The first time I went to Glastonbury, I literally cried at the state of the toilets. I was eight. My mum works at the festival, giving massages in the Healing Field, and nothing had prepared me for the long drop loos. While most people enter the festival world as mid-teens, clutching shit warm cans at Leeds and Reading, I just inadvertently went full-pelt into the biggest festival of them all. Attending every time until I was 21 (when I discovered that European festivals were warm and places like ATP had beds) I learned a fair amount that it feels important to share before hundreds of thousands of Brits pack away their pill stashes and roll mats for another train ride to the Somerset farmlands.
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I saw countless "legendary" sets but remember very little of them because often getting ice cream or watching people fall down a mud hole for hours is more entertaining as a kid than looking at a stage, watching music you don't know that well and can only see when you're on someone's shoulders. So from someone who as a child saw The Levellers more times than any human being should be subjected to and at 16 took one for the team and stood in a pile of his friends own pear cider-induced vomit to hide it from his mother, here's some of the things I've learned about the UK biggest festival.Come on. Before I'd even hit puberty I'd seen more bad acid trips at Glastonbury than your average St John's Ambulance person sees in a lifetime. I encountered wild-eyed and deeply scared grown-ups curled into a ball on the floor crying, manic hysterical screams from frazzled minds and one year a semi-naked guy came bursting through the hedge in the middle of the night, all bloody and scratched and drenched in fear, as I sat toasting marshmallows around the fire. It's amazing what you just shake off as not a big deal when you're a kid, and even all those experiences never stopped me deciding to experiment with hallucinogenics there for the first time. Maybe for a seasoned pro, Glastonbury's infinite lands of colour and activity are a tripper's dream but for a first timer there's so much potential headfuck that I'd stay clear if you're a novice.
Think twice before making it your first psychedelics trip
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