Raving Is A Lifestyle Essays - Drug Culture, Electronic Music

Raving Is A Lifestyle Raving Is a Lifestyle. One of the most rapidly expanding scenes in the world is raving. The dictionary defines Rave as To utter in madness or frenzy; to say wildly; as, to rave nonsense, which makes you wonder why raves were ever called raves to begin with, unless of course you have been to one. I will never forget my first experience at a rave. Media portrays Raves as cesspools of filth, sex and drugs, so naturally I was very nervous about attending my first party. We sit in a circle inside the party with the lights and music assailing my senses and take out the pills. I stare at mine and sweat nervously. I have never really done drugs before, and I am going to put a pill in my mouth that someone that I do not know has manufactured in their basement. Little did I know that this was a common theme in the scene, quality control for basement pharmaceuticals is a difficult thing. I down the ecstasy and wait nervously for some thing to happen to feel something that had been extensively described to me, but for which I still had no idea what to expect for words can do it no justice. After forty minutes, I start to stand up to get some water, and before I know what is going on, I am already standing. It feels like I have no joints in my body, and everything is fluid. My mind is rushing and I let this sense of pure energy, goodwill and friendliness wash over my body. I feel the need for something different and wander off to make some new friends. I sit to talk to a beautiful girl by a pillar. Normally, I would be very shy and never dream of talking to a goddess such as she. Before I know what is going on, I am laying on my back with my head in her lap and she is massaging my face and neck gently, her touch so light that there seems to be almost no touch, just energy passing from her fingers to my face. I start to imagine strange worlds in my minds eye, seemingly rendered by computers full of brilliant glow-stick colors like fluorescent blues, purples and greens, and there are strange creatu res dancing and racing about. Now this total stranger is kissing me very very softly, and I am lost in space and time, I can no longer feel the floor beneath my body and the images I see are more vivid, the moment lasting for eternity. Soon we break apart and I give her a warm hug and we go our separate ways, her name already forgotten in the sensory overload that I am riding. Imaging five thousand people all experiencing the same thing that I did for eight hours and it is not hard to imagine how an entire culture could be based on these parties. When I finally came down from the ecstasy later the next day, everything I knew about the world seemed to have changed. From that day on, the grass has seemed greener, the breeze feels more soothing and I have noticed and appreciated more of the simple pleasures in life more than I ever had before. Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect. P.L.U.R. is the Raver code that, if everyone lived by, the world would be infinitely better than it is today. When you were young, your mom probably told you that to be accepted by everyone you had to be yourself. As time goes by, most people forget what it is to be their self and build up attitudes, fronts, and inhibitions that become their accepted personality. The Rave culture is so popular because when people are on ecstasy, which is by far the drug of choice for partiers, they have no up attitudes, fronts, and inhibitions and you get to see the raw personality underneath. Imagine a party with four to twenty thousand people oozing friendliness and goodwill, with no social inhibitions all dying to meet you, and it is not hard to see why this culture is so popular. Since my first party I have continued to rave