Everyone around me is dancing. They no longer look like worn-out junkies, but like normal people, actually beautiful people. I realize that the judgment I had about them was hiding what they really were: happy people having fun, and now I am one of them. Everyone is smiling, everyone is hugging. I start to feel an incredible sense of love. I stop dancing and walk around. Everyone looks at me and smiles, and I do the same.

One of the things I notice that makes me happy in that moment is seeing people, especially couples, hugging, kissing, smiling together. Even thinking about it now gives me goosebumps, I had never felt anything like that before. Around me there are quite a few tattooed people. I get closer to them and it almost feels like their tattoos are moving. They are so beautiful, so colorful, and I ask if I can touch them. I ask at least ten people and they all tell me that of course I can. Then they hug me, and feeling the warmth of people, even strangers, is another one of the many magical things I am experiencing in that moment.

I had a very different idea of ecstasy. I would have never imagined that these would be the effects. And it’s actually a shame to think that the emotions I am feeling right now come from taking a drug, and that a person cannot feel them this intensely without it. Everyone deserves to feel the way I feel in that moment, because it is beautiful. Truly beautiful.

After about an hour of dancing and rubbing against people in the crowd, Marco tells me to follow him because he wants to talk to me. I follow him until we reach the beach.

“So, how is it?” he asks.
“Incredible. I have no words.”

He offers me a cigarette. The best cigarette of my life.

We lie down in the shallow water by the shore and look at the sky. The clouds move, and watching them is beautiful. So is hearing the waves and the music in the background. I feel like I am in heaven. We talk for a long time, telling each other what we feel, and in that moment I feel an incredibly strong bond with him. I had known him for a few years, but I had never felt a deep friendship toward him. In that moment everything changes. Something begins that, even today, six years after that event, is still there. I feel deeply connected to him. I smoke another cigarette, and then another one. It’s as if smoking gives me brief orgasms, I don’t know how to explain it, but smoking in that state feels completely different from normal. We spend about an hour like that, until he tells me he wants to go back dancing. But I feel too good there, so I tell him I will join him later.