting kaleidoscope, bending the laws of physics with all the fractal visions of a DMT trip. Her VR success as a DJ has even led her to play physical shows in Japan, although she was not the headliner. “My life has been expanded in ways that I can hardly relate to you,” she says, “all because of VR and how it brings all these different, immensely creative people together.”

Luna, a VR raver from the Netherlands, was suffering from poor mental health, unemployed, and socially alienated when she first went on VRChat at the age of 19 in 2022. “I was really depressed,” she recalls. “I didn't have work. I didn't have real friends. I was stuck at home.” But, like many before her, discovering raving changed everything. “It was like a way to experience new things, new worlds,” she says. “I loved it instantly.” She has partied so hard from her living room that her neighbors have complained. “I can dance quite wildly.”

Just like she would in the physical world, Luna developed an entire group of friends from VR rave encounters. They now pre-drink together before heading out at the weekends in VR, and sometimes they even take MDMA as a group, from their individual silos. Her first trip came in her first few months VR raving, when a friend of hers in Australia said she was going to take the euphoria-inducing drug, and fellow raver Benji, who also lives in the Netherlands, offered to mail a dose of a legal version of MDMA to Luna’s house. Later, at an in-person rave organized by a VR club, she connected with Benji; they’ve now been a couple for two and a half years, and he goes on VR far less.

But others get hooked on the platform’s rave scene, even though the experience cannot fully replicate the neurochemical correlates of a real rave, says Maria Balaet, a research associate in the department of neuroimaging studies at Imperial College London. Prolonged drug use in VR could also amplify sensory overload and cognitive fatigue, raising the risk of dissociation and having a bad trip, she warns. “Having a bad trip in VR is probably worse than a bad trip outside of VR, because once one comes out of the VR environment their body and mind needs to readjust to the world too, and that is taxing in addition to the bad trip itself.” She adds that drug use in VR could bring about a “false outward experience,” in which an individual has an inner experience in an artificially designed context. “I am not sure how long one can stay in this state without feeling disconnected or disoriented,” Balaet cautions.

Benji and Luna first connected romantically in person, but sometimes one thing can lead to another on VRChat—with or without drugs. Through the use of VR rooms and custom avatars with adult capabilities, clothing can be removed and certain “gestures” can be performed to simulate sex. The explicit phenomenon, tucked away in private metaverse spaces, has spawned whole categories of pornographic videos on adult websites, where VR users record themselves having sex. “When people engage in ERP [erotic role-play], they typically pick out an avatar to dress the part,” according to an explainer video on how people “do it” in VRChat. “There’s special physics for body parts that can be added to avatars, as well as ‘collision,’ so that other users can interact with them.” This is against VRChat’s terms of service that prohibit creating pornographic content, and these sorts of avatars should be swiftly banned if they are active in a public world.

Heelix’s avatar is a young female anime character, and he describes how loneliness led him to find solace in VR, where he plays shows as a DJ. “All of my friends are old, and they don’t go clubbing anymore,” he says. On the occasions he has gone out by himself he has felt conscious of his greying hair and growing belly. “But here in VR I know a lot of people,” he says. “It's much easier.” Plus, “the way home is very short,” and en route he can even stop by places like one of VRChat’s sex-positive clubs, PSHQ—originally known as Pussy Squad Headquarters—where as many as 20 lap dancers can be tipped during exotic dance nights, and attendees can slope off to a motel area for what the club describes as “NSFW activities.”

Some erotic dancers, like Lichbait, have even developed popular online personas and are profiting from subscriptions, like a VR OnlyFans. PSHQ, according to its creator DeityAnubis, who did not want to be named for privacy reasons, is “a sexually positive adult space with a focus on music. The music, the dancing, the lighting, the atmosphere, the sense of community, the LGBTQ safe space, those are the important parts of PSHQ and make us what we are.”

In January, VRChat introduced age verification on the platform to ensure children were not accessing certain adult spaces, after a BBC investigation found children were able to enter VR strip clubs and could be cajoled into performing virtual sex acts. Zeus Tipado, a PhD candidate researching neuroscience at the University of Maastricht, describes VR as a mammoth social experiment, but it's one that he has increasing concerns about. Some frequent users get progressively less interested in base reality, to a far greater extent than traditional gamers, he warns. The site’s anonymity also provides cover for racist or bigoted behavior.

During one of his forays into VRChat, Tipado says, he was part of a group invited into a man’s apartment. “It was a vibey apartment,” Tipado recalls. “Everyone was watching Power Rangers. I found a nice place to sit down on the sofa, and then this guy comes up in front of everybody and tells people to take off their clothes.” Nobody took off their virtual clothes, and they were soon kicked out of his apartment for failing to comply with the request.

User safety is a top priority, a VRChat spokesperson tells WIRED, and the platform has provided users with a number of tools to protect themselves, such as making it easy to block and report others. “When our trust and safety team receives a report, they have the ability to use metadata and logs to track down and ban problematic users,” they said.

While many might assume that all VR users are on a quest to escape reality, sometimes the parties act as a gateway to live events.

Promoter James Campbell, who runs the popular Shelter map, has held events in New York, San Diego, and Los Angeles playing dubstep, bass, and other electronic music genres to bring VR ravers together.

At Shelter’s first party, in New York, attended by more than 250 people in May 2022 at the now-closed VRWorld in Midtown Manhattan, he says countless people came up to him and said it was their first ever actual rave, telling him: “I didn’t think I’d ever have the confidence to come to a show.”