The festival, ah yes three days of music, peace, and harmony, well at least that's what they officially say, in reality it's more like music, peace, and as many drugs as you can cram into one weekend. It was unbelievable the availability of every single drug under the sun, as soon as we had set up our tent and sat down the first kid we saw walked right up to us and asked if we needed any L (as in LSD), literally we had been there for maybe ten to fifteen minutes, and that was the setting for the rest of the weekend, people walking through the rows of tents offering up everything from headies (weed) to oxys to ecstasy to drugs I had never even heard of before (Moon Rocks sorry for the forum link but it was the best description I could find) literally anything you could smoke, snort, or ingest you could buy, we even had one kid offer up some PCP which I thought had been totally phased out of the drug world. Now most of the drugs sold were pretty commonplace for the festival atmosphere and were expected to be sold in mass quantities as everyone and I do mean everyone at the show was on drugs, well except for the Disco Buddhas, which was a small tent at the back of the main stage ground for "clean and sober fans of the Disco Biscuits" which had at most six people inside of it, six out of the roughly 30,000 people who showed up were clean and sober, walking by this tent prompted Peter to retort that they were probably on probation, which was probably true. Anyways I am getting lost much like the many people I saw late at night, some passed out in other people's tents, and some just harassing Peter and telling him that because he touched the glowing orange crystal, he was going to hell (we saw no such crystal). Regardless of the drugs the festival was a beautiful place with an atmosphere second to none, when I said that it was full of peace and harmony I seriously meant it, not a single fight happened where we could see, not even an argument or shouting match it was simply incredible and beautiful as I totally found the meaning and an understanding of the whole life. Sitting in the field on the second day Peter and I found ourselves surrounded by some unforgettable characters, there was the girl painted like a cat with her multicolored leggings, the small hippie girl with her transformation posse, who changed from hippies to nightlife fiery pink haired dancers right before our eyes, there was the dirty blond hula hoop dancer, who seemed to inch closer and closer to us with each passing band, and the merry group of dancers who had sacks filled with balls that they swung to the rhythmic beats of Shpongle Live. Each unforgettable in their own way and each beautiful in the spirit of the show, it was like watching my own personal Woodstock, and I totally understood the whole spirit of the thing, as everyone found their individual rhythm that somehow moved in unison with everyone else's. But along with the beauty of the dance there was the rain and with the rain came the crashing end to the dream, which then became the nightmare. As the "war paint" washed off of faces I started noticing the toll that the drugs and sun had taken on the people I had marveled at not an hour before, the girl with the cat paint dancing alone no longer danced in her own beautiful rhythm but instead in her drug induced stupor, and when she smiled I noticed she was missing a considerable amount of teeth and those she still had were brown or black seemingly rotting from her mouth. As the rain intensified and the lightning came over head people began racing back to their camp sites and the blue haired hippie dancer no longer looked like he was full of life and energy but instead was running on nothing short of meth as his face was blotchy and his hair dye ran down his neck. The mud ruined the solid footing and in the pitch darkness cast overhead the throngs of walkers looked more like a hoard of zombies in search of brains. The only constant things were the increasing flow of drugs and the music, as the bass beats continued to push a dance through the bodies of all and no matter how much I tried I couldn't stop bobbing my head and dancing as if pulled by some imaginary force. Amazingly, people continued to purchase more and more drugs piling this on top of that hoping to score some "good" drugs as everyone complained that the amount of bunk drugs had increased over last year, sad to see so many people so desperate to score something that it really didn't even matter what they were buying, or worse finding as when every band stopped and people returned either to their camp or to the next stage there was always a small wave of people searching the grounds for fallen bags or loose pills, anything to get them high. Even the campers directly next to us fell into the whole scene, as I watched one proclaim the first night that he only wanted to drink beers, smoke weed, and maybe find some mushrooms. By the end of that first night he was talking about how the next day he was going to try acid, and by nightfall I heard someone convince him to try some Special K, and as he asked about it his friends reassured him that it was nothing, just don't bump it like you would molly or blow, he was fully into the scene and I fear that for people like him once you are in there is no turning back.
With the morning came the sun again, and all was seemingly normal once again, back to the brilliant beautiful atmosphere, but I knew better. It was and is a beautiful scene to see that many people living in harmony and unison but the toll it takes on one's body to live in such a manner is unforgettable and will forever remain etched into my mind.
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