DRUG 'DOSING' MAKES RAVE PARTIES LATEST YOUTH TREND TO SCARE PARENTS

ADELANTO, Calif. -- On most nights, the darkness and dust that cloak
Highway 395 in this tiny high-desert town are pierced only by the
headlights of passing big rigs and the glowing red-and-white sign of the
new Dairy Queen. So it was easy to imagine locals rushing to their porches
on a recent Saturday night when green laser beams strafed the sky and a
throbbing pulse began echoing above the desert winds.

The origin of the eerie commotion could be found at the pitcher's mound of
the city's baseball field, where a nest of special-effects machines and
speakers had, for one night, replaced the national pastime. Now the
ballpark belonged to one of those mysterious, fleeting festivals of youth
known as a rave party, a singular marathon of electronic music and sensory
overload that thrills its followers and terrifies parents and authorities.

This rave would follow the form of most: a mass of young people, many
brimming with the giddy high of drugs such as Ecstasy, dancing madly until
dawn to dense bass and beats at a remote site. The average age? About 17.
This one drew about 6,000 ravers, but recently others have pulled in triple
that number. The scene's music, graphic designs and fashions are
percolating into mainstream culture, but for the most part the rave
phenomenon remains well below the radar of the general populace. Until
there's a casualty.

"Yeah, as soon as I heard about those kids driving off the mountain I knew
people would be giving us grief again," said a 17-year-old raver from
Riverside who identified himself only as "Racer X." He was referring to the
five young people who died in August when their car plunged off a highway
in the San Gabriel Mountains east of Los Angeles. The group had been on the
way home from a rave at a ski resort, and their autopsies turned up traces
of Ecstasy and speed.

"People hear that," Racer X continued, "and they think raves are all about
drugs. It's really about the music, about the love and dancing."

Like many others at the ballpark, he was chomping on a plastic baby
pacifier, a "de rigueur" totem among the ravers that eases the
teeth-grinding side effects of Ecstasy. He also had a surgeon's mask
slathered with Vick's VapoRub, which some say enhances the drug's high. He
smiled when asked if he was "dosing."

"Hell yeah, man, everybody is."

Here, from the mouth of Racer X, are the conflicting assessments of raves,
which are approaching a vigorous 10th anniversary in Southern California.

To the scene's faithful, it is a celebration of cyber-hippie ideals and a
forum for a genre of music that may be the most exciting and least
commercial outpost on the pop music landscape.

To the scene's foes, however, it is nothing more than an elaborate ritual
for young people to explore drugs and debauchery. And, perhaps worse, it
often takes them to distant, dangerous locales and leaves them bleary and
spent when it's time to drive home at dawn's light.

"Without Ecstasy, most of these events would not exist, no doubt about it,"
says consultant Trinka Porrata, a former Los Angeles Police Department
narcotics investigator whose rave expertise is now focused on helping
federal lawmakers to curb the scene's drugs. "I'd estimate that 80 percent
of most rave crowds are using Ecstasy or another drug. ... They're not
driving hundreds of miles for the music."

The all-night dances are mounting a comeback, and have grown so popular
that they have evolved from ragged, outlaw events into quasi-concerts, with
permits, big budgets, vendors and security teams. Rave fashions and music
are also becoming staples in American malls, films and television
commercials as touchstones of the new youth.

Several cities in Florida have outlawed raves, and in October state
officials there announced they would crack down further after a Miami rave
was connected to one death, 10 hospitalizations and 30 arrests, all
drug-related. Arrests and deaths have been tied to rave gatherings in more
than a dozen Southern California communities, and with each incident it
seems someone suggests stamping out the parties.

"We've been getting calls from other communities asking what's going on
down here, why we're letting this thing go on," said Adelanto City
Councilman Richard Althouse. The wide-eyed city elder was watching early
arrivals for the rave in his city's California League baseball stadium.
"I'm not sure what to expect. We're doing this because our city budget is
in a negative deficit. We need money, honestly. But I came down to see what
it is."

What to expect is the syncopated sensuality and abandon of disco; the
formalized drug culture of psychedelic rock and the bonhomie of the
Grateful Dead society; the chaotic populism and anti-establishment stance
of punk; and the turntable science and audience response of hip-hop.

But walk through the chugging sound and dazzling glare of a rave and you
will also find some unique hallmarks, most dramatic among them the
hypnotizing, high-tech sound that fans say resonates with their Information
Age sensibilities. The special effects of lasers, glowing orbs and
latticework towers at the desert raves makes the sites seem like alien way
stations, but the ravers say they find a warm humanity within the cold,
machine-like sounds and cosmic imagery.

"It's not passive, they're not bowing down to some rock star, because they
see that as false, fake, and the kids now don't want that," says Mark
Lacey, president and CEO of Raveworld, a Lake Forest-based company whose
eponymous Web site has become a hub for the global rave community. "They're
turned off of rock. After grunge what's left to do in rock? This music
sounds like the future to them, and when they're at a rave they can touch
the future. And at a rave the future is utopian."

An informal sample at Adelanto suggests that most ravers are from Los
Angeles, Orange, San Diego and Riverside counties, meaning many have driven
two hours or more to reach the stadium of the High Desert Mavericks. The
audience is more culturally and ethnically diverse than at most any other
live music event, but it is also primarily suburban.

In the search for the heart and history of rave culture, X marks the spot.

It was in England at the tail end of the 1980s that two American imports --
the designer drug Ecstasy (a.k.a. X or E) and the electronic music sired in
Detroit and Chicago -- were combined to create a sensation. The music had a
mechanized, relentless beat and shimmering sound-scapes that, to someone
high on Ecstasy, creates a magical sensory experience.

Ecstasy's proper name is MDMA (methylene dioxymethamphetamine), and
although it was patented in Germany more than 80 years ago, it more or less
disappeared until U.S. researchers revived it for experimentation in the
1960s. The drug creates some hallucinatory effects similar to LSD and jacks
up the nervous system like speed, but toxicologists say it also creates a
sense of well-being, euphoria and empathy that make it a pharmacological
curiosity -- and a touchstone for the rave culture's trademark communal vibe.

A study published last year in the Journal of Toxicology catalogs a host of
physical dangers as well: possible neural damage, fainting, hyperthermia,
nausea and hypertension among them. But Simon Reynolds, author of
Generation Ecstasy, says his research has shown that the psychological
dangers might be more profound -- the vivid world Ecstasy creates in a rave
might leave young users with psychological effects as their daily life
becomes a dreary, gray desolation. The party is fleeting as well. The
euphoric power of the drug diminishes as it builds up in the system of a
regular user, so while the speedlike effects remain, the sparkling
perception enhancement fades.

Through the years, Ecstasy has remained a key component in the rave, but it
has given way to many other substances, from speed to the stimulant GHB,
and Reynolds says that has undermined some of the spirit of the events
because now kids have "nasty, selfish" highs.

At any given rave today, many in the crowd will be sober or using legal
stimulants such as the trendy "smart" drinks, caffeine pills or ginseng.
Alcohol is almost completely absent -- in part, no doubt, because it mars
the effects of Ecstasy.

At the Adelanto rave, marijuana smoke wafted among the laser lights and
groups of ravers huddled among the bleachers snorting lines of
methamphetamine. In the dirt parking lot, furtive teens sold blotter hits
of LSD and Ecstasy tablets, while inside, some stumbling, wild-eyed
revelers were quite clearly under the influence of some substance. Although
the city's police force and the event's security guards kept a constant
patrol -- and searched every raver at the admission gate -- these types of
drugs are easily secreted or simply ingested outside.

To some people, the rave is perhaps the safest music event for young
people. Lacey said that compared to the looting, arson and rape reports at
Woodstock 99 and the violent imagery of many rap acts, the rave culture's
neo-hippie motto of "PLUR" (Peace, Love, Understanding, Respect) should be
enticing to worried parents. The events may seem dark and strange, he said,
but "dancing around a fire to repetitive beats -- well, you know, as a
species we've been doing that for thousands of years."