Thailand has recently legalized marijuana, so Michelle Lhooq, the drug & parties expert had to go visit, with her parents! Small weeds shops have opened all over the place in recent months, but they just might soon get endangered. Hugely popular US weed brand Cookies opened its first dispensary in Bangkok in January, and there are fears the market will soon be dominated by foreign companies that will put small mom-and-pops out of business. Lhooq points out that the current legal uncertainty around Thai cannabis has prevented international interests from entering the scene, however, companies like Cookies are paving the way for a franchise model where US brands team up with local partners to sell name-brand weed.

Drugs and partying specialist Michelle Lhooq is wondering how the eminent psychedelic legalization is going to affect partying in general. She asks three pivotal questions for the emerging era of post-alcohol partying:

"How might the energy of a dancefloor shift if everyone is vibrating on psychedelics?

What new aesthetics emerge from a social space designed for recreational psychedelic use?

Can nightlife be sustainable if its economic model does not revolve around booze?"

Drugs&parties expert Michelle Lhooq shares an interesting invitation to a "sober rave for all the freaks seeking new horizons of holistic hedonism...:

Parties are portals into a new way of being.

The womb is a vortex into what comes beyond.

MUSHWOMB is an alternate reality to a nightlife hellscape infected by the clout matrix.

It is a wormhole where a pussy portal leads you to a sunny dancefloor where the vibes are immaculate, the music is soulful, and toxic substances are abandoned in favor of sparkling shroom candies, botanical booze-free cocktails, and chaga chai teas.

The portal opens on 01.22.23 in a sacred queer space in Los Angeles—a secret yard where the underground’s sweat and joyful tears collect into a pool for baptism and rebirth."

Drugs and parties specialist Michelle Lhooq checked out New York Dimes Square scene and published a great post about it, including some very interesting thoughts:

“One thing is obvious: when too many people try to adopt the contrarian position at once, it’s no longer contrarian. Mavericks become the new herd.”

“At the end of the night we’re all humans working to the real cause of just being,”

"There’s no such thing as purity anymore."

"I’m sorry to break the first cardinal rule of Berlin nightlife—you don’t talk about Berghain—but when I pull up to the club and see a factory line of black silhouettes wearing the exact same BDSM harnesses from Amazon.com … biiiiiitch! I cannot resist going in. I mean, come on. That shit looks like a meme" - clubs&drugs lover Michelle Lhooq writes in her latest Instagram about the famous club. "I hit the Berg three times during my trip, and every occasion felt like a hollow simulation, like taking a soulless ride through techno Disneyland. It was as if a meta-level of self-consciousness was hanging over the club - an acute awareness that THIS IS BERGHAIN. Half the dancefloor looked like they stepped off the Balenciaga runway, and the bug-eyed models stomping around on designer amphetamines were actually terrifying. Dabauchery didn't look like an act of debasement but a way of fitting into a proscribed lifestyle".

Party and drugs specialist Michelle Lhooq discusses the changing landscape of drugs in the New Models podcast - from legalization grifts to “spectrum sobriety”, They also discuss nü party paradigms, emergent synthetics, and the gentrification of club drugs like K, MDMA, and 3-MMC. Additionally, Lil Internet fills in some context with fascinating explainers on Berlin’s Telegram drug delivery services. Listen to the podcast - https://ravenewworld.substack.com/p/techno-disneyland.

"Every time I pop out, I keep running into fools talking on the dancefloor. Just standing around, chitty-chatting" - Michelle Lhooq is frustrated and angry in her latest post. She also gives the oblivious a scientific explanation of the dancefloor: "The key to a popping dancefloor is ENERGY CIRCULATION. The DJ opens the portal and radiates nrg through the speakers, which disseminates through the dancers and twists into an atmospheric vortex. So when Chatty Kathys cluster by the DJ booth, ya’ll create ENERGY BLOCKS right at the power source, siphoning radiance with your black hole of self-absorption. This is not your aunty’s tea party. We out here exorcising demons. Out here for dissolution, for relief, for fucking feeling something—not networking!!!".

"Nightclubs and music venues have been closed since March 2020, disco lights are banned, and DJs are prohibited from playing on 'raised podiums' or mixing tracks in case, god forbid, this encourages dancing" - Rave New World's Michelle Lhooq looks across the ocean into Singapore night-scene. She points out "the moratorium on partying feels like a morality-tinged repudiation on the value of electronic music culture: classical music concerts have returned, pop bangers blast at indoor spin classes, church choirs sing maskless, yet the country is still waiting for a tiny cadre of four or five top officials to decide when clubs can reopen".

An interesting point by Michelle Lhooq in her latest Rave New World post: "Clearly, we are entering the most absurd era of the pandemic, where ravers are actively trying to catch the virus, the scarcity of COVID testing is a joke, and the President himself is tweeting 'LMFAO IDK just Google it'. As the void closes in, the question lingers: is there any use resisting the nihilism of this moment? Or do you just cross the goddamn Rubicon, and jump into the gabber rave mosh pit?".

Rave New World's Michelle Lhooq goes into "hard reduction", a public health philosophy that is moving from the fringes to the center of the cultural zeitgeist. The clubber talked to Ripley Soprano, editor-in-chief of Dirty magazine: "When I think about harm reduction, I think of whore and junkie magic. It exists in some middle ground between science, community work, and public health medicine. Dirty is about broadening people’s perception of joy so they can make their own autonomous health decisions, like whether or not they want to use drugs, and just having stuff to live for. Which feels like a very downtown New Work ethos, not like what exists now".

Party and drugs connoisseur Michelle Lhooq talked to Jon Hopkins - who produced his last album 'Music For Psychedelic Therapy' while on drugs in a cave in Ecuador - about how do you make music on ketamine, how do you translate music from plants, why DMT elves love synths, why we might be on the precipice of a new genre of music. He talks to Lhooq about his creative process - "In order to write this record, I would go into the psychedelic space every few weeks to experience it, usually through ketamine... There's a lot of weird stuff that happens when you enter into the zone—you switch from thinking you're the creator to realizing you’re a channel".

A lucrative new market is emerging for music designed for therapeutic trips using ketamine, psilocybin, MDMA and other psychotropic drugs. “There’s some amazing synergy between technology and these medicines that wasn’t possible until quite recently. And it seems to be really powerful” - music producer Jon Hopkins tells party-and-drugs chronicler Michelle Lhooq for her interesting Guardian article about music and trips.

"It is impossible not to consider the entangled nature of race and drugs. Despite efforts to rectify the War on Drugs’ disproportionate harm to marginalised groups, the legal cannabis industry has become overwhelmingly white-controlled, while drug law enforcement still disproportionately hurts Black communities... Getting stoned no longer holds any countercultural bite when your weed comes from a SPAC owned by a vertically-integrated cannabis conglomerate, and legal ketamine clinics are a privilege reserved for the most wealthy" - gonzo journalist Michelle Lhooq writes in her new essay. She will try to answer three essential questions: "Is substance use still subversive and emancipatory? Do drugs have any place at protests or in organizing? How can we reimagine nightlife spaces for sober experiences?".

Rave New World's Michelle Lhooq makes a great point in her latest newsletter about partying getting its long over-due recognition: "Suddenly, club culture was front-page news, rather than relegated to tabloid gossip or society pages; everyone poking out of their quarantine hovels now obsessed with knowing where the party’s at... Now, rave culture is going mainstream, Gen Z is arriving on the scene, and city officials are finally recognizing the economic value of nightlife—thanks in part to grassroots activism that kept beloved music venues afloat during pandemic shutdowns. Could all of this mainstream media attention finally destigmatize nightlife—a culture long associated with antisocial escapism and frivolous peacocking—and finally convince the gentry that partying is, in fact, an essential activity?".