Drugs

Although I've been known to indulge in my share, and despite the ready availability of almost anything on the playa (we had at least one mini-van drive down the road by our camp, the passenger hawking shrooms, pot, nitrous and such out the window, and I've yet to meet a marijuana smoker who isn't friendly and willing to share), the extent of our drug consumption was two bottles of wine.

For one thing, the place is just too darned weird to begin with. When I got used to the fact that people were driving living room furniture around the place was still surreal.

But if nothing else, next year I'd take a bottle or three of tequila for barter at the various bars, maybe some mixers, just to be sociable.

If you do choose to indulge, a few words of warning:

• First, stay hydrated. If you're the sort of person who gets flakey when they're tripping, make sure you've got a friend hanging with you carrying the water bottle. It doesn't take a whole lot of dancing to suck the water out of a person.
• Second, leave anything you value back at camp. The lost and found board on the Burning Man BBS has several pleas from people who traded cameras or other valuables for cute trinkets when their value systems were chemically altered.

Wednesday, December 30^th, 1998 danlyke@flutterby.com