Whiting out...
A word of advice: if you are going to take recreational drugs at a festival, be very careful where you choose to enjoy them...

Reading 2005. Main stage. About 15 meters from the front. I'd been working my way forwards for quite a while, with the aim of being at the very front when the Pixies would grace the stage, and despite there being only one band left (the Killers, if you care) before them, I was confident. I was also carrying several joints, which I had been merrily smoking by myself (having lost my mates some time back). Just as the Killers came on, I thought I'd light up another one. One toke. Fine. Two tokes. Ooohh, spacey. Three tokes.

WHITE OUT!!!

Head rush, feeling sick, need to sit down. But I can't cos I'm in the middle of a huge fucking crowd. So I turn to escape. But I don't decide to head for the side, oh no. In my confused mind, the best way out is BACK THROUGH THE ENTIRE CROWD.

So I turn and start pushing my way, quite forcefully, through the mass of people trying to dance and jump around. You know that bit in a zombie film where there's one person desperately trying to fight their way out of a crowd of hundreds of the fuckers? I felt like that. Wave after wave after wave - no matter how many people I passed, more instantly took their place. I was freaking out. I felt like I was going to faint, my limbs were going numb, and I'm fairly sure that after about 30 seconds I was no longer walking - rather, I was continually falling, with each new set of people knocking me into an upright position, at which point I would fall through two of them and be pushed back upright by the next lot. I knew that if I were to hit the ground, I wouldn't be able to get back up again. Utterly terrifying.

After what felt like an hour (but it all happened within the timeframe of 'Jenny Was a Friend of Mine') the crowd thinned and I fell into a little clearing, landing face-first on the dirt and proceeded to desperately dry-heave, retching hard enough that the spasms were making my entire body bounce up and down. I must have looked like I was dying. Not that anyone came to help. No, they all just stared at the druggy freak.

After a while, I felt strong enough to crawl away from the site of shame, at which point I saw some friends I hadn't even known were at the festival camped out on a blanket. So I joined them, and eventually watched the Pixies from a nice, calm spot behind the chaotic crowd.

And had my last joint.
(HarryTheMole whatever's on my finger is going in your mouth, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 16:59, 1 reply)

Eurrrrgh ... !
Great story - really well told - I was completely with you on that ... eurgh! Nice happy ending, though!
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Thu 4 Jun 2009, 17:05, closed)