Okay its been a week or so now, so I finally feel like I can write this one, and I just won't share it directly to Facebook since this is going to get a little bit out there.
Let's just say this girl, we'll call her Sabrine, who was most definitely just someone I know, had a very peculiar new years experience.
And I feel like I should tell it so that nobody else ends up having to follow in her footsteps.
What the hell, lets even see if I can write it like its a story.
This is going to be disjointed and inaccurate, recollections of it are hazy, and I don't feel like pushing her to work it out.
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Her day had been frantic and full of energy, trying to keep a music festival on track and somewhat functional requires a lot of people doing exactly what they need to be and at exactly the right moments.
So she had been doing her best to be there, but the time was rapidly approaching where she could at least temporarily become just another party goer for New Years Eve.
The last hours of her gate shift were a blur of hasty makeup application and drunken punters, casual chats while checking tickets, and chasing after people who couldn't follow directions and would disappear into the crowd before check-in was even complete.
It was just after 10PM when she finally escaped back to her friends campsite, just three exhausted ladies keenly looking forward to cute outfits and the ingestion of some substances to enhance the evening.
I am absolutely certain at least this step of her evening was dignified, so as they changed their outfits and she found the small strips of LSD she had acquired in the days leading up to the festival.
They were the off cuts from a large sheet of blotter, the very edges, and so the actual quality and doses were a somewhat unknown. And for some reason she had in her head that at the absolute worst there would be five doses worth. So she swallowed it all.
Finally outfits were on, makeup was finished, and this squad of lunatics were somewhat ready to face the world and listen to some music.
And then it happened... it was not the usual slow build up of a slightly energised and anxious body, the subtle blurring of vision that takes an hour or two to really turn into a trip. It was a kick to the face of colour, and sound. And it happened in minutes. She panicked. This was far too much for this soon.
Her friends had taken various other types of LSD and were both also remarking about how quickly it had happened, but they seemed fairly comfortable with their progression.
Sabrine knew that this was going to get a LOT worse, the thought crossed her mind to find some benzos now and terminate it before it could get there. The last sober and sensible thoughts she would have for the next twelve hours, and it wouldn't be until much later that she realised she should have followed that instinct.
But no... you can't kill it before you have at least enjoyed it a little right?
"What time is it"
"11:50"
"Shit we have to go, its almost midnight, come on Sabs"
Panic... the idea of being amongst all that light and colour was terrifying, the concept of walking enough to get there when the physical world kept blinking out.
"I don't think I can... I really don't"
"Yes you can, you have to, we came here for New Years"
"I don't think I actually can though"
"We'll fucking carry you if we have to bitch"
"You might actually have to...I just can't"
And with that they each took one of her arms, and guided her to the exit of the tent, past the treacherous tent strings and out into the world.
She had the overwhelming desire for sunglasses even in the pitch dark, as protection from the inevitable light, but also so that nobody could see how off planet she was...
There were other people everywhere, apparently everyone had the same idea.
Miraculously they were at the first bridge... the arms around her were gone, but she made her way across and actually almost felt like she was in charge of herself for a moment.
The wall of sound hit her like a slap to the face, and she could see the glow of the light across the next bridge... along the path there were soft lantern-y lights, and the whole scene looked very tropical like a nice lagoon. So she stopped.... unsure if she could deal with the actual stage area ahead of this, and enjoying the cuteness of this spot.
They came back and found her.
"Bitch we have to go we are going to miss it"
She could have sworn it was already past midnight, since a bunch of people nearby had stopped to say happy new year and hug. But apparently not.
"Oh, didn't it already happen?"
"Shit.... did it? WHAT THE FUCK!"
"Well I guess, um happy new year then..."
Hugs... always nice, until your entire body feels like its made of some kind of glowing liquid.
And then Heather checked the time... 11:59....so stroke of midnight round two!
They walked, though she had no idea how, to the dance floor of the party.. it was a sea of people, noise, light, and this was still in the first hour... there were so many feelings and distractions, it was like being immersed in the entire crowds existence all at once but individually.
It was everything she expected and more, her friends were spinning fire on the stage, it was just a blur of flame and movement to some extremely loud music.
Her bones were vibrating against the glowing liquid of her body.
And she had to keep looking away from the blinding flames.
She followed her friends... they bumped into various people she knew, but was barely capable of saying hello to, she felt like she was scaring them simply by being there. She felt like she was scaring herself just by being there too. She felt sorry.
Too many sensations occurring simultaneously.... panic.
"Sabs, shall we go to the Chai tent?"
She had no idea what that meant but she followed anyway...
There were moments of feeling quite together, and cute in her floaty dress and cute sparkling shoes.
Back across the bridge and its Gilligan's Island vibe... a little quicker than she'd like, over the slightly more troll vibes second bridge.... and a hard right into the Chai Tent/Safe Zone.
Stepping into that space felt surreal, its an enormous black tent, with a few sketchy pillows to lie on and some provisions for chai tea making and strangely enough a bunch of condoms, she worried about the people who come to safe zone to fuck... hopefully the condoms were a takeaway concept.
She lay down, closed her eyes, and she felt everything slipping away...
The concept of self, the knowledge that she was lying on a pillow, the tent, and even her friends... it all floated in and out of her mind as she lay disconnected from it all and thinking.
The void was not empty... it was like her thoughts were taking physical form only temporarily and then disintegrating into molecules and blowing away on some form of theoretical wind.
She had no body, and no name here. Just an observer watching as the universe unfurled itself in this unknown space.
"Sabs, are you okay?"... the real world came rushing back like a sharp breath in.
"No" she replied. And the exhale returned her to the other universe.
"What can we do to help you?"... inhale
"I don't know... I don't think anything"... exhale
The girls were flailing about, being surprised by the fact that they could stand, and then Rose managed to clip her nose on the edge of a hard pallet that one of the pillows was sitting on... who the fuck uses a hard surface in a safe room she thought...inhale
Commotion... exhale...
Nothingness. No molecules. No Sabrine.
The void was darkness this time, the dimness of the tent had stripped it of all the shifting colour.
The thought molecules were more like the exhales of her cigarette earlier, vaporous and drifting slowly apart and into the darkness.
Inhale... Rose was gone to fix her bleeding nose, Heather was asking if some other people could also come inside to chill out. She thought that might be okay...
Exhale... fuck... other people, and their energy, what if they are really freaking out, what if she has to try and talk to them, what if they are angry, what if... what if... what if.....
Inhale... she stood up and walked out of the tent and started putting on her shoes, much to the surprise of Heather who had just told people we were fine with them coming in.
Her shoes sparkled in the moonlight, she struggled to get them on her feet.
And eventually Rose came back, and decided she would change her outfit a little, so they walked back to their campsite.
The landscape on that walk felt completely different than it had just ten minutes earlier, it felt twisted and alien, like it stretched out forever but her legs were taking giant strides across it.
Depth perception and spatial awareness were just words at this point, words that meant nothing to her anymore.
Finally, they made it back to the camp... she lay down... and returned to her other universe.
They started talking amongst themselves, she wasn't really following the words, she was drifting in and out of here and there.
They laughed and joked as people tend to in this state, but she wasn't in that state.
It all sounded so loud, and so chaotic, it shook through the other universe she was still floating in.
It burst through the thought molecules, smashing them away rather than drifting off on a breeze.
"Shhh", she attempted.
Which just invoked even more raucous laughter.
This went on for some time, it might have been weeks for all she knew at that point, but the other universe was less serene now.
Every time she tried a "Shhh" they would laugh more, so she learned to not say it, she felt the "Shhh" inside her soul aching to get out but knowing it would make it worse. It hurt.
She felt like she had become a monk that had taken a vow of silence to try and make it better.
As the laughter and shenanigans continued she tried desperately to get her friends to at least tone it down a little, she heard neighbours in other tents yelling for them to shut up.
A few tents away she heard a lady say "I am going to get up and deck that bitch in a minute" and her partner quickly ask her to calm down.
The tension, aggression, and the way the noise was shattering her strange bubble universe forced her to try and seek solace somewhere else, she somehow gathered herself up and walked outside.
The real world was there briefly, it was completely alien and incomprehensible but it was there.
She staggered forward looking for a quiet place, she stood and looked at the stars like brilliant diamonds covered in clouds that looked like they were made of silk.
It felt good to breathe the cool air, she found a log to sit on near an old campfire and managed to light a cigarette. Cigarette lighters have a tendency under these conditions to stop emitting flame in her mind, instead they rather spit out a red coloured pixel which you must catch on the end of your cigarette.
She enjoyed the smoke in her lungs, and watched it slowly drift away as she exhaled... it felt like you could see it forever as it disappeared into the night.
"SABS!" a voice yelled....
"Shuuuuuuuuut up!" another replied.
Somehow she managed to find her phone... it's screen burst into life, spewing colours and light in every direction. 1:23AM
How the fuck... how had so little time elapsed, how was she in this bad of a state.
Her friends appeared out of the darkness, but she was still unable to talk, her vow of silence had not yet worn off, it was like the only thing she needed in the world was complete silence.
She tried to smile, and waved them onwards.... they looked confused... but they walked away.
She sat there for some time, people drifting in and out to check on her, just floating between universes and staring at the stars. It was getting cold, and she realised she had been here alone for too long.
And so she headed back to the dance floor... to try and find her friends.
Her makeup felt smudged, her fake lashes felt as though they were barely holding on, she was a mess in every sense of the word.
The walk was different every time, as though the world was reconfiguring around her every time she turned around, and yet inexplicably she found herself back at the fire dancing area with her friends.
"Should we find somewhere to sit?"
She fetched herself some water from the bar tent, struggling to comprehend the various sources of water and cups available to her.
She had decided that maybe some MDMA would help ease her out of this manic incomprehensible monster of a human she had become, scrambling in the pocket of her jacket where she had kept it, and struggling to get it into her mouth. She swallowed them, and tried to follow her friends.
They walked slowly up the steep hill, trying to find a place to rest and watch the fire dancers from a safer distance, and enjoy the music without being deafened. But there was no sanctuary, only more hill.
They reached the top of the hill, the tree they sat under was dropping leaves which she could have sworn were a swarm of bees, that she tried frantically to bat away. She felt super exposed and visible, like people could be watching their frantic states perched in a shrubbery.
There was no calm. Only thousands of sources of stimulation slamming into her at once, the relative safety of the other universe actually felt preferable at this point. At least there were no bees there.
She pulled the hood up on her bathrobe, attempting to block some things out, to lower the sensory volume. It didn't work. She flattened out her dress underneath her, trying to make sure it was not getting muddy or wet.
"Do you need to go somewhere else?"
"I don't know... I want to listen to the music, I want grass, and stars, and I don't know... I want a meadow" she said softly.
"What the fuck... a meadow?"
"Yeah y'know a serene patch of flat grass, farmlands, open spaces, I don't know... a fucking meadow"
The girls stood up...
Sabrine stood and almost fell face first down the hill, the girls edged their way carefully down.
And somehow in a miracle of self assured ridiculousness she almost skipped down the treacherous slope, past the people sitting by the fire pit and flounced her way through the crowd on the dance floor.
And so they started walking back toward the music, and remembered the Yoga tent which sits beside a stream, and near a bridge with a nice big flat patch of grass.
She immediately lay down, and glared at the silken clouds for how much they were obscuring her view of the stars. She definitely couldn't really see them, but she absolutely could see them in those moments. Her friends were wandering around again, she wasn't quite aware doing what, but she was finally happy temporarily.
The music was nice, it was all quite funky and had a lot of attitude so she just lay there with her knees up bouncing her feet and loving the whole universe for the first time in a very long time.
Exhale.... the other universe was a bright candy coloured world now, all lavish pastels and soft clouds of imagination. Everything was sparkling and the colours were shifting in time with the music which she was still aware of.
Inhale...
"Hey Sabs, Rose wants to go somewhere, are you going to be okay?"
"Sure"
Exhale...
She floated for so long... blissful and happy.
Thinking about all of the wonderful people she had met the past few days, thinking about the year ahead, thinking about the people she loved.
Sometime later...Inhale...
Slow drops of rain, darkness, her friends had gone somewhere and suddenly she became profoundly aware of how vulnerable she was. Her dress had slid up because she had her knees up, she was lying on the damp ground, still not really aware of where she was a lot of the time.
And there were wasted men walking past constantly in full view of her, and so she was in full view of them. Panic.
What could she even do if one of them came and caused her any trouble, words like rape, stabbed, and haemorrhage floated through her head. Panic AND dread.
She stood shakily, and rearranged her clothes... unsure where to go next, would they have gone back to the dance floor? to the camp site? She had no idea... she headed for the dance floor, security giving her a slightly concerned look as she floated back over the bridges.
At the fire dancing area she saw some people she knew, tried to ask them where Rose had gone, tried to ask them how their night was going, but they all just seemed so distressed by her that she couldn't stay long.
God, what do you do when you are scared, and other people seem scared of you.
She remembered her time on the log, four hundred years ago, a younger more at peace Sabrine.
The walk back was more casual, she floated, she skipped and she flounced her way back to the log.
And once there managed to check her phone, 3:17AM...she lit another cigarette and took a deep breath.
The rain had eased to a slight mist, she stared at the sky which was just a sheet of rippling clouds now.
Groups of people walking back to the campsites, and she still had her intense feelings of vulnerability, a group of men stopped to ask if she was okay, she said she was fine, and one of them had that familiar look of shock and possible outrage...."Is that a dude?"
Thankfully his friends quickly grabbed him, and dragged him away further into the camp sites.
She managed to find her phone, and message her friends...
AT MY LOG, NOT LOVING BEING ALONE, CREEPY WASTED FUCKERS EVERYWHERE.
She lay down on the grass and leaned against the log, trying to make herself smaller, and less visible.
Soon enough her friends arrived, and the world felt much better again, they lay there and she played some music to try and soothe their fragile little minds.
She found they could talk again, she was finally at that fun stage of an acid trip where you can talk absolute nonsense and laugh your foolish asses off, she no longer wanted to "Shhh" she just wanted to explain why her night had been so insanely hard.
Rose disappeared back to the campsite and bought back her gigantic Bluetooth speaker, and suddenly it was a party within a party by her log, a soothing girly vocal psytrance sub-party. Which made her immediately feel a million times better.
Random people stopped to say hi and listen along with them for a bit. And eventually a little after 5AM they decided they had been civil enough keeping the noise away from their campsite, they walked home... and it felt amazing to finally be somewhere away from it all, safe, warm, and able to relax.
Sabrine had refused to get out of her cute dress all night, through cold, wet, muddy, and generally dishevelled states it was still on. And damn if it wasn't staying on, she fetched blankets and some pyjama bottoms and made herself a nest.
Eventually the friends and neighbours found their impromptu chill out party, and as the morning started she was surrounded by all kinds of people and in the midst of numerous amazing conversations with people. Life stories were exchanged, jokes were had, all of those amazing things that happen when the MDMA takes over from the trip.
Slowly their guests drifted away to their beds, or to find other people and check on them, and she was left with her friends who were also floating in their own universes.
Things felt relatively normal again, but only from her perspective, for any normal person this was still definitely more fluid and strange than you'd call normal.
he rain on the roof of the tent slid down the canvas looking like delicious watercolour paintings...she sipped some nitrous oxide and felt the way it shifted the tone of the music, and intensified the visual effect of the acid briefly... it felt nice... she sipped again.
THE END (well the end of the most interesting pieces, the silly bitch went on to do several more days of this foolish nonsense, but those are stories for another time)
