Party Vibe

the partyvibe newbies/freshers guide… 🙂

Some hints for new ravers – originally I aimed it at UK students (written at the start of a new college term) who are in 6th form/FE college/Uni; but much of the stuff here is applicable to those starting out partying, or anyone whose relocated into a new city/town/village recently.

1. Finding out info

OK – you’re new to the city, and want to know where the partys at. How do you find out, given that free events are in a legal grey area?

Often the answer is closer than you think. In most universities the student unions often host nights where local DJs (often themselves students) play underground dance music (these are often open to non-students) – also there are often underground club events in cities.

Attend one of these, make some friends and very soon you will be pointed in the direction of anything from a student house party (at which often many underground crew people may be found) to a full-on waehouse rave!

• What you should not do is post on here “where are parties in ***** area?”. or worse still “where can I score *****?”!
• This board is not exclusive to ravers, people who do not approve of free parties such as cops, locals, hostile journalists, even your college authorities can and do look here as well.

Too much information on open boards can jepoardise an event before it even has a chance to get off the ground, and you could even incriminate yourself – college authorities can take disciplinary action on a far smaller burden of proof than the Police require…..

2. Safety, security and legal stuff.

Raves are still way safer than many other social events (including traditional “student” union bars and local pubs!) – but are often held in areas with higher crime and social deprivation levels. Then again, your own student dwellings or shared house may also be in such an area!

All the “personal safety” stuff your student union and the old bill tell you about avoiding robbery, sexual crime/harrasment etc still applies at raves; but also remember that the effect drugs may affect your judgement.

“New friends” may not always be all they seem; all sorts of predators lurk in areas where idealistic young people can be found. Be careful.

If you become a regular at raves, you may be offered a “connection” by local dealers to “knock out a bit” of whatever party substance to other students.

It may look like an easy way to reduce your student debt, but you can get involved in situations with local criminals (which may involve violence) – your own house could be targeted as word gets round there may be cash and drugs there.

http://www.partyvibe.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2333

Furthermore, dealing remains a fairly serious criminal offence and the penalty is usually prison.

University authorities these days are often perfectly happy to co-operate with the Police when they suspect dealing on uni premises such as halls of residence, its also possible at least some of your fellow students may be trainee or even serving Police officers or other govt officials such as HM Customs on day release.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/kent/3603025.stm

Anyone who wants to join the cops as a graduate is definitely an aspiring detective, and will often have no compunction about grassing up fellow students!

The risk is yours… at present the current penalty for first-time Class A dealing is around 5-7 years, of which most people serve 2.5 years.

As a worst case you could end up finishing your degree with the Open University from behind four walls – if things do become that bad you might as well carry on with education, apart from PT theres not a lot else to do in there!

Even so you may get 1st class honours (all acommodation paid for and plenty of study/revision time 😉 ) but your career prospects will be limited – I don’t know of anyone who has served time in HMP who has ever been able to get a steady non-criminal career – there is so much competition for jobs these days and plenty of surplus people.

Small posession gets you a caution nowadays, usually two hours in the cells and a minor bollocking from a sarge; but it does disqualify you from a lot of public sector jobs and can limit your travel choices as some countries are less likely to give you a visa (the USA being one of them!).

Some colleges, depending on their policy, may even expel you for such an offence (more likely for the younger lot).

If you are in age 16-18 further education, remember that you are still classed as a juvenile until you are 18. This means that getting caught means your parents are hauled into the station as well, unlike older people you do get nicked for cannabis, plus the old bill try and make you go to the “drugs are bad, m’kay?” type counsellor.

I’ve known situations like the above to cause people to become estranged from their parents to the point where they sometimes never recover the relationship.

Again, the risk is yours, although I do think a lot of parents are way too stubborn and refuse to accept that a small amount of recreational use doesn’t make the child they brought into this world an evil monster..

3. Heart and soul… (and other body parts)

Parties and associated substances affect our emotions and feelings – thats why we do it after all! But we sometimes need to consider the wider effects on yourself and others.

Is a one-night stand with the person you’ve just met at a party really worth risking the long-term relationship you’ve already got with someone else back home? The fun of that night is gonna be replaced by misgivings, bad feelings and paranoia as the comedown sets in.. What if they also have a partner? two sets of lives wrecked! Gossip also travels fast – its so easy for someone else who finds out to “tell all” to the internet on message boards and sadly rather commonplace these days – I won’t post links this time but I’ve seen way too much of this, amongst people I thought were friends :confused:

OTOH you may be single so this isn’t a problem – but did you think about protection?

Lots of things in life are worth sharing – but not STIs.

Unplanned pregnancies are traumatic for both parties; the £500 cost of a termination knocks a hell of a hole in a finances; or ends up with one/both parties having to approach their parents for the money-not nice!

Unsurprisingly, this almost always kills the relationship along with the human that’s accidentally been brought into this world 🙁

Do you even know where the family planning clinic is for your area? If the cost of contraception is excessive they can usually help, as can student union health services. That said if you care for someone that much its surely worth it?

These are links to official advice on contraception and sexual health from the NHS…..

http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/innerpage.asp?Area=65
http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/innerpage.asp?Area=58

As for the rest of your body, life can be hard on this as well – particularly in Winter when you are exposed to all sorts of viruses both on campus (or at work) and at home.

The after-effects of substances can reduce your immune systems effectiveness as well – making you prone to colds, flu and other illnesses. These can be quite nasty, and affect your academic/work performance more than you would like. Try and look after yourself during the week – at least keep some money for getting some decent food, and look into bulk-buying healthy food from good sources (most uni cities have at least one bulk-food co-op, join the “green” society or follow the hippies 😀 )

You don’t need to cane it every weekend either; worth having a weekend or two off, and take note of any “drugs scare” warnings that may turn up on here or local warnings about anything stronger than usual.

Mind your mind as well! What goes up must come down, and the stress of stuff like money / exam / work / relationship pressures can add to the problems.

Try to keep everything in balance.. a degree certificate or a paycheque isnt a lot of use if its handed to your grieving family by a copper following your death from an overdose or suicide..

4. Have fun and ‘ave it…

A lot of the above is quite heavy stuff – but its here to protect people and to illustrate things that have happened to friends over the last few years.

The freedom and novelty of your new lifestyle and the search for new friends and experiences can make it easy to overdo things.OTOH you are bound to meet loads of new people and go to loads of excellent parties during the 2-5 years you may spend at college or uni (or time on the scene in general)

Education also gives you a lot of social opportunities and access to resources which you can make good use of for both your social and academic life (fuck, this sounds like something out of a prospectus 🙂 ) but even if things don’t quite work out and/or perhaps you find education is not for you you will still have learned a lot about life.

Not having a degree does not make you a second class citizen – I parted company with uni after 2 years and have still managed to get decent jobs, stay in employment and am not doing crime or anti-social behaviour. A degree may give you slightly more salary but often automatically puts you into a more stressful job with higher responsibilities and more chance of failure – and in some fields such as IT what you learn may be obsolete in a few years anyway..

Here’s a lady who didn’t even graduate from high school but is still really clever (there’s no way I could design stuff like that!)

http://www.partyvibe.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=7273#post7273

Of course you could also decide to just live near to a university town /city – that way you can get away with taking part in the social life without all the hassle of exams, lectures as well – its worked for me for the last 14 years 😀

Alex/GL – 2004-10-26 (updated 2004-12-23) Reading