It’s 4am and I’m in a club – the first time I’ve done this in years. I’m 51 and in my sandwich era, meaning I’ve got teenage and elderly loved ones on my mind – a situation that generally calls for early nights. But when you’re responsibilities-maxxing, sometimes you need the opposite. A blowout. A huge, transcendent, resetting release. A rave.
I don’t know what took me so long to get around to it. Misplaced parental guilt? Internalised ageism? Exhaustion? It’s not as though I didn’t know other gen-Xers who have been regularly getting blissfully – ceremonially, even – lost in house, techno or drum’n’bass, and they’re not alone. A 2025 study by the University of Leeds went viral: “Women aged 40-65 are turning to raves for real mental health,” said one of many Instagram posts and press headlines. “Why many women over 40 still go to raves,” read another. But surely the question should be: why the hell wouldn’t they?
