How to Have An Elite Festival Sesh

May 5, 2026

Article by Simon Doherty

For a lot of people who enjoy dunking themselves into electronic music culture, the summer is approximately 4% an actual summer and 96% drifting through festival campsites smothered in MDMA and ket and shrooms. Doused in tepid beer and trying to make tripping over tent guide ropes a competitive sport. In other words: taking full advantage of the pinata of fun that is the summer festivals.

Visiting a festival if you’re into music is what I imagine visiting a cathedral would be like for a practicing Christian. Like a central hub of proceedings, but instead of the normal holy communion (a tasteless wafer and a swig of wine representing the body and blood of the OG influencer Mr Jesus Christ) it’s an un-holy communion (a bump of k and a swig of cider).

Photo credit: Josh Eustace

Festivals put all the basic elements of the culture––the music, the people, the dancing, the hot looks, and the drugs––into a cement mixer and churns it all around, throwing in extras for good measure (pop-up tents that are close to impossible to pop-down, $15 falafel wraps, and sleep deprivation). All good fun, but to make the most of the weekend you need a strategy. This article, reader, is that strategy.

Avoid Dodgy Heads Selling Dodgy Drugs

One great thing about a festival is the crowd who tend to sprinkle fun all over the site. It’s likely to be almost exclusively a hula-hooping, chewing gum offering, multi-coloured, reservoir of goodwill. It’s the best place to get chatting with a stranger. It’s the best place for people watching. But you do get the odd grubby opportunist who will be selling fake drugs.

They’re usually quite easy to spot, as they’ll be steaming through the crowd offering a smörgåsbord of party prescriptions – PILLS?, COKE??, KET???, NOS????; PILLS?, COKE??, KET???, NOS???? – being conspicuously loud and blatant. The reason they're so blasé is that they’re not selling illegal drugs; their baggies might cost the same as popular drugs but they just contain sugar or chalk or caffeine or crushed up paracetamol, or whatever was lying around. There are no legal implications for them if they were caught by an undercover cop anyway. Plus, unlike a neighbourhood plug, they don’t care about repeat business so they can just rip everyone off and disappear into the night never to be seen again.

These charlatans can be rumbled by presumptive testing kits like EZ Test Kits, but a simple evaluation of the situation should be enough to choose not to engage with suspicious people like that. The real dealers are operating inconspicuously, moving in the shadows of the night, I’ll say no more about that. In general, buying drugs inside a festival is more risky than buying them elsewhere. Research from America, Australia, and the UK has concluded this.

In the latter study, the pioneering drug checking charity The Loop found that, for the sample they were looking at, festival-goers who bought their drugs inside the festival were more than twice as likely to be mis-sold (either being sold a cheaper substance than the one advertised or sold something with no drugs in it at all). People buying drugs inside a festival are also subjected to vastly inflated pricing structures because bringing the product in can be risky.

The Non-Negotiables

If you want to make the most out of the weekend and keep the energy going right up until the very last kickdrum, you’re going to want to take care of the non-negotiables: eating, sleeping, hydrating, and suncream.

Suncream, yes. I saw a TikTok once saying that if your partner doesn’t actively encourage you to wear suncream in the sun, they’re not actually invested in the long-term future of the relationship. So you can assess the prospective longevity of your relationship and avoid skin cancer in one fell swoop. Go, suncream!

Hydration is also your friend. If you’re spending all day and night ricocheting from stage to stage, like you’re impersonating a pinball machine, remember to take some breaks away from the crowd to cool down. And aim to sip ½ a pint of water (around 250ml or a quarter of a litre) per hour if you’re in a hot environment. Starting the day by whacking a cheap sachet of electrolytes into your water bottle is never a bad idea.

Food, it’s simple really: you need to eat twice a day at a minimum. Even if you don’t feel like it because you’re on stimulants, it will stop you getting too wrecked too quickly (especially in the case of alcohol) and stop your energy levels from withering away like a dying candle. Even just a banana in the mid-afternoon can do wonders. If you eat nothing, that’s like setting off on a road trip without any fuel in the car.

I’d say that it’s good practice to get at least some amount of sleep or downtime every day. Even if it’s just lying there and trying to sleep, your body will thank you the next day. It might be hard if you’re really enjoying sitting around the campfire at 9AM talking utter gobbledygook, but still go and have a few hours of shut eye before the proceedings kick off again.

Don’t Peak Too Soon

Drugs can enhance a festival experience, let’s be real that’s a fact. But if you don’t have a solid plan you could peak too soon. The best part of the festival is either the penultimate night or the very end. The first day is just the warm up, all the stages aren’t even open yet, you don’t want to drown in serotonin-suckers at that point: A few beers and a few joints to gently shear the sharp edges of the world, yes – of course. Enough 2C-B to tap dance on the precipice of reality, shaping and reshaping the idea of your very existence on this earth? No, that’s peaking too soon for the Thursday, save that for later on. That’s more a Sunday morning at 7AM vibe.

Summon the psychology of an athlete: you don’t see a runner sprinting at the beginning of a marathon, do you? A boxer doesn’t throw their most vicious combinations in the first five seconds of the first round. They might, after all, need that energy later on. Well, the Thursday night at the festival is your metaphorical first round.

Less is Often More

I like to advance a theory that less is more for most drugs, the less you take the whole experience is better overall. Think about it: MDMA is great because it makes you feel like you’ve won the lottery ten times in one day. But if you take too much you don’t get more of the openness and empathy, but you do get a crippling comedown during the week. Coke can make you feel confident, but too much and you're feeling so anxious that you’re sitting in the corner not talking. Booze is fun, of course, but if you guzzle it down for ten hours you can become sloppy and disorientated and possibly annoying to be around. A trickle of ket can be fun, no doubt about that. But if you smash way too much, it’ll feel like a stegosaurus wearing a purple foam hat has arrived, peeled back your scalp, pried open your skull, and proceeded to pirouette on top of your cerebral cortex. Knowing your limits and pacing yourself is essential in this game; nobody wants to have to carry you back to the campsite while the headliner is about to start.

Mixing Drugs: Do Your Research

Whatever festival you go to, it’s likely to be carpeted with drugs. There'll be no lack of choice. All drugs (legal or illegal) have the ability to be harmful. And these risks increase if you mix multiple substances together, and that includes alcohol and any medication you might be prescribed. For that reason, it’s best to avoid mixing as much as possible. But, If you are going to anyway, do your research beforehand to be sure to totally avoid very risky combinations (GHB and alcohol, for instance, is a total no go). This tool, from TripSit, is a good place to start your research.

On top of that, you don’t want to take drugs that work on the same neurotransmitter systems every day. If you take MDMA or 2C-B one day for instance, which work on your serotonin pathways, the next day your serotonin receptors are depleted. If you took it again the next day, you wouldn’t get the same effect but the potential side effects (like overheating or a horrible comedown) increases. Drugs that work on different neurotransmitter pathways (like weed or ket, for instance) might be more preferable the next day.

A Meeting Spot

At some point you will inevitably get split up from your group and will end up spirographing around the site alone. This always seems to happen in the pathways in between stages after a major act has finished. You look the wrong way for one second, to, for instance, observe how a cloud kind of looks like a lion eating a butterfly (mushrooms) and… BAM! The crowd surges on, like an overflowing river, and you’ve lost everyone.

You can’t call anyone because there’s no signal. But don’t get worried about this because you’re now on a side quest and what generally happens is you’ll make some ‘festival friends’. You’ll see and hang out with them at festivals periodically over the next few years but never meet outside that context because they live in another city. Then, before you know it, you’re watching the speeches at a wedding with the creeping realisation that you don’t really know these people at all.

Photo Credit: Josh Eustace

Side quests are fun, but you need to get back to your crew at some point. This is all about preparation. On the very first day, select a tall landmark (like a certain fairground ride) and make that the meeting spot. Then agree with the group that at two points in the day (it could be 3PM and 1AM) everyone goes there. Then the lost stragglers have two opportunities to be reunited.

(Side note: Isn’t it wild to think that previous generations had to navigate general social engagements without mobile phones? “I’ll meet you outside the Post Office at 2PM on Tuesday, Barbra.” You have to bring the pre-internet energy.)

If In Doubt, Just Get the Medics

This is a team sport. If you see anyone around you who looks like they could be ill or having a bad time, help them! Nobody should be left behind. If someone looks like they could be in trouble in a serious way, get the medics. The medics aren’t in the same team as the security, half of them are sesh heads themselves too, nobody is going to get in trouble or be searched for getting the medics. If it’s related to drugs, it’s best if possible to let the medic know exactly what has been taken and in what amounts. Nothing bad can ever happen from getting the medics.

Never forget the values this whole culture is founded upon: peace, love, unity, respect, and equality. As long as people seek spiritual transcendence by gathering in front of sound systems in fields, in clubs, in legal spaces or otherwise, these values will never die.

What Comes Up, Must…

It’s likely that you’ll be contending with a comedown during the week after the festival. Symptoms can include a general low mood, a questioning of one’s life decisions or, if you excessively caned it all weekend, staring down the barrel of a vicious (albeit temporary) existential crisis.

Make sure that there’s nothing taxing or stressful booked in for this time – like a job interview, a serious deadline at work, or that conversation where your parents sit you down and say, “You’ve posted videos about drugs for a while now, shouldn’t you think about getting a real job?” Just me? Okay, just me.

People often talk about using expensive supplements to expedite this process. Disregard all that because it’s not necessary; you just need to stop partying (the only powder today is cheap electrolyte powder that goes in your drink – not cheap speed that goes up your nose), get as much sleep as possible, and eat healthy food. Food that is rich in the essential amino acid tryptophan for the W: chicken, turkey, tofu, chickpeas, sunflower seeds, eggs, fish, milk, cheese, and oats. It helps to have food waiting for you at home for when you return because fuck going to the shop where the lights are so fucking bright.

If things get bad, conduct precisely this sequence of events precisely in this order. This is a tried and tested formula. Don’t question it, reader, this is the blueprint. Are you ready? Let’s go…

Get out of bed. Brace yourself, then open the curtains. Cut off your festival wristband. Inhale a pint of water. Inhale a pint of orange juice. Get in the shower. Let the water blast you in the face for ten minutes. Get out of the shower. Get back in. Shout, “Can someone bring me a towel, pleaseeee??” Put on sweatpants. Eat healthy food (please see aforementioned food list). Sit yourself down and explain to yourself that this is a comedown and it won’t last (it’ll likely be gone in 24 to 48 hours). Chill with your dog. Go for a walk in the park with the dog. Then head to the shop. Avoid direct eye contact with the bossman. Buy a sugary drink. Buy a packet of crisps (chips, that means chips, American readers). Demolish the lot while walking home. Then… select a Netflix series, perhaps a takeaway, and chill the fuck out. This is ‘you time’, remember, so do something you like (play your favourite game on the PlayStation, listen to some tunes, or zombiescroll until your eyes become glazed like a doughnut). Having said that, if you have no housemates and you’re feeling lonely, don’t isolate yourself: call a friend and see what they’re up to. Do they want to watch a movie? A feelgood one, designed for emotionally fragile people like you right now, not Requiem for a Dream or A Clockwork Orange or Enter the Void.

All that’s left to do then is to organise the next party.

BONUS SECTION: Toilets

When it comes to festival lore and legends, you’re unlikely to beat the story of Poo Girl. She was an 18-year-old girl at Leeds Festival in the UK who got wedged and stuck in a long-drop toilet while trying to retrieve her bag which had fallen in. After some time, she was rescued by firefighters (who initially thought it was all a joke). She was put through a sanitisation procedure before being released back into the event. At some point during this process, a festival legend was born.

“As I got up to leave I swung my body round to open the door and my handbag slipped off my arm and disappeared down the toilet,” Poo Girl told the Sunderland Echo newspaper in 2009. “It had my phone, ticket, and all my money in so if I left it I would have been stranded.”

She added: “I put one hand down but I couldn't reach so I put the other one down too to try and grab it. I had both my hands down the toilet. I was straining so far down that I got wedged.”

Years ago, while working at a magazine, it turned out that I had a colleague who knew Poo Girl. I suggested that he might pass on a message with a view to setting up an interview to mark an anniversary of the incident. He batted away the request, explaining that she didn’t want to bring it all up again. Fair enough.

Mercifully for Poo Girl, this was before the content economy. Had that happened now, it’d be feeding time at the zoo. A baying gaggle of content creators would have abseiled in from all angles like a Tom Cruise film. They’d feverishly shoot short-form video with the energy of a pack of hungry hyenas locked into a scuffle over a rotting piece of meat. She is not a meme thankfully because she was in the wrong place (inside the toilet) but at the right time (before TikTok).

What I will say about navigating festival toilets is carry hand sanitiser as the big bottles tethered to the wall often run out. On top of that, if you see the toilets have just been cleaned (about every four hours) that’s a good time for your daily shit.

The facilities are more likely to be clean in the campsite rather than near a big stage. This is especially true if you can somehow blag your way into the staff campsite, if you know someone who’s working there. These guys are on the site for like two weeks, so their facilities are better looked after and less weathered by a stampede of wreck heads on a weekend-long sesh. They’re less likely to look like the infamous toilet scene in Trainspotting. But nothing in this life is guaranteed.