For 15 years, I’d never raved without the aid of a drug like MDMA, 2CB, or ketamine—or, at the very least, a fridge’s worth of booze. Reduce the anxiety, amplify the ecstasy: to me, that was always the whole game. When I first went out ‘dancing’ with school friends, what we engaged in felt like a time-honored rite of passage: take some pills supplied by a friend’s older brother, and listen to upbeat house music while contemplating oblivion. A recipe for bliss I’ve been following my entire adult life (not the friend’s older brother part; Interpol, please don’t swat his house). Recently, however, I’ve started to wonder whether this ritual is altogether healthy. While there seem to be obvious benefits to dancing under the influence of psychedelics, I’m 18 months dry from booze, and wanted to see if raving without booze and drugs was possible for me. “I was offered drugs including ket, coke, and nitrous a total of seven times, and at one point was even given a mini spoon purpose-made for sniffing racked lines of muck”So I went to Bass Coast festival in British Columbia, Canada, a flamboyant four-day dance music jamboree unfurling itself in the scorching, high-summer heat, and challenged myself to stay as sober as a judge the whole way through. There were certainly difficult moments—apropos of nothing, I was offered drugs including ket, coke, and nitrous a total of seven times, and at one point was even given a mini spoon purpose-made for sniffing up racked lines of muck—while simply being around thousands of non-sober people being gyrated into a shuddering mass of liquid by the thunderous sub bass also presented certain issues. But, thanks in part to Bass Coast’s forward-thinking offering of daily group sobriety meetings, I heroically managed to remain stone-cold sober throughout—not even smoking a cigarette, though I will admit to knocking back a few zero-proof kombuchas.Anyway, here are ten things I learned from this novel and eye-opening experience.Turning down drugs during a 3AM dubstep set is actually quite difficult The pulsing bass in a wobbly, precipitous dubstep drop seems to lend itself perfectly to a bump of K, a toke on a spliff, a balloon, or all three at once. During the first dubstep set of the weekend, courtesy of G Jones, I had to excuse myself in frustration at not being able to commune with my kezzled seshgremlin brethren in a delicious melee of limbs, sweat, and self-tranquilization. But come Bristol-based producer Cesco’s Sunday night shelldown, I was somehow able to get extremely hyped, despite the total lack of fun running through my bloodstream. (Sorry to the guy I elbowed in the head.) After four nights of practice, I realized that, yes, I can jump around to good music without being on the brink of a K-hole. Fancy that!Four-day benders are disgusting affairsI didn’t feel remotely suicidal when the festival ended on Monday morning, although multiple people around me described the same situation as “an ordeal” due to the marathon of drug-taking they’d subjected themselves to. By Sunday, I could observe an uptick in the collective scattiness levels, and there was a noticeable rise in people walking around like zombies. It’s also quite funny to witness people gurning their tits off on drugs, steadily dislocating their own jaws, while you’re not gurning yourself. And, of course, it is also entertaining to see folks scurrying around like tiny animals, desperately trying to score. It was all a far cry from one particularly hectic weekend at a festival in the UK when I ketbombed myself into CBT therapy. Is taking drugs for four days straight a good idea? It depends what you mean by ‘good.’“What I can say with absolute scientific certainty is that staring at the boggle-eyed, crow-fingered distortions of humanity around me made me feel weird as fuck.”My dancing is actually much better when I’m highThey say ketamine is killing the dance floor. But a cheeky amount of livestock tranq is actually an incredible dance aid, one that transforms me from lanky English bloke to limber woodland sprite. It lubricates the joints, encourages a state of flow, and helps you zone out from potential distractions, like people doing very Canadian things on the dance floor (discussing the price of lumber, being considerate to others, etc). Thanks to the pioneering drug-checking service at Bass Coast—coupled with the elite psychedelic scene of nearby Vancouver—the drugs consumed at the festival generally have a high purity, too, with psychonauts indulging in more obscure drugs like 3-MMC, MDA, mescaline, and 5-MeO-DiPT. These are also fantastic dance floor looseners (so I’m told). My lack of that stuff made dancing way harder.I remembered everythingLook, I don’t often take so many drugs that I nuke my memory. But I know what that feels like and can confirm that I never experienced it at Bass Coast. Worrying about what might have gone down in some hazy fugue state is a fast train to the prang, which isn’t a state I enjoy.Food is actually edibleI ate three meals every day, which for me is almost certainly a festival first. What can I say, not chewing your gums into a bloody carcass while taking hunger-suppressing drugs is actually quite good for your appetite. Plus, food slaps—never forget that.Electronic music has its own psychedelic effectsShamans in Siberia coax themselves into ecstatic trance states through little more than repetitive drum beats and non-stop dancing, and recent research shows the depression-busting power of dance, as Dr. Scott Carlos Lopez explained at Bass Coast during a talk. There is a collective euphoria independent of the drug experience that can come about on dance floors, and not all of that can be easily explained. Sustained breathing is also a potent drug—seriously—though just like other drugs, it is one to be indulged in responsibly. When you’re surrounded by fucked people, being sober is actually more trippy than being highIn the rapidly growing field of collective neuroscience, emerging research suggests that on some level, as a ‘social species,’ the brainwaves of two or more people may occasionally synchronize. And so maybe, given the state of those around me, I was ‘tripping’ vicariously. What I can say with absolute scientific certainty is that simply staring at the boggle-eyed, crow-fingered distortions of humanity around me made me feel weird as fuck, and that these images will endure forever more inside of my dreams and memories.It helps to have a sober communityAt Bass Coast, the festival’s ‘sobriety lead’ Pearl Cicci—a seasoned sober partygoer who radiates all the profound moral authority of some kind of rave nun—took me under her wing for a series of meetings. These brought together all kinds of people, from those who had been sober for years and done multiple festivals without any psychoactive aids, to others who just wanted to get through one night without touching drugs. This created a benign and useful kind of peer pressure: I couldn’t bear the thought of being the one who got found at dawn trying to confide something into the small end of a traffic cone.Taking psychedelics isn’t countercultural anymoreIt’s hard to feel edgy about doing shrooms when your aunt’s microdosing before her Pilates class. Go online and it feels like the whole world is nudging you into doing psychedelics, just like The System wanted you to take those antidepressants, eat those glucose fructose syrup-infused snacks, and drink that shitty beer. Maybe the ultimate slap in The System’s face is just drinking water, and eschewing kombucha too. My nose still got blocked from the dust in the airPerhaps I may as well have sniffed loads of drugs, after all. A few days after the festival, my nose was just as gunked up as it usually is from all the dust that was getting whipped up due to the dry conditions and raver footfall. Bloody amazing weather, so annoying!So would I do it again? Honestly, yes, next weekend in fact. I wasn’t just spared a potential comedown, this whole thing gave me clarity, sustained energy, and the rare ability to remember people’s names. It was humbling to realize that I’m less of a dance-floor demigod without a bump of K, but it turns out I’m still capable of having fun without launching my serotonin system into the Mariana Trench.So, in summary, one of two things must be true. Maybe sobriety really is the new high. Or maybe I’ve just finally become the kind of annoying person who says things like that unironically.Follow Mattha Busby on Instagram @matthabusby. Follow Ramón Nyitrai @the_uninsularist.The post 10 Things I Learned Rawdogging a 4-Day Rave Without Booze or Drugs appeared first on VICE.