Montreal raver Pedro Alvarez has quit the party scene after discovering that DJs have been hiding messages about him inside their music and that several of his closest friends are government agents sent to monitor him. "At first, I only noticed these things after taking drugs," says Pedro. "Then I started noticing them before taking drugs, which proved that the drugs had permanently improved my awareness."

Pedro's suspicions began at a happy hardcore party when he noticed two ravers talking next to him with unusually serious expressions. The music was too loud for Pedro to hear what they were saying, but after one of them glanced in his direction and touched his nose, Pedro became convinced they were discussing an embarrassing incident from six years earlier. "Nobody has a conversation that serious at a happy hardcore party unless it's about me," says Pedro. "Touching your nose is the oldest undercover signal in the book. It means stop talking, Pedro knows."

Things grew worse after Pedro took a large quantity of drugs at a three-day psytrance festival and went nearly sixty hours without sleeping. He became convinced that the music was giving him instructions. One track told him everyone knew who he was, another convinced him that he had offended somebody and a darker track warned that something terrible would happen if he left the dance floor. "By sunrise, it felt like every track was reacting to my thoughts," says Pedro. "I wasn't following the music anymore. The music was following me. Then a green laser pointed directly at my chest. When I pointed at the operator, he aimed it somewhere else. That's how I knew I had caught him."

What began at the festival soon spread to every style of rave music. "Every genre had its own department," says Pedro. "Happy hardcore handled my relationships, jungle distributed intelligence and acid techno conducted the interrogations." Pedro also believed that every nearby conversation was about him. If people laughed, they were mocking him. If they became serious, they were discussing criminal allegations.

Pedro's friends became worried when he accused them of being narcs and undercover government agents who had been sent to befriend him. "He investigated how he met each of us," says his friend Mélanie Dubois. "He said it was suspicious that most of us met him at raves, even though raves are practically the only places he goes. When I reminded him that we'd been friends for twelve years, he said that proved the government was willing to play the long game."

Pedro tested his friends by telling each of them that he intended to buy a different drug, then waiting to see if dealers or DJs appeared to know about it. "I told Mélanie I was looking for ketamine," says Pedro. "Within thirty minutes, two strangers offered me ketamine and the DJ played a track with a voice saying 'fall into the K-hole.' Mélanie says people offering ketamine at a rave is normal. That's exactly the kind of cover story the government would use."

Dr. Leonard Fischkopf of the Montreal Centre for Drug-Induced Revelations says powerful stimulants and psychedelics can cause severe paranoia, particularly when combined with dehydration and several nights without sleep. "Ordinary coincidences begin to feel like evidence and close friends start looking like government informants," says Dr. Fischkopf. "A normal kick drum says boom. It doesn't know your name, it hasn't reviewed your police file and it isn't disappointed in your career. You haven't uncovered a massive conspiracy. The federal government does not have the budget to spend twelve years befriending a man whose biggest secret is where he buys ketamine."

Pedro finally abandoned the rave scene after attending an underground gabber party where he became convinced that hundreds of people were participating in a public trial against him. "The kick drum kept repeating guilty, guilty, guilty," says Pedro. "Then everyone raised their fists at the same time and the DJ looked in my direction. I realized the entire party had already reached a verdict. I'm not going back. Partying was destroying my mind." Since quitting drugs and raves, Pedro has been sleeping normally and no longer hears accusations inside every kick drum. Dr. Fischkopf says anyone experiencing similar symptoms should remain sober, get proper sleep and seek professional help if the paranoia continues. When told that a doctor might establish his baseline, monitor his sleeping patterns and watch for sudden drops in his mood, Pedro became suspicious. "Baseline, patterns and drops?" says Pedro. "That's DJ language. They've infiltrated medicine."

Are drugs making ravers paranoid? Can DJs send secret messages through kick drums? Are Pedro's friends really government agents? Only time, sobriety and several nights of proper sleep will tell.