Rave Packing List: Festival Harm Reduction

Most festival medical emergencies are prevented at home, not at the venue. This list is organised around the four things that actually go wrong, so you can tell which items are non-negotiable and which are comfort.

Some product links below are affiliate links. We may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We link to DanceSafe because it is the only nonprofit reagent manufacturer in the US and it runs free drug checking at events.

The four failure modes

Packing lists usually read as a pile of products. Start instead from what puts people in the medical tent.

The substance is not what you were told. Solved at your kitchen table, before you leave.

Hyperthermia. MDMA impairs thermoregulation, so you stop registering how hot you are. Solved by breaks and cooling, not by willpower.

Hyponatremia. Drinking large volumes of plain water while on MDMA dilutes blood sodium, and it has killed people. Solved by electrolytes, not by drinking more.

Nobody knows what you took. This is the one that turns a manageable situation into an emergency, and it is fixed by a conversation that costs nothing.

Hearing damage belongs on the list too, though it never sends anyone to the medical tent. It just quietly takes something you do not get back.

The list in one scan

• Test at home: fentanyl strips plus a reagent kit
• Hydration: 500 ml per hour with electrolytes dancing, 250 ml resting
• Heat: light clothing, chill-out area located on arrival, hourly breaks
• Two pairs of earplugs, because you will lose one
• A buddy plan: what you took, when, where to meet if separated
• Emergencies: medical tent, Good Samaritan law, naloxone
• 62-FIRESIDE saved in your phone

Test at home, not in the queue

On-site checking exists at some festivals, but coverage is patchy and lines are long. Testing at home leaves you time to act on a bad result instead of standing in a field deciding whether to throw something away.

Fentanyl test strips come first, for any powder or pill regardless of what it was sold as. Fentanyl has been confirmed in MDMA, cocaine, ketamine and pressed pills. One line is POSITIVE, fentanyl detected. Two lines is NEGATIVE, none detected. That reads backwards to most people, so check it twice. A positive is a reason not to use, never a reason to use less. Strips are single use, one per sample, so buy more than you think you need.

Then a reagent kit matched to what you have. The MDMA kit carries Marquis, the two-part Simon’s and Froehde, and Simon’s earns its place because it separates MDMA from MDA. The cocaine, LSD and ketamine kits each ship with a starter fentanyl strip, single use like any other. Several different substances is what the complete set is for.

Three small things make reagent testing work properly: a spot plate so you react samples on ceramic rather than something that stains or reacts itself, a micro scoop for a consistent sample rather than a guess, and a milligram scale with calibration weights, used at home rather than in a dark venue. Add xylazine strips if anything came from the opioid or pressed-pill supply, since naloxone does not reverse xylazine sedation.

Walkthroughs: testing MDMA, testing cocaine, using fentanyl strips, and which test kit do I need.

Hydration is not “drink water”

Both dehydration and overhydration have killed people at these events, which is why the instruction has to be more specific than a slogan.

Dancing: about 500 ml per hour, with electrolytes. Resting: about 250 ml per hour, and that is a ceiling rather than a target.

Any electrolyte powder works, as does a pinch of salt in coconut water, and DanceSafe sells hydration packs if you want one shipping with the rest of the order. Alcohol is not hydration, which is obvious and still worth writing down. More in our festival heat and hydration guide.

Heat

Take 10 to 15 minutes off dancing every hour. Find the chill-out area at the start of the night, while it is still an errand rather than an emergency. Wet cloth on the back of the neck, wrists and temples cools core temperature fast.

Know the signs: sweating stops, confusion, collapse. The sweating stopping is the counterintuitive one, because it looks like cooling down and it means the opposite. If someone collapses from suspected heat stroke, move them somewhere cool, remove excess clothing, put cool water on their skin, and call emergency services. Do not leave them alone.

Hearing

One unprotected night produces a measurable temporary threshold shift, and repeated exposure accumulates into permanent loss. A randomised trial at an outdoor festival found earplugs cut the rate of temporary threshold shift roughly fivefold against unprotected listening, which makes this the best-evidenced item on the entire list.

High-fidelity plugs, like the DanceSafe EarPeace ones, drop volume evenly across frequencies instead of gutting the treble the way foam does. Loop and Etymotic are comparable. Bring two, because you will lose one. See our hearing guide and do earplugs ruin the music.

If you are snorting anything

Shared straws and rolled notes transmit hepatitis C, which survives on surfaces longer than people assume, and a rolled banknote is abrasive enough to cause the small nasal bleeds that make transmission possible. Bring your own tube and keep it yours. DanceSafe sells single-use crisp tubes, and the detail is in sharing straws and hepatitis C.

The conversation that costs nothing

Before you dose, tell one trusted, relatively sober person:

1. What you took and roughly how much
2. When you took it
3. What interactions you checked for
4. Where to meet if you get separated
5. That Good Samaritan laws apply, so calling for help will not get either of you arrested

That last point is the one that saves lives, because the delay in calling is what turns bad into fatal. Check combinations in advance with our interaction checker, and save the Fireside Project number, 62-FIRESIDE, which is free peer support by phone during or after a difficult psychedelic experience. Save it before you go, not while you need it.

Emergencies

Know where the medical tent is, and the drug amnesty policy, because most large events have one.

Stimulant and opioid overdoses look nothing alike. Naloxone does not reverse MDMA toxicity, and it is the whole answer for fentanyl. If you carry it, know how to use it. NEXT Distro ships free naloxone to most US states and many local programmes hand it out, so this is one thing nobody should be buying.

What is free and what is not

Packing lists imply everything requires a purchase. Most of what matters does not.

Free: the buddy conversation, locating the medical tent and chill-out area on arrival, knowing your state’s Good Samaritan law, saving the Fireside number, scheduling cooling breaks, and naloxone in most US states.

Bought once, used for years: earplugs and a scale. A single reagent bottle runs 50 to 75 tests.

Bought repeatedly: fentanyl and xylazine strips are single use. This is the line to over-buy rather than ration.

The half hour before you leave does more than anything available to you once you are inside. Test, plan the water, name your person, find the tent. It all works better in a lit kitchen than in a field at 2 AM.

For substance-specific guidance, see our MDMA guide, cocaine guide and ketamine guide.

Sources

• Effectiveness of earplugs in preventing recreational noise-induced hearing loss: a randomized clinical trial. JAMA Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, 2016. PMID 27054284