The phenomenon of joining a (sober) morning rave to ready yourself for the work day is spreading across the world, revealing how the ethos of 1990s dance culture can be successfully re-appropriated without the use of narcotics.

“'Morning Gloryville - Rave your way into to the day!' Is turning clubbing on its head,” beamed Sam Moyo -- organizer of the London-based group -- in an interview last year. The hugely successful event, which originated in East-London, has now spread to 12 cities around the world, and is just about to open it’s second UK event in West London on July 9.

This is drug culture, but strictly without the drugs. The reason events are held on Wednesday mornings is, as Moyo explained last year, “to filter out the after partiers,” namely clubbers still wondering London’s streets at 9 a.m. with a brain awash with serotonin, looking for just one more place to dance. “This is you. Love it and just do it,” she says, “you don’t need all the drink and the drugs.”

How right she is. Acid House and rave culture was never solely about a drug. MDMA shed its chemical name early on and was hailed as ecstasy itself. Morning Gloryville raves just aren’t for the intoxicated. Instead, they have all the staples of the new age, smart-casual, tech savvy professional -- you can “get a massage, a super food smoothie, some coffee,” but also, “lots of hugs and just general love and fun before work.”

Yet, it’s worth acknowledging that this phenomenon, and the culture it embodies, owes a lot to drugs. The very format of recreation and the ethos of “love and hugs” were born of a chemical as well as people. Before ecstasy, people drank in pubs and clubs. They drank until they their inhibitions dissolved sufficiently enough to allow them talk to strangers and brave the dance floor.

After 1989 and the seismic explosion of ecstasy, clubbing as we know it was born. By 1995, the UK Home Office estimated that up to 1.5 million ecstasy pills were being taken every weekend in the country. The drug floods the brain with serotonin and dopamine; dancing is impulsive and empathy overwhelming. After the aggressive individualism of the Margaret Thatcher government, ecstasy helped a section of the nation rediscover collectivism, unity, and, “love and hugs.”

It’s worth quoting Mathew Collins at length, who describes the power and allure of rave culture in his seminal text on the topic, Altered State: The Story of Ecstasy Culture and Acid House.

“Ecstasy culture -- the combination of dance music (in it’s many forms) and drugs -- was the driving phenomena in British youth culture for almost a decade… The fundamental reason it became so widespread and pervasive, reaching into every town and village and spreading far beyond the borders of the country, is simple and prosaic: it was the best entertainment format on the market, a development of technologies -- musical, chemical and computer -- to deliver altered states of consciousness, that have changed the way we think, the way we feel, the way we act, the way we live.”

Attendees of Morning Gloryville are children of the 1990s. What Irvine Welsh labeled the “chemical generation” have taken the culture fostered in their teenage years, sanitized and reinvented it: “When people start getting really serious jobs, or start having a family, or they want to live free of alcohol and drugs, they almost stop partying and dancing … we thought this was a shame,” says former organization member Nico Thoemmes.

So, rather than a grueling and mundane visit to the gym they’d rather get their exercise from free expression, and dancing to Rob Da Bank -- engaging with their imagination and other people. A drug may have taught many how to let go in this way, but it is far from a necessary condition.

“At [rave culture’s] heart was a concerted effort to attempt to suspend normal transmission, if only for one night. A mission to re-appropriate consciousness, to invent, however briefly, a kind of Utopia,” says Collins.

And at the heart of Morning Gloryville, is an effort to suspend the 9-5 grind if only for one morning, and to re-appropriate rave/drug culture. It’s an inspiring demonstration of how drug culture can, to a degree, have positive effects on society. I think it’s a fantastic idea. See you next Wednesday.