You attend a music festival under the vibes of a hippie flip. The term, “hippie flip” was something you found out about two hours ago. It involves ingesting psilocybin (hippie) and MDMA (flip). If not both then magic mushrooms or molly, and if not either, there’s always alcohol. If not alcohol, your vice is attention, while soberly sensing the music, druggies, DJs, alcoholics, and everything in between. Your group of four friends, including yourself, can’t help but stare at the archetype of the typical music festival goer. In the case of the edgy girl wearing all black: down to her shades, shorts, boots, tank top, and tattoos, there’s no doubt she’s feeling all the above. She’s in her mid-twenties having the time of her life, and high on drugs under Toronto’s summer heat. She stands there waiting by the entrance of Woodbine Park to get into the Boiler Room music festival. You can’t help but fixate on her. Thoughts stir in your mind, along with the psilocybin you consumed two hours ago with your friends Marty and Dennis.
The anticipation is high and so are Marty, Dennis, and you. The only sober one in your group is Alex (designated driver). Regardless, Alex still plans on ingesting molly during the festival. He has a zip-lock bag to smuggle eight capsules filled with MDMA (two for each guy). Alex stuffs the bag along his boxers beside his balls. You approve. Driving under the influence of molly is like navigating familiar waters, but magic mushrooms…that drug can make you feel like vultures picking your stomach from the inside. This was the feeling Marty was experiencing. He stayed seated on a rock in the same pose as The Thinker, pondering the uneasiness coming to him. He felt vulnerable. Marty’s defence mechanism was to pick a fight with anyone, so you choose to keep your distance as he battles his demons.
Thankfully, your psychedelic trip isn’t as bad as Marty’s. You feel uneasy, but it’s tolerable. “Reality will move forward regardless of how you feel,” is the mantra you keep telling yourself trying to look normal, despite the anxious feelings of tripping in the middle of a large crowd. Your shoes feel like they’re planted to the ground as you wait to get into the venue with your friends. Your body is swimming in a beautiful ocean of colours. The diverse green from trees, leaves, and grass. The popping paint of yellow from the school bus driving by. The black texture of Alex’s beard. Bright blue hues flood from iMessage bubbles in your phone. Not to mention tie-dye t-shirts worn by the modern-day hippies. You feel grateful for this wonderful trip in Toronto with your friends as Summer starts.
The natural realization that follows is, “Why are sober colours dull by comparison? Is my perception of reality’s fabric a facade because of psychedelics? Would monks who meditate share these sensations that I feel now?” You tell yourself it’s unfair to ask such questions when the whole point of drugs is to make your perceptions abstract from reality. The act of meditating is trying to be completely aware of oneself. One must detach from desires to perceive reality as accurately as one can pray to know. You accept the purpose of your hippie flip as the opposite of meditating, understanding that drugs stimulate the serotonin and dopamine receptors in your brain, resulting in probable delusion. You give into the feeling of being a human test tube, one made of flesh, reacting to the mind mixtures of psilocybin and the MDMA yet to be taken.
By the time your epiphany ends, you find yourself inside the Boiler Room music festival with Marty, Dennis, and Alex. The zip-loc bag is removed from Alex’s pants and the molly is evenly distributed between the boys. You each take one capsule for now. “It’s best to start small and take more as required. Otherwise, you risk waking up with panic attacks,” Alex advises. Like an alcoholic surgeon, you’re aware of the dangers of what you’re doing, yet for some reason you choose to continue. You justify your actions by telling yourself, “I’m merely experimenting and tuning into the frequencies available to me. I’d rather do drugs at a music festival in my mid-twenties than regret my precautionary choices during a midlife crisis. Then again, what if I regret my youthful optimism being blinded by delusion only to see with hindsight?” While waiting for the MDMA to kick into your bloodstream, serotonin to pump into your brain, and elation to pour out of your heart, you enter the first stage, witnessing a live Afrobeat performance. There are two African men on the stage. Behind them is a large red flag with the words “BOILER ROOM” printed in black. One man is behind a drum set of snares, cymbals, bongos, and a cowbell, while the other guy plays as the DJ.
As your body moves with the music, you slowly feel the rhythms of the base vibrating on your chest. You notice the spontaneous expressions of the moment’s emotion. This is it. The hippie flip has officially begun. Like the drummer and DJ, your body is experiencing a chemical camaraderie between two drugs. The organic, raw, and pulsating energy from the drummer is similar to the feelings of psilocybin, whereas the observant, vast, and deliberate attention projecting from the DJ becomes the essence of MDMA. Despite recognizing these feelings as chemical alterations in your brain tricking you into extreme feelings of love, you continue to direct it at your friends while dancing with the music. It makes you feel––as cliche as it sounds––one with the crowd. The elation makes you feel grounded, surrounded by your friends. Hippie flip or not, you’re a product of their presence, vibrating with the rhythm, feeling shared pulses between Dennis, Marty, and Alex. You stop and think to yourself, “Maybe it is meditation.”
