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[三江源]

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Edited July 19, 2014 by cat

[三江源]

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Edited June 23, 2014 by cat

[Flolfolil]

i started going to raves and doing drugs when i was 15 and it had a -huge- impact on my personality. At that point in my life i couldn't imagine conversation and emotional connection between people ever being easy, but here was this room full of hundreds of people smiling and hugging eachother and not really caring much about social standards. i loved it!

 

i started to become an idealist, thinking thoughts like "why can't it be like that all the time?" i became a self taught psychologist helping people work on their shyness by introducing them to various drugs. Everyone i gave some kind of drug to instantly came out of their shell and learned to be more enthusiastic about life.

 

i always wanted to be the one still hugging and talking when the drugs wore off, but sadly, no one else really did. It was just a temporary thing for them and i wanted to make it permanent.

 

i mainly stopped because i didn't realize i was stepping on other peoples toes to pull off nights like that. Pushing people out of their comfort zones and not allowing them to be themselves. Years down the road of not attending events, i have contemplated the shallowness of raves and the need to use drugs at them. It depresses me, but one day i may return. i still listen to the music and visualize myself at the party, i mostly just wish i had friends to go with :/

 

 

 

That's me on the left and my boyfriend on the right. This pic was taken 5 years ago

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

I *can't*. there is nothing to gain from attending, no benefits to me, who cannot hear clearly in a QUIET setting...

[hod]

I have much to say about this, but first let me finish another bottle of wine, collect my thoughts and get back to you.

 

So this spot is reserved.

[i am]

Not "clubbing", but definitely partying and going to bars. I went to a couple raves.

 

It was basically most of college through to, oh, maybe six years after.

 

What did I get out of it...well, alcohol and other drugs certainly got me used to the feeling of lower inhibitions. Other drugs expanded my understanding of what could be possible in the universe. I also got to see that party/alcohol/drug side of life and all the great and terrible things that can come from it.

 

Relevance...I don't know. Everything I've done is part of who I am, and I like who I am.of course I wish I had dropped all that stuff sooner or never got involved in the first place and started this stuff much sooner. But the types of groups who didn't drink and do drugs...well, until you get into the kind of community we have here, most of the people you run into who don't drink or party are, well...often pretty lame. So i hung out with party-ers, and so I partied. More than I wanted to, but that's what everyone around me was doing.

 

I've since found more and more people for whom drinking is secondary to what they're doing, rather than primary. That's a great start.

 

In some ways the drinking and drugs helped open me up and get me out of my shell faster. But in other ways it painted me into a corner and stunted my development and opening up, a lot.

 

I don't think there's a connection to clubbing or partying and cultivation any more than there are connections between anything else. The ecstatic and trance dance thing I can see. But having always been more of a partier than clubber, I probably don't have the best perspective.

Edited July 31, 2013 by i am

[Protector]

ANTISOCIAL INTROVERT EXTRAORDINARY REPREZENT!!!

[suninmyeyes]

Cat , funny this thread pops out when I am going proper out out this week first time after literally more than a decade(!) .

 

I definetly was a clubber since 15 till about 24 non stop . Had extremely good times and that is why I did it . Danced once for almost 13 hours and ended up in hospital etc.

 

 

Dancing is great , but clubs are really not my kind of atmosphere for regular any longer ...Give me ocean ,lake , walking in mountains and cycling in the forest or playing Capoeira (it is such a buzz -- incredible ) any day instead .

 

However there is a feeling of (spiritual) high that a lot of clubbers feel while dancing even without drugs and that is why people do it . Something we all know and can connect to so easily . Natural urge to move to the rhytam .

 

Try and not dance to this :

Edited July 31, 2013 by suninmyeyes

[ion]

I've partied alot in my days. I just turned 38, and I know Ill get some arguments out of this assertion, but I've been higher then all of you put togeather .

 

I've been in my share of cuddle puddles at 7:30 in the morning in the jungle room with a bass speaker two inches away from the back of my head more then once

 

But besides just getting high and partying I moved from california to new york city right when I got out of highschool and ended up working in the night club industry there for a few years, doing promotions mainly but all sorts of stuff. My job was basicly to party 5 nights out of the week, have a guest list and hand out drink tickets. Some of the places were pretty wild, trapeze acts half pipes on the dance floor, all sorts of charecters.

 

W had a party at my apartment one night with all sorts of people,showing up among was a group of people that were all aquaintances, they were these club kids that had gained some fame in the club scene and noteriety on talk shows like Geraldo, one of them was one of our drug dealer freinds; A few weeks later one of those guys (the dealer dude)got murdered by a couuple of the other guys and a couple years later they made a movie out of it where Mucaulay Culkin played Michael Alig, the guy who murdered the guy.

 

Right around that time the new york club scene had recieved a major blow when Giuliani bacame mayor and the DEA started raiding all the major clubs which were all owned by one dude, Peter Gatian who was selling all kinds of drugs through all the clubs I worked at.

 

When I was about 24 I moved back to California and became a little more down to earth but was still very much in to drugs and psychedelics. I started getting involved in drug manufacture synthesising GHB, and extracting compounds from plants, like DMT, mescaline, and growing massive ammounts of psychedelic mushrooms and growing ganja, but in all this I was getting out of partying and was beginignt ot use drugs more a s a tool, as a psyche-naut. At this point Im pretty bored with them all, lost interest. Watched people get busted using things for the wrong reasons, had helicopters swoop down on me which gave me pts syndrome and the only reason I ever got anything out of it was because of who I am anyway.

 

The most life changing and life altering experiences Ive had were not drug related but brought on by my ability to see tao and know its essence, That has expanded my mind and changed my life. Where drugs linked me to the culture, the tao ostrisizes me, causing me to live on the fringes...

 

I think my attraction to clubs was partly because of my natural attraction to drugs, and that my natural attraction to drugs is more of a natural attraction to altered states of consciousness, and becomming egoless. The egolessness I experienced on drugs was not what I was looking for though. I think because of who I am on my path, and cognition of pastlife experiences, and that my cognition is the result of past lives in meditation, that I have an attraction to drugs because now I know, that what I was trying to achieve with drugs was meditation delivers and will deliver further., at least in my own practice.

 

One of the things I learned and experienced working in clubs though really shaped who I am is the social aspect I experienced, not just at the parties , but I met alot of people and formed personal relationships with them from presidents of major record labels, like ones located in rockefellar center under Time -warner, Princes/shieks from the middle east, and all kinds of major players from many industries, famous people, the people that are running the fucked up show as it is, the rich, the powerful; I learned alot about tao. About how everybody uses it or is used by it. That the people who are the least familiar with its principle are utilizing its essense the best, but that you cant truly practice it to its fullest from those positions where it is easily seen at work.

 

 

It'd be fun to hit up a good club again just for kicks but I doubt there is much IO would gain from it at this point.

[Flolfolil]

but I've been higher then all of you put togeather .

IME, the drug experience climaxes when it gets to the spiritual realm. No matter how much of any crazy drug i take the experience always leads me to unity or nonexistence and never seems to go any further

[Bubbles]

I stopped clubbing when I was 21-23. Before I was seizing any opportunities to dance i-e to feel the joy in my body, because sports didn't give me that joy and I was too tensed during sex.

Then I found yoga, meditation, internal martial arts etc..so I found ways to produce a new quality of joy within my body. Music is still an opportunity to dance, but I do that at home now. I medit-dance.

[thelerner]

Growing up I was shy and ran with a pretty straight group. No drugs, very little drinking even coffee, no clubbing. I always preferred a get together with a few friends over big crowds. I'm a late bloomer finding my vices later in life.

Edited August 1, 2013 by thelerner

[skydog]

may post here later

Edited August 1, 2013 by skydog

[TzuJanLi]

Greetings..

 

I have been fortunate, some would say, to have 'low friends in high places'.. in the mid '60s one of my best friends was a concert promoter, and i was asked to work/manage security for some of the biggest bands in the business. and.. once the venue was secured, there were serious after-show parties, some that lased for days and traversed several cities.. it was during those times that i discovered my enthusiasm for 'pushing the envelope' further and further into unexplored regions of mind and empty-mind..

 

Drugs played a part in the experiences, but i had to maintain the ability to actually do my job, or establish the protocols with others that allowed me an occasional interval of deep exploration.. where that led, was to reveal what was possible with a still/clear mind that could actually navigate, chart, and document unexplored regions of existence and potential.. time-off between shows/gigs/tours etc.. allowed me the freedom to focus that intense curiosity in a regimen of body/mind/spirit practice/training that, among other things, explored the differences between artificially induced states of altered consciousness, and naturally allowed states of still-mindedness and clarity that arrived in approximately the same place/awareness, union with 'That which IS', the unified whole collective consciousness..

 

The difference that i noticed was that drugs rocketed you to 'wholeness' so fast and without any reproducible clues as to where you were in the wholeness, that there was just random amazing imagery that fairly quickly got reattached and associated with the immediate 'local' physical stimuli, really nice,but.. with a structured practice/training that liberated the mind naturally, i was able to navigate around the collective consciousness with some consistency.. after a time, though, i began to notice that i was creating 'structures' and attachments that were limiting the explorations, so.. occasionally, usually on a yearly basis, i would set aside a week or two, and tear down the structures, and allow myself to be propelled wherever the natural substances took me.. this revealed more and deeper regions of unexplored and even unforeseen/unimaginable consciousness/opportunity/potential.. which i was then able to navigate to with clarity and awareness..

 

That was Zen ~ this is Tao.. the practice/training has become a natural state of presence.. i can choose the experience/perspective, whether individual, whole, or both, as the situation resonates the effects of the options.. i find reality to be most present 'between' part and whole, between individual and collective, a balance that is both and neither simultaneously.. the only compelling motivation i experience is 'clarity', the ability to see/experience what is actually happening, the sense to 'feel' my relationship with Life.. it all began with the willingness to 'let it all go', to trust 'That which IS' to reveal itself to me through me, and the experiences of living with unconditional sincerity..

 

Be well..

[minkus]

I was a clubber from 14 to 22

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54r3UCzAlro

[三江源]

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Edited June 23, 2014 by cat

[Enishi]

I used to go almost every week to a goth club for awhile, but it was more so because I decided I needed some way of getting out of my INTP/INTJ shell and socializing, most of the time I still very much preferred books and internet, or small social groups, over the atmospheres of meat market clubs and bars.

[三江源]

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Edited June 23, 2014 by cat

[Bubbles]

I'm thinking now that the ecstatic mystics are my tribe.

 

[HoldorFold]

I'd be interested to know about bums of all ages.

 

 

1. If you were a clubber/party person.. how long did you do it for? DId you have one phase of clubbing, or more?

 

 

2. What do you think you got out of it? Why do you think you did it?

 

 

3.Do you see it as relevant to you being a person that cultivates? Is there a connection?

 

 

1. Yes, from 18 to 26. Lots of parties, clubs, raves etc.

 

2. Socialising, adventure and escapism

 

3. Not really

 

 

[i am]

When did the phrase meat market for such situations get coined?

 

I actually never saw it that way. I did of course notice predatory males, but they exist in every place and dont just come out at night where there is music.

 

It depends on the particular club/bar scene. Some bars are just clearly places people are going with the intent of hooking up. Other places, yeah there's that going on, but you feel like you can hang out there without everyone assuming you're looking for action.

 

 

[adept]

Great topic !!!!!

 

I started way back in '86 when house music exploded in the UK. Went to raves, warehouse parties, outdoor and indoors. Clubbing every weekend for about 6 years till '92. In that time I had taken copious amounts of cannabis, speed, lsd, mdma, cocaine and ketamine. I absolutely loved it. The UK club scene has always been fabulous. In '92 ( I was still only 23 ) I got bored with it and stopped for a few years. I still took drugs now and then at home or at peoples house parties.

In '98 I got itchy feet and started clubbing again, this time with my wife who I'd recently married, virtually every week for another 6 years till about 2004, when we both finally gave up for good. These were probably the best times we ever had, apart from getting married and having our children.

I've been clean ever since. Although I sometimes miss the scene, I had some wonderful times which shaped me into the person I am today.

Techno was, and still is, my love of all forms of electronic music. I still play it regularly. Techno is part of me, of who I am.

[Protector]

It's official, The Bums should get together and party!

[i am]

It's official, The Bums should get together and party!

 

I would be very curious to see what a motley crew we'd make! Wow. Can imagine a big house or building full of possibly 100 or so of the people who post on this site?? I would definitely have all the exits scoped out..

[Flolfolil]

ketamine