After a short break to get over some sinus troubles I was ready to trip again. My usual group of friends and I headed for a nearby city to attend a rave. We were all taking either Ecstasy, acid, or both. I was taking LSD, two hits of liquid on candy.

After standing in line for about a half an hour we got inside. I took a few minutes to feel the place out before taking my two hits. Shortly after I took my acid, one of the featured DJs came on. This was Sandra Collins, one of the best trance DJs working today. She started into her set as the acid began swirling around my consciousness.

As the music got more and more intense I began tripping harder and harder. Each beat seemed to resonate in my head. I was a dancing fool. The venue was incredibly crowded, there was barely room to move, but I managed to dance anyway. It did make it hard for me to find my groove, but I continued to try.

The crowd was very into the music. Before long we were all moving more or less as one entity. Ms. Collins was playing an excellent set and the energy was very intense. By this time the acid was really working. As I headed into the peak, the lights were beginning to strobe and blur into one another, I was seeing trails off of every moving object, and when I closed my eyes, cartoonish landscapes sprung up and began twisting around themselves in a most lovely way.

My girlfriend showed up about halfway through the set. I offered her a hit of acid, she declined since she'd had a long day. When she found out I was tripping she seemed a little perturbed, but I didn't think much of it at the time. She and I embraced for a few minutes before I went back to dancing and she caught up with a few friends that were present.

The music just got more and more intense. The whole crowd was on its feet, trying to get as close to the music as possible, moving and twisting and jumping around. I was feeling great, heading into my peak and really into the music and the mood.

As she left the stage and the next performer was announced. This was Ritchie Hawtin, AKA Plastikman. He took the stage and began doing his thing. And what a thing it was.

He was performing on two turntables and a 909 drum machine. A wall of throbbing techno poured out of the speakers and infected the crowd. Immediately the dance floor surged to life, people swaying and jumping and grooving to the intense sounds he was making. I was just starting to peak.

My ego was dissolved and washed away into the sea of noise he was making. I felt I was on the verge of exploding. I could not stop dancing. I knew I was tired, I knew I was thirsty, but it didn't matter. Then I didn't know anything. It didn't matter anymore that it was so crowded I couldn't move six inches in any direction without bumping into someone, it didn't matter that I was way too hot, nothing mattered. I was swept up into the groove, the collective energy of a few thousand kids going to crazy to the most bad ass techno any of us had heard.

I've been to a lot of parties now. They are all fun, and many of them have an element of something more, a deeper spiritual feeling. This was head and shoulders above anything else I have ever experienced. The music and the mood combined and fed off each other to create a total frenzy. For me it was the consummation of what I knew parties to be capable of. I finally reached the point that had eluded me thus far. I was 100% engrossed by the music and dancing. I didn't think, I didn't exist. I lost myself in religious ecstasy along with a few hundred other people crammed in next to me. I didn't know or care where the crowd stopped and I began. I felt merged with the people around me as we fused momentarily into one metabeing. It was quite an incredible experience.

Sometime in the midst of this my girlfriend asked me when I wanted to leave. I was in a state of near religious ecstasy. Only my high dose mushroom experiences had ever approached the depth and purity of spiritual bliss I was feeling. I told her I didn't want to leave until it was over, which was clearly not what she wanted to hear. She disappeared back into the crowd and I went back to dancing without thinking too much of it.

She returned before long and we decided to go get some water. We spent ten or fifteen minutes negotiating the line to buy a bottle of water for $2. Finally we had it and we were able to return to the mayhem. I threw myself back into the middle of the crowd and fell back into my groove. I was tripping at about an average level for two hits of acid. In other circumstances it would have been less intense, but as I said, this was a rather unique party. By this time I was quite tired, but it didn't matter. I found energy I didn't know I had and threw it into moving my body to the stark, beautiful beats Plastikman was lying down.

Within a half hour she came back and asked for her keys, informing me she was leaving without me. This upset me, since we had been planning on spending the night together. I gave her keys to her and asked her to call me the next day. She didn't acknowledge me as she walked off, so I followed her. She was pretty upset with me, since she had wanted to hang out with me and felt that I wanted to party more than hang out with her. I was tripping too hard to rationally explain myself, so we ended up in a misunderstanding. Although I was having a good time, I was willing to leave with her. She told me to forget it, and we ended up arguing for the next half hour or forty five minutes about what we were going to do, and whether or not we were going to do it together.

I felt terrible. I really hadn't wanted to upset her, although I saw that I had been somewhat inconsiderate. I tried to apologize, to explain myself, but my ability to vocalize my thoughts and feelings was inhibited by the acid. We kept going back and forth about what we would do. I was willing to leave and finally managed to get that across to her, but by then she felt guilty that she was making me leave when I was clearly having a great time. She insisted I go dance some more and she would wait. I didn't think that was a good idea, and told her so. We argued about that...it was fairly miserable. It was one of our first major disagreements/misunderstandings, and I was having a hard time dealing with it effectively in my inebriated state. Finally we agreed to leave together, but she wasn't too happy with me by that time.

The trip home was awkward. Neither one of us said much as we drove down the highway. I wasn't tripping much by then, just enough residual effects to smear the headlights of oncoming cars and leave pretty trails. After we arrived at my house, we still didn't talk much. I felt bad about what had happened, since it was largely just a misunderstanding. We finally managed to work it out around eight in the morning. We talked for while afterwards and then fell asleep.

This was an interesting trip. The experience of ego loss and oneness with the crowd fulfilled my expectations of what a rave could be. I look forward to the next time I am privileged enough to participate in such an event. The performances of Sandra Collins and Plastikman were intense and wonderful and contributed heavily to the experience. I wish that I could have avoided the misunderstanding with my girlfriend, as it was quite unpleasant. I hope that it will be a long time before I get into another argument with someone I love while on a psychedelic! Not fun, to say the least. It was rather difficult to express myself while we were arguing. I felt at a loss for what to say, unable to explain myself. Luckily we were able to resolve it without it escalating into a major incident. Overall it was an excellent experience, and one that I feel I will value for a long time to come.