After my last rave experience I was eager to get out to another. A few weeks later I found the opportunity to do so. I gathered three of my good friends and we headed out for an evening of dancing.

I had hoped to find some X at this rave, to see what the rave experience was like in that state. However, this rave was fairly small, and if anyone was selling anything, I was unable to ascertain it. Luckily, I had brought along two hits of acid as a fall back plan and after deciding I wasn't going to find any X I took my hits.

As I said this was a smallish rave. There weren't a huge amount of people there and there were even fewer people dancing. The DJ that was on wasn't all that great, but even so, there was remarkably little dancing going on. Another DJ came on after a bit and before long no one was dancing. I felt bad for the guy, and the acid was starting to roll so I grabbed one of my friends and pulled her onto the dance floor with me, hoping to start a trend.

As we started dancing a few others joined in, and before long we were having a pretty good time. Dancing felt great, as usual. Once things started going I went back and grabbed my other two companions and pulled them out to dance. As usual, I began tiring after a short period of time, but this time I just pushed on, dancing through my exhaustion.

After about forty minutes of dancing my body demanded a break. I went and got a drink of water and sat down to chill out. I closed my eyes to do a trip check and was astounded by the degree of movement and color I found behind my eyelids. I was tripping harder than I had expected on two hits! Electric patterns were weaving in and through one another in bright, vibrant colors. They moved in a most magical way, pushed along by the beat.

A new DJ came on and threw down a huge beat. I literally could not stay seated. I had to get up and dance again, even though my few minutes of rest hadn't even allowed me to catch my breath properly. I rushed down to the dance floor and began moving to the beat.

Like my last experience, I had a bit of trouble feeling completely merged with the experience. It was like I was a bit tight, or a step removed from the experience. This is a problem I often have, feeling more the observer than a participant in the action. It is one of the things I am currently working on with the help of entheogens.

As I danced I was thinking about the role of dancing in religion. For hundreds of thousands of years, in many different cultures, dancing has been a way to get closer to the divine. It seems to me that for many people (myself included) the rave experience is a modern day example of this. As I was having these thoughts, I was feeling more and more in tune with the beat. I closed my eyes and sort of gave myself up to the beat (difficult to explain). As I did this I had a vision of this immense plant with vines or roots extending down into the being of the ravers around me. As I became more involved with this vision and the relentless beat I left my body and ego behind and found myself (although at this point there was no self) floating, a disembodied point of consciousness floating in a psychedelic universe. I stayed in this incredible, ecstatic state for a minute or more before opening my eyes to find myself back in my body which apparently had been dancing the entire time. I was thrilled by the experience, one of my more involving OBEs (out of body experiences).

I have had similar experiences while dancing on psychedelics (specifically, 2CB) but never with that degree of ego loss. In my previous experience I knew I was a human, dancing with eyes closed. I was even worried I might fall over or bump into someone else. In this case, there was no knowledge or conception of existence on an earthly plain until I opened my eyes. I was able to do this again three or four more times that evening. Each time was a sort of divine gift, a merging with the Real.

Around 4:00 a.m. I left to go get something to eat. Out on the early morning streets I noticed I was still tripping fairly hard, five hours after liftoff. I felt great, very positive and happy. Everything around me had a sort of psychedelic edge, or gleam to it. I navigated the grocery store with ease and headed back to the venue, eating as I walked. About halfway back I ran into two of my companions who had decided to leave. I convinced them to return with me for some more dancing. When we arrived, my roommate was just leaving. We all stood outside and talked, trying to decide whether to leave or stay. Finally, my roommate and I decided to go back in and our other two friends decided to head home.

Back inside I headed for the dance floor immediately. However, the time I spent walking around outside and/or the food I ate had served to ground me, or at least change the tone of the trip considerably. I didn't feel into the music, and I was suddenly acutely aware of my exhaustion. I was tired and sore and I just couldn't find the groove. After a minute or two, I found my roommate and we headed home.

We met up with our other friends on the way home. When we got there we sat around and talked about our respective experiences while we smoked some cannabis. As usual, the pot sort of kicked my trip back in while taking the edge off. After I got high the corners of the room started to vibrate and flow into one another. I lit some incense and sat for close to an hour watching the patterns it made in the air. I stayed up until 7:00 a.m. or so and headed for bed to listen to the Cure and try to sleep.

I slept fairly well, awaking around noon for an hour (just long enough to eat something) and then again at 3:00 p.m. or so for the day. I was still a bit tired and fairly sore, but other than that I felt excellent.

Except for a few brief periods of rest to catch my breath and drink water, I had danced more or less nonstop for about four hours. I pushed my body to the brink of exhaustion and beyond, almost to the point of collapse. I think that helped bring about my ego-loss/ecstasy experience. I tripped considerably harder on two hits than I anticipated, which goes to show that even for an experienced psychonaut it is difficult to know what you will get out of a given trip.