Where is all of the real advice? Veterans helping new ravers on the scene.

I met my best friends at a festival while rolling. Making friends while rolling at a fest is so easy. Keeping them however isn't easy though.

So a while back at a festival over last Summer I was rolling nutsack in the line and this groovy chick comes up to me. I don't remember what I said to her at all or how I broke the ice but pretty much we clicked instantly. Talking to her was so natural and fluent, by the time we got into the festival I had been talking to her for almost 2 hours and I had asked her if she wanted to hangout. I sold her some pills to her friends and we were on our way.

That day ended up being the most amazing day of my life. Rolling with my new friends was the experience of a life time. We were family through the good the bad and the ugly. From the moment we met, to the moment my new friend took the pill and threw up in the grass, to the moment were we all laid on each other in a cuddle puddle watching Bassnectar throw down. It was the most beautiful experience ever. The day couldn't have gone better, I met new cool groovy friends, we were all rolling, I made out with this super cute blonde chick in the grass and cuddled with her, I watched Bassnectar fucking kill his set that night, I experience euphoria on an unparalleled level. It was a dream come true. Imagine the most amazing and awesome dream you've ever head, now imagine that dream actually happening and actually being real. Thats what that day felt like for me. I never imagined that the day would end up being the best day of my life. Watching Bassnectar surrounded by my new beautiful friends all cuddled up together and feeling the most euphoric we have ever felt in our whole lives was such a surreal and truly heavenly experience.

It was amazing, I had just befriended a group of really cool and groovy chicks. Everything was perfect right? Well not exactly.

Like I said earlier keeping the friends you make a festivals and while rolling isn't as easy. All the friends that I've made from going to festivals that have stayed my friends required a good amount of effort on my part. Most people you meet at shows that you befriend at shows will only be temporary friends, by temporary I mean like you'll talk to them and hang with them for the whole day or the whole night and then you probably won't talk to them again. Even if you exchange numbers, they probably still wont text you. I'm not saying this is the case most of the time but more often times than not this is the case. Don't expect to actually make long term friends with people you rolled with or hung out with at a fest.

However in my case I was REALLY lucky to be able to form a very strong bond and relationship with the girls I met at that festival. At first our friendship was literally almost non-existent. The day after the fest we didn't meet up and I texted my new friend to see if she wanted to meet up again but no dice. She didn't respond, I would like to think she was too busy raving to bother responding to my texts but the truth probably was she wasn't interested in meeting up the second day or at least just didn't want to bother with it.

I spent the whole day looking for her and it ended up being kind of a shitty day. It was a poor follow up to the amazing experience I had the previous day. I had taken more than half a gram of MDMA the previous day so the negative side effects were creeping up on me. The second day I was a total mess, I was super depressed and worried that I would never see my new friends ever again. It wasn't that good a day honestly. I was so worried that I would lose them and never see them again.

But yeah the festival finished and I texted her and she told me she was sorry we couldn't meet up. I told her that I wanted to hang out with her and go to more shows with her and she said she was down and that was it. I didn't text her for probably a month and a half.

My friendship with this girl was almost non-existent for a long time. I was honestly kind of scared to text her. She wasn't interest in meeting up with me the second day so I was scared she wouldn't text me back because she wasn't interested and that would be the end of our short lived friendship. I was pretty much just another temporary festie buddy but I wanted to befriend them all.

But yeah I wasn't sure what to say to her for a long time. I wanted to ask them out to go to a show again but I just didn't know how to go about saying that without sounding thirsty or desperate. This time in my life was kinda stressful, all my friends had gone to college and I was kind of alone and these girls were my only hope of having friends for the next two years. I was scared that I would have nobody to look forward to going to shows with or having just nobody at all in my life. I took mushrooms one afternoon and eventually figured out what to say to her, the mushroom trip was really rough because I was so afraid of losing them as friends and being stuck with no friends for a long time and having no one to go to festivals with over the summer and that resonated and I had a really emotional and raw trip. But I did figure out what to say to her.

Like 3 weeks after that I finally mustered up the balls to text her. I sent her kinda a long paragraph telling her how much fun I had with them at the festival I met them at and how I was interested in hanging out with them again. She took like 2 hours to text back and those two hours were hell for me. So she texts back saying her and her friends might be going to a show soon. I tell her that yeah I was gonna go to that show too. She doesn't text me back at all that day, that night I had really bad nightmares and I was so depressed and heart broken. I text her the next morning hoping for a response and nothing at all. I spent an entire week being a sad sack, totally depressed and heart broken over her not being interested in being friends and how I would have to spend the next two years with no rave fam and how I wouldn't be able to go to any festivals this summer cuz I had no one to go with.

So yeah a week passes by and I text her again. Thankfully she texts me back and says she can't go to the show but that she is down to go to a show some other time.

To keep this post from being any longer than it has to I'll sum up what happened after as quick as I can. So pretty much a few different things happened to me and her. Pretty much I go a bunch of lucky breaks that led to us eventually going to a show. This DJ she really liked was announced that he was gonna be playing at a venue near us in the next two months.

Three days after that she texts me asking if I'm going to a festival, I tell her no but that I was going to go to go to the show where her fav DJ was playing at. I ask her if she is down to roll there and meet and she says yeah and yeah pretty much thanks to a bunch of lucky breaks and occurrences like her fav dj playing a show in our area and her asking if I was going to this other festival earlier that month was the lucky break I needed to make our friendship actually happen.

After we reunited with had an amazing night and after that it was all fluent from there. She asked me if I wanted to go to another show with her, and then another, and then another. And yeah pretty much I've hung out with her as of now 6 times. We are now really close, closer than I could have ever thought we would be. I'm now attending 3 festivals with her over the summer and I was able to befriend her friends and I'm travelling with her friends to a festival abroad.

I know this is a super long post but I wanted to share my experience with making friends and what to expect and share with you how hard and kinda difficult it was to consolidate a friendship with some random person you met a festival while rolling. Its not gonna be easy, I was able to make these friends because of a number of lucky occurrences that worked in my favor.

Thanks for reading if you actually made it this far. Have fun and good luck making long lasting festival friends.

/r/aves Thread Parent