Oftentimes limit-experiences are induced by altering devices, grasped in
Weberian terms as “intoxicating elements of orgiastic sensuality”: music, drugs,
dance, touch, among other techniques (Weber 1913). Alternative ways of perceiving
and understanding reality thus entailed are potentially disruptive of subjective,
collective, and political identities. This potential for transformation poses a menace
to the legitimacy of civilizations, which depend on the control of populations and
subjectivities, as particularly exemplified by the biopower mechanisms of the nation-
state. However, as absolute eradication is impossible, exercises of self-transformation
become marginalized while reinforcing exclusionary practices and moralities. The
ritual exploration of limit-experiences is then largely confined to alternative or
“underground” subcultures, for which “intoxicating elements” are rendered as
catalysts of charisma and problematization.
In New Age and techno music, rhythmic and melodic features stimulate specific
sensorial-affective responses, such as states of well-being, timelessness, disorientation,
and intensity, often associated with imaginaries of inner utopia (or dystopia) or unio
mystica. Whether as “narcotic,” “angelic,” or “plastic” sounds, the development of
digital music as a “science of psychedelic sounds” seeks to mimic psychedelic or
spiritual states (Erlmann 1996; Reynolds 1998). Such audio-emotional mimicry of
inner states facilitates the experience of “movement” towards the “extraordinary.”
Among intoxicating elements, drugs stand out for their corporeal and political
implications. They amplify extraordinary experiences, whether in dance or spiritual
scenes. LSD and MDMA provide two different phenomenological registers. While
LSD (acid) propitiates a psychedelic asceticism enacted by mental states of hyper-
imagination and mystical transcendence, MDMA (ecstasy) creates an oceanic
eroticism expressed by affective states of excruciating pleasures and overflowing
immanence. Notwithstanding their phenomenological complementarity, both
substances greatly facilitate the setting of collective experiences of the extraordinary,
such as “Temporary Autonomous Zones” (“TAZ”) (Bey 1991). But as dangerous as
sacred, drugs can destroy as well as enlighten the user. Drug abuse by itself quite
often transforms chemical blissfulness into nightmarish despair, as the two-year
cycle of MDMA indulgence repeatedly demonstrates. In Techno, it is arguable
whether drugs are mandatory for “understanding” digital music or achieving group
acceptance. In any case, the following maxim holds: the basic drug is the music, a
music that drugs the subject and makes him or her dance.
The history of drugs congeals New Age and Techno, suggesting a single
countercultural formation. Synthesized in Germany in 1910, MDMA was
rediscovered by American psy-researchers by the mid-1970s and employed in
experimental psychotherapy. Known as “Adam” for its effects of “Edenic rebirth” on
patients, MDMA was also quickly absorbed by New Age circles as a device for
creativity and self-exploration (Escohotado 1998:1,019–33). However, the epidemic
dissemination of MDMA as commercial ‘ecstasy’ during the 1980s led to its
criminalization in most Western countries. Even so, ecstasy became the drug of
choice in the club scene, reaching massive levels of consumption in Western Europe
throughout the 1990s.^5 By and large, a comparison of MDMA and LSD reveals
244 GLOBAL NOMADS IN IBIZA AND GOA