Due to a chance meeting online, I was invited to attend a rave as I was passing through Austin, Texas. As I am always eager to meet people from the online visionary community, I felt it was an opportunity not to be missed. I brought along a friend of mine who lived in the area.

The guy whose acquaintance I had made was one of the promoters of the rave. I arrived early and we had a chance to talk. We realized that we had some mutual acquaintances in another state, which struck me as a synchronocity. Our chance meeting began to seem synchronous as well once I gave it more thought.

People start to arrive an hour or two later, and I was able to meet a number of people from the entheogenic community. These people were all fascinating and I was quite happy to have this opportunity to discuss various aspects of visionary experience with them. We had dinner and waited for the restaurant that was next door to close. At around 11 pm it did, and the fun began.

The guy I'd met, C, offered me and my friend a drop of liquid. At this time it had been eight months since I had tripped and I was somewhat nervous, but I accepted, knowing I was in good company, and that one hit was unlikely to be mind blowing. My friend did the same.

A large screen divided the room, onto which was being projected the most marvelous computer animation. Pounding Goa music poured from the speakers and people started to dance. I sat back quietly and eagerly awaited the onset of my dose of acid.

Before long, the body effects were apparent. A slight tightness in my chest, an overall alert feeling, and then, slight visual distortions. I sat and watched the acid creep up on me as I discussed various aspects of visionary experience with my cohorts.

One of the people I had just met was one of the DJs, and he left to go do a set. By now, the acid had me firmly in its grip. I closed my eyes to do an "eyelid movie" check and found the familiar flowing, jagged, morphing fractalscape, with its characteristicly (for me, anyway) hypersaturated colors.

At that point, as I was starting into the peak of the experience, my neighbors brought out some Nitrous balloons. They offered me one and I accepted. I had never tried nitrous before, so I wasn't quite sure what technique might be involved. I clumsily inhaled half of the balloon they give me, but failed to hold it, getting only trace effects. One of the other people I'd met earlier, T, appeared and asked me if I had had nitrous before. I told him I hadn't, and he gave me instructions (inhale deeply, hold as long as possible). I did this with the remainder of the balloon and got substantially more effect.

The nitrous seemed to launch my trip, as everything became a bit more intense. I began to smile and then to laugh and T remarked "That's why they call it laughing gas" A few minutes later I was handed another balloon and I managed to get this one down without losing any. Suddenly I'm tripping balls. The room rushed in to meet me and then rebounded back into place, over and over. People all around me are dancing, yelling, getting off. I had a flash of insight into the rave phenomena as a shamanic ritual. I had read about that possibility before, but at that moment, I simply felt it. It wasn't an intellectual realization so much as a visceral one.

T had mentioned that with nitrous, there was a sort of breakthrough point. He told me I'd be "wowed" if I got there. A short while later, more balloons were handed out and I was given my third balloon of the night. I successfully inhaled the whole balloon in two large inhalations. As I held the second hit with eyes closed, the world split into four discrete channels, which I was watching with eyes closed as they streamed into me. Even with closed eyes I felt I could see perfectly, but what I was seeing wasn't normal. I had the knowledge that I was human and that I had just hit a balloon, then that was ripped away as the world collapsed to one overwhelming wave of green and purple, and I was simply a disembodied eye floating in the void, vibrating on the carrier wave of the universe. Total ego destruction in the blink of an eye. This lasted an eternity (maybe 15 seconds? a minute at the outside?)until my awareness slowly reformed itself. As I opened my eyes I said "Wow".

I sat, awed by that experience for at least ten minutes. I marveled at the ease with which my ego was melted down to nothing. It was definitely the most painless ego death I had ever encountered. T returned and I told him about my experience, which led into more discussion of the topic and related issues. I was totally happy, all my earlier nervousness washed away. I sat back to enjoy the ride.

The rest of the night I spent lounging on some pillows watching the awesome computer animation play over the screen in front of me. At one point, a girl I had been briefly introduced to came over and sat near me. She seemed to be having a difficult time of the trip, but I wasn't sure what to say to help her feel comfortable, so I just tried to smile and give off good energy.

The guy I'd come with, A, came over and we talked for a bit about personality archetypes. Some of the people there reminded him of folks from "back home" and he was curious about my observations on this phenomena. We sat and discussed this for a while. T came over again and we talked organic vs synthetic psychedelics, bad trips, juggling and Burning Man. Another guy, J, had me put on a pair of diffraction glasses and did an awesome dance with a pair of light sticks in front of me.

The night wound down, and before too long, T took me and my companion home. We attempted to sleep for a short time, then got up and talked for a few hours as the sun finished coming up.

This was an excellent acid trip and it really reminded me of the importance of setting on visionary experience. Although I was on a relatively low dose (certainly lower than many I have taken) it was quite intense, due to pounding Goa, tripped out computer animation, and interesting traveling companions. The addition of the nitrous certainly helped a bit too. All in all, it was a great night and a great trip.