DOSE: T+ 0:00	5 tablets	oral	MDMA	(pill / tablet)
T+ 0:00	3 bowls	smoked	Cannabis	(plant material)
T+ 3:00	2 hits	oral	LSD	(blotter / tab)

BODY WEIGHT:

145 lb

I have referred to myself as a Psychonaut for nearly two years, as I believe that the hallucinations and ideas induced by psychedelics are closely related to hidden subconscious thoughts. Substances like LSD and psilocybin seem to reveal my imagination, which can be both beautiful and terrible.

I have been idolizing the rave scene for years, long before I even considered using drugs apart from weed. I've always enjoyed the spacey, digital quality of electronic music. I have composed many trance songs, and spent countless hours studying the work of psychedelic, trance, and drum & bass artists. I envied my friends who had been to several raves before me. For about two years I had very little motivation and money, and couldn't attend a rave until after I turned 18.

Shortly before my 17th birthday, I tried mushrooms with my brother (UnHoly) and my best friend (Jester). To make a long story short: We ate the shrooms, went for a walk, played with finger lights for the first time, meditated under a waterfall, went to Jester's house, and proceeded to trip like madmen until sunrise. It was beautiful and mind-blowing, and from that point on, we were in love with psychedelics. We took mushrooms several times in the following year, had a lot of fun and learned some interesting things about ourselves. The three of us gained a kind of psychic connection which we call The Unimind. We all became very close, more like brothers than friends.

I used to be very afraid of extacy, the drug that burns holes in the brain and dehydrates; and LSD, the drug that can trigger permanent psychosis. For the longest time I only used natural drugs, like weed and mushrooms. Having been exposed to light shows for the first time while tripping on mushrooms, we quickly and intensely appreciated the art form. We learned how to swing glowsticks on strings (poi, as most would call it), and really immersed ourselves in our training. We started hanging out with ravers who take extacy and LSD frequently, and that's when my perspective of these drugs began to change.

I observed my new friends rolling a few times, and it seemed like a fun experience. After a few months of hanging with this crowd, I bought two Red Bacardi pills from them on an impulse. I figured it can't hurt to try it once. Silly me...I rolled that night and loved it almost as much as mushrooms. The light shows had a whole new meaning to me, and techno music sounded even better than ever. We of The Unimind began taking extacy once a month, more or less, and rapidly learned a lot of poi technique.

Finally, after much curiosity and craving, we found a source who could sell us LSD. 4-20-08 was a very mind-blowing day for The Unimind. We each took three hits, and soon had the time of our lives. Acid brought us even closer together than mushrooms, packed a stronger body high than extacy, and allowed us to fucking SEE music! Trees whispered to us, colors swirled through walls, and animals approached and attempted to communicate with us. Acid was my new favorite. The dealer, however, was our only source for acid, and he got busted. There went our acid connect, so we went back to MDMA for our high.

I made it to my first rave, Nocturnal Festival '08. I rolled harder there then ever before, and felt I now understood the nature of party drugs. As it turns out, I was just beginning to scratch the surface.

=========================

My second rave scared the shit out of me, shattered my ego, and showed me a dark and sinister side of the rave culture. Upon arriving at the FuzyFest in Redlands, Jester and I bought 10 extacy pills. We consumed five apiece within 3 hours. I had never before taken more than two in one sitting, so naturally, I was in High Heaven. All the people were friendly and social, and so many people were blown away by our light shows. I felt happier than I remember feeling ever before, like that night could have lasted for eternity.

Five hours into the rave, Jester asked me, 'Do you want some acid?' Remembering the bliss of our first LSD experience, I gratefully accepted his offer. We couldn't get those paper tabs out of the foil quick enough, we were so excited! We dropped the tabs and went back to dancing in the crowd.

It didn't take long for that familiar acid trip to begin, accompanied by an intense party and the strongest roll I've ever experienced. Somebody brushed my body with a fuzzy duster, and with my eyes closed I felt myself floating through clouds. Everything around me began to resemble M.C. Escher patterns, and the tracers were unexplainably vivid. Jester and I performed a light show for a group of people unlike any light show we'd ever imagined. I am convinced that I projected my vision to these people, because the moves I performed were the simplest ones I know, but they looked like nothing I'd ever seen. Some of these people were moved to tears, nobody around us could look away. That is the last thing I remember before Jester and I became separated.

I blacked out for an unknown amount of time, finding myself in a completely different area of the rave. I didn't know anybody in this whole building aside from Jester, and at this point my trip was so intense that I couldn't navigate, see straight, or even speak without the comfort of the Unimind. I kept looking for Jester all around the rave, through each stage area and room, with no luck. What I did find was that everybody else in the rave was walking. It was like a highway of people, all in strange clothes, all with a longing look in their eyes, as though they too were searching for something. It seemed like everyone in the rave was searching, because they were all perpetually walking. Some were dancing, some were conjuring bizarre entities with their lights, but the greater majority of the people were just aimlessly walking.

I still hadn't found Jester. The music was becoming too much for me to handle. I decided to go outside and take a break from the music, and maybe even find Jester out there. I followed the assembly line of walking people until I reached the door to the outdoor smoking area. Four security guards were blocking the door, informing us in a very serious tone that the outside area was now closed. I was trapped in the place that was beginning to frighten me beyond all reason. By this point I had forgotten that I'd even taken acid. I couldn't understand why everyone's faces looked so grotesque, why the light shows appeared to be controlling the people who held the strings, why everything seemed so mechanical. I now identified this place as The Machine, and felt I could not trust anyone who was participating in the machine. It all felt like some kind of mind control facility, and I was convinced that this rave was a conspiracy. Nobody understood it but me, so I had to be very careful about who I talked to.

Several times, I found myself sitting in the most bizarre places, watching the people circulate on the conveyer belt without any idea that they were being brainwashed by the system. Most people avoided me, due to the look of agony on my face. One person approached me and fanned air at me with his shirt. The breeze was so shocking it snapped me back to reality for an instant. He smiled at me, and told me I should walk around, it might make me feel better. I took his advice, and after drifting along the assembly line for another half-hour, I Freaked out. I was in the Machine again, so easily tricked into following the crowd that I had lost the mission, I still hadn't found the only person in this myriad of people that I could trust. I listened to one other person and wound up brainwashed into the system again!

I sat down again, nearly crying, and tried to call Jester telepathically. It has worked for us before, but not consistently. I figured it was worth a try, easier than finding a needle in a hay stack. I tried and tried, but just didn't know what to do. I walked along the walls, in the outskirts of the traffic, and for some reason I was drawn toward a Dance Dance Revolution game. When I reached it, I found Jester on the other side. The first thing he said to me was 'We shouldn't have taken acid at a rave!'

He too had noticed many frightening peculiarities about this event, and wore a fearful expression on his face. He could not stop swinging his lights--it was as if he was being mechanically controlled, like the living entity in the light show forced him to carry on! I was now frightened of light shows, and every time I found myself instinctively swinging my own lights, I freaked out and cursed the machine for making me do its bidding.

Now don't get me wrong, there were many qualities of this trip that I enjoyed. The ceiling was undecidedly purple or green, and the music had a futuristic, sci-fi aspect to it. But I just could not accept the constant migration of the people. It was too organized, it was too perpetual, it just didn't seem like something a bunch of druggies could have designed. It had the vibe of a slaughter house, and by now all the people looked either frightened, phony, or deeply confused. People were beginning to get inside my head by now. In the midst of my attempt to identify what was happening to me, somebody five feet away from me uttered the words 'Bad Trip.' I was stunned. I turned to him and told him I was having a bad trip too, I had been stuck in the machine since time began and couldn't stop the conveyer belt. My rash assumptions seemed to have frightened him quite a bit, and he promptly left Jester and me alone in our riddle.

Jester looked at his clock; it was 5:15am, the rave should have ended fifteen minutes ago. We finally admitted to ourselves and each other that we could not handle this rave, and we followed the assembly line to the exit. We passed a line of security guards, who told us to hurry up, we were 'halting production.' That further convinced me that we had been in some kind of mind control slaughterhouse. There were cops outside, many people still looked lost or frightened, and the security guards wore grim expressions as they directed the assembly line of ravers out of the party. I thought I was going to be arrested for taking acid, and furthermore, everyone displayed symptoms of undead reanimation. I was surrounded by freakishly dressed zombies!

Jester and I now had two choices: wait 3 hours for the first morning bus to arrive, or walk 10 miles to get home...we couldn't handle the idea of sitting in front of a street for 3 hours on acid, so we walked home with many negative thoughts to keep us entertained. But the further we got from the rave, the calmer we began to feel. We agreed that the rave was more frightening than fun, and acid is not a wise drug to take at a rave. The sun rose as we walked home, and the trees and bushes melted in the most beautiful ways. The sky changed colors and the ground resembled spin art.

After idolizing the rave scene for such a long time, I never thought I would see it from such a perspective as this. I think it's just a money-making scheme, and I really do believe there is some form of mind control going on. I can never again look at a rave the way I used to. I will always remember the PLUR credo, but I will not let the system conform me.

Exp Year: 2008	ExpID: 74111
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Jul 27, 2010	Views: 20,594
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MDMA (3), LSD (2) : Combinations (3), Difficult Experiences (5), Rave / Dance Event (18)