Sarah Rose Siskind - Comedy is a Backdoor into Consciousness
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Guest Background
Sarah Rose Siskind is a science comedy writer based in New York City. She's the cofounder of HelloSci.Com, a consulting group that makes smart people funny, and the producer of Drug Test, a show about Psychedelics.
Previously, she wrote comedy for Hanson Robotics, StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson on Fox, and several shows on Facebook Watch. She's written jokes for the White House Press Correspondents dinner and spoken at Comic Con! In the words of Marie Curie, "follow me on Twitter."
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Links
Show Notes
1:37 - Running a 50K on LSD
11:02 - Sarah's experience with depression
15:46 - Working at Fox Business and being a semi-pro Amazon reviewer
21:52 - Comedy and depression
28:57 - Psychedelic misconceptions
31:14 - LSD and Game Theory
35.38 - Solving her depression and an ayahuasca experience
45:29 - Becoming a psychedelic educator
51:58 - Working with Neil deGrasse Tyson
Transcript
Trey: Sarah, welcome to the podcast. Finally,
Sarah:
Thank you for having me.
Trey:
We just had the longest sound check I think that I've done so far, but hopefully we're good to go.
Sarah:
We sound great.
Trey:
So you are a comedic writer and a psychedelic educator in your words, and you've done a ton of cool shit in your career. I'm curious, what you think is your claim to fame at this point?
Sarah:
Oh God. Oh my gosh. My claim to fame. I think the most viral thing I've ever done is I ran a ultra marathon on LSD at burning man. so, and "I claim to fame" sounds very dramatic. I CLAIM THE FAME! So that, that did pretty well, for better or worse. It's probably one of the most flamboyant buoyant things I've ever done in my life.
Trey:
Why did you do that?
Sarah:
Yeah, there's a lot of backstory. It wasn't like I just woke up one day and was like, I'm gonna do this insane thing. Oh God, where do you even begin? Why did I do that? I think the shortest possible answer is to bust some myths about drug use and the effects of psychedelics that's the tweetable answer.
Um, the greater context is a bit of a story. I don't know if you want to jump right into it
Trey:
Right in there. Let's go.
Sarah:
Okay. Well, the prior year I had gone to burning man. And I had found it to be an absolutely unremarkable experience, extremely boring. Just getting, I don't think I've ever met a person who goes to burning man, who is somehow marked by it.
I thought it was absolutely fantastic. but I was, still quite depressed. And, you know, the very reason that I brought me to burning man, and so I had sought out MDMA, I had read that that was useful for working on depression and a man claiming to be a Russian shaman. Don't believe Russian shamans, red flag number one, sold me what he claimed was MDMA, which turned out to be a bunch of fentanyl and PCP.
Trey:
Oh my God.
Sarah:
And I was paralyzed for a better part of 10 hours was taken to the hospital and was luckily discharged without a scratch. He, the Russian Shumon had also taken it because he had also believed that it was MDMA. And had scars on his chest from where he had to be resuscitated because he was completely non-responsive and went into a comatose, unconscious state.
Whereas I was lucky to get away with just being temporarily paralyzed. So I came away very lucky and you know, with my life, you know, intact. And I decided I would come back next year and after a year I would be a professional or semi-professional drug educator, and I would do everything in my power to make sure that this mistake was never made again, if it could be avoided.
And I did that, I came back the next year and I worked at the Zendo tent, which was a tent at burning man where people go, if they've taken too much of a substance and we help them through their difficult experiences. I also came back with a drug testing kit. Which I tested a lot of people's different substances and showed some people that in fact, they were not sold what they thought they were getting.
And I also came back and decided that I was going to run the Burning Man ultra marathon on LSD. Part of this was because I didn't really want to train that hard. I wanted an excuse not to run that fast. If I'm being totally honest. And part of it was because I had trained, I had trained, running marathons and running long races, and I'd also trained on LSD running a, I think it was, it was about, 20 miles. As a practice run for a 50 K, which is about 31, 32 miles.
And I found the experience to be ultimately performance enhancing, though it slowed my time. It decreased my soreness and improved my, frankly, my enjoyment of the experience, which I think is the ultimate performance.
Trey:
Give me a, give me a quick comparison of, I guess, doing, I assume you had done LSD prior, prior to doing it while running. What was that experience like versus using it while running?
Sarah:
The demands on your consciousness while running are greater because you have to focus on not falling and moving correctly. And so, it does decrease the high,
What's one of the hallmarks of psychedelics that people remark on is the way in which you can, to some extent control your high, like people will talk about, you know, spacing out and being completely out of control or they feel, but then let's say they get a call from a relative and they think it may be something important.
Can quickly don, a mask of sobriety or at least just a better grasp on reason.
So it's, it's worth noting that, you know, unlike with other drugs, like, you know, SSRIs, like there's an amount to what you can control the psychedelic experience that I find really interesting. However, what I found was similar in both experiences. Is a profoundly deeper sense of proprioception, which is your sense of your own body, your own balance, your place in space, how your muscles feel, what it feels like to breathe.
Proprioception is also correlated with like knowing where your limbs are, and that is, I found advantageous while running, because I could identify sources of soreness before it got too bad and was adjusting my running style accordingly and doing way more grape vining and running backwards than I ever have in a race. And was incredibly not sore at all the next day, which is unheard of for marathons and ultra marathons.
Trey:
Is there a visual element?
Sarah:
Yes, I did have a visual element, which is to say colors are brighter, all the classic things. When I stopped to use a porta-potty, I became aware of just how high I was. Some people get disoriented and are uncomfortable by visualizations. And I strongly encourage people to think of hallucinations and visualizations as an extremely helpful indicator of how high you are and where you are in the experience.
Because unlike with other drugs like alcohol, you know, there's no little like, you know, barometric pressure thing on the corner of your eyes, like to tell you, you know, how high you are in the experience, but with psychedelics there kind of is how intense are your visualizations. And so I find them to be very helpful and comforting.
Trey:
Are you losing any sense of time? Like actually how long did the 50K take you? I'll ask that first.
Sarah:
Well, time is an interesting construct. It took me somewhere in the vicinity of six hours, which is pretty slow for me. That's about, I think it's like 11 minute mile or something like there 12 minute mile, maybe, I haven't done the math recently. It's, you know, it's not a walk, it's suddenly a jog, but there's, there were some walking breaks towards the end.
What was your original question? Oh, yeah, time we've talked for so long. I lost sense of time. Yes, there definitely was temporal perception changes. I felt like I'd been running forever, but also like I wanted to keep running forever. Especially towards the end. I was asking my compatriots in running, whether they wished the end of a race would last longer.
And it was kind of interesting cause I got it a couple responses from them. A lot of people do experience a type of sorrow, a counterintuitive sorrow when a race is ending because it was the thing you'd built up for, for so long. And now it's finally ending, even though you're very, very tired, you want to stop running. and so what we came down to was we wish the hours were longer, but the miles were shorter.
Trey:
Was there an element of being in a flow state while you're running? Is that a component?
Sarah:
I don't know if there have been good studies about LSD in the flow state, but I would wager that the experience of taking LSD decreases cerebral blood flow to your prefrontal cortex, which is the front part of your brain that is most associated with responsibility and ego and identity and timing. Also very correlated with time.
And I would guess though, I don't have any studies on me that. LSD, fucks with that because I do think that time is correlated with identity. So the sense of ego dissolution can be strongly correlated with temporal, misperceptions of what, how much time is actually passing.
And perhaps this is due to the continuity of self from moment to moment being an illusion. And that's where identity comes from. So it's, it's an interesting connection of time and a sense of self.
Trey:
So you mentioned the first burning man you went to, that was the year prior.
Sarah:
Yes. Yes. And I've only been to two because I was going to go to the third one this year. And, I don't know, maybe you didn't hear about it, but there was this like disease going around or something.
Trey:
Yeah, not, not here, not in the US. We're fine.
Sarah:
Yeah. Says the woman who still can't smell anything from March.
Trey:
So that first burning man, you went to, you said you. Sort of went with the intention of actually taking MTMA and that was in an effort to help with depression, too. Tell me a little bit about that. How long had you been experiencing that up until that point?
Sarah:
Okay, well to clarify a little bit, I actually did not intend on taking MDMA. I intended on gaining a, I actually was not intending on taking any psychedelics while at burning man. I expected the experience itself to be a psychedelic, which it certainly is. It's a drastic change in consciousness, but I was disappointed that my depression had followed me there because I had assumed that with this change of setting this drastic change, that my consciousness would change as drastically with it.
And it's one of those things, you know, wherever you go there you are. I could not outrun my depression. And so I didn't exactly go to burning man to take MDMA. That would be a very roundabout way of taking MDMA. You can, it's very easy to stay in your bed and take it. But yeah, so I have, once again, lost the question.
What was the original question?
Trey: How long had you been experiencing depression at that point? Is it something you've had your whole life, or...?
Sarah:
No, I was a fairly, I would say fairly late in life, which is to say, maybe around 24, 25 before I started properly understanding it as depression. So that's a little bit later than some people, a lot of adolescents are the first people to experience it, but I think it presented differently and I've gone through a bunch of different diagnoses about major depressive episode and bipolar type two, which is much more cyclical than depression. The periods are shorter. And then instead of mania, you have what's called hypomania, which is just nothing to worry about. It's just kind of like, slight extroversion.
But I don't know if that's what it is, to be honest. There's a fad right now where a lot of psychiatrists are diagnosing manic depressives, or manic depression or bipolar and especially bipolar type two.
And I believe that is because you are required to have that diagnosis in order to receive certain medications that work better than SSRIs. And SSRIs are used to treat depression, but they only work in about a third successfully and about a third of the population. So I actually took a 23 and me test gosh, like nine years ago and through an extension site called Prometheus I found out that I had a less than likely aptitude of responding to SSRIs, which is extremely helpful. And I advise anybody listening, interested in this stuff to do that because I saved so much time and so many side effects, not fucking around with SSRI and going straight to alternative therapies.
I will say later, just because I am a scientific person, I did try an SSRI.
I tried Lexapro just to see and like a suspected it didn't really, I didn't really respond to it. And so one of the things that happens with depression, that's kind of interesting is it makes people desperate or risk accepting to put it in economics terms. And it's kind of a wonderful thing because you don't have anything to lose.
And so. I was seeking out a lot of things, I was seeking out ecstatic dance and burning man. And next on my list was acupuncture, which I never got around to trying, but I still retain that excitement around looking for therapies and weirdly enough, like alternative therapies, like seeking them out is the first step towards healing depression, because you have already made the decision to try and remove your pain as opposed to accepting it or identifying with it.
So it's kind of like the people who psychedelics are within a very risk accepting population. And that's why oftentimes psychedelics are correlated with other things like burning man and Reiki healing, energy work, essential oils.
Mumbo-jumbo what have you, there's a huge field of healing. Yeah.
Trey:
So when you were 24, what was it that was happening? Like put us a place in time in your life and what was going on and what was surfacing, I guess from like a symptoms perspective that was causing you to take more action or actually like seek out alternative treatments?
Sarah:
Sure. I was very unhappy. I had, I mean, you'll never guess this, but I was working at Fox Business Network and that was in the Fox News Cohort. And Fox News is not a fun place to work. I bet you've never heard that before.
Trey:
We could do a whole podcast about you working there, by the way.
Sarah:
Yeah. Oh God, it was, there were some lovely people there for sure,
but it was a very toxic work environment. There wasn't even free coffee. I would like, I would hang around the green room and like essentially eat the scraps of people's food. Yeah. it was so bad. There was just a real sense of, it's okay to take your emotions out on people underneath you, because we're working in a very fast paced environment and we need to get the work done.
And it just like, fucked with my head. So I quit without having a job as a backup, but all I knew was that the one thing that had made me truly happy while I was at Fox, was working at UCB. While I was taking classes at UCB and then was later hired to be on a sketch comedy team there. And that made me truly happy.
And so I left Fox. I left a relationship that was like, the guy was perfect. He checked all the boxes, Jewish, Ivy league, like, you know, very respectful. My parents would have been over the moon, But I just, there was, there was something missing. He couldn't quite understand, emotions. I once asked him what is the most complicated emotion you've ever felt? And he said, I once was full, but I kept wanting to eat. The best indication of a relationship with somebody who's depressed anyway. So I left that relationship. I left that job.
Trey:
What were you doing at that job?
Sarah:
I was a lowly production assistant. So I was, I had been a personal assistant. I was so bad at being a personal assistant. I was so bad at it that they promoted me out of being... my boss literally told me I was the world's worst personal assistant, numerous times.
Like just one quick anecdote about why he was actually correct. The one thing that gave me joy working at Fox Business Network was leaving very detailed reviews on Amazon, for things I'd bought.
Trey:
Okay.
Sarah:
I would do this all the time. And I bought this dress that was just like black with a white color and it looked great. And it was like $10 from China. So I just decided to throw them a bone and write them a nice review. And I wrote this review saying like, I look like a sexy Wednesday Adams. My gams look great. My thighs are thundering down the hall in this tight dress. And I'm feeling fine. Post. I got a little endorphin rush. I don't think about it.
Then half an hour later, I get an email from my boss. My boss is a mustachioed very severe old man who is a veteran news journalist. And he writes me an email and he says, have I been hacked? And underneath that message, a forwarded email from Amazon saying you have just reviewed a dress. I had been logged in, in his Amazon account. So there's this 65 year old veteran journalists man has posted. I look like a sexy Wednesday Adams. My gams looked great. Thundering down the hall on this beautiful dress.
So I do what every production assistant should do. I wrote back being like, Oh my God, yes. You've been hacked. I've heard about this hack. They're trying to scam you into like buying the dress. I don't know. So I like, you know, do, do, do, do, do, do, do you know, like a scene from, you know, hackers or something like that?
I'm like, okay, I uploaded the codes. You're no longer hacked. I got into the mainframe.
And I just deleted my post anyway. So I was a very, very bad personal assistant. But I was very unhappy cause it was like one of my first significant failures. It was just another really big failure of mine. And I had to, like, I was wrenching myself at this point in time a track towards an identity that I thought I should be. But I knew that I wasn't that wrenching was super painful. I'm still, you know, this is a whole four years later, so, I'm still kind of in many ways, recovering from that transition.
I also, you know, Trump was elected. I kind of like disgusted by the political atmosphere and I majored in politics. I used to love it. So all these things I used to love, were important to me. So I went through a very early midlife crisis or a very late puberty and the depression began.
Trey:
Got it. So you're leaving Fox Business, you're starting to go to UCB on the side to do some, is it all performance improv or is there an element of just writing?
Sarah:
Yes. I was just a writer. I did some performance, but my heart's always been with writing. I mean I do love standup, but the actual like character actors at UCB are out of this world. Like it, it is such a joy seeing some of those people perform, Oh my God.
Trey:
So I imagine that created a little bit of a spark for you at least professionally, but certainly not enough to entirely overcome this depressive period?
Sarah:
No, and it, it is kind of interesting the way in which so many comedians and comedy writers can have crippling depression and it will not affect their comedy writing skills. There's a fantastic podcast called the Hilarious World of Depression that is unfortunately discontinued, But it's interviews with famous comedians about how they deal with depression. And I had heard the first episode with Peter Segall who has a weekly NPR show like his, where he's a very upbeat performer. I had no idea he had depression, but it completely makes sense to me now. Like it's just, it's a different part of your brain working, I guess.
Trey:
Is it compensating in some way or it's just compartmentalization?
Sarah:
It's mostly for me, it's mostly compartmentalization, but what's interesting is like with doing any job, there's an endorphin rush at doing something well. So it's not like the comedy itself is making me feel better. It's that I'm successfully doing something, you know. That is a little bit of a rush. But, comedy is like, it's, I don't know, for me, it's like, it's like water where I could be in any kind of a state.
And I will still be, I was in a real, like a big fight with my boyfriend earlier today where I was really mad at him, but I had to say a joke that I had written in my head. So I was getting mad at him because he hasn't been working out at all. And I was like, I thought I like was in the middle of saying something and I was like, sigh, and I was like, yes, I have to say the joke.
I was like, you are giving me more resistance than the resistance bands you should be using. And he was very confused and it didn't help my point,
Trey:
Yup. Yup.
Sarah:
But yeah. So I don't think I could, I could stop. Like I pity the person who's eulogy I have to give because it won't stop there either.
Trey:
Was that the case before you were 24, 25? Were you always that way?
Sarah:
Actually that's a great question. No, I had a very delayed, what's the word I'm looking for? A delayed period of my life, where I was a refined audience member. So one of the things that is helpful, I think in the development of a comedy writer is just to like hone your taste. And I spent a lot of years just like watching and rewatching shows and stand-ups and reading books and sketches. And also admiring my older sisters who are devastatingly funny and I did not consider myself a comedy writer or a comedian.
I just wanted to make some people laugh. It was only when I started calling myself, only when I started getting paid really to be a comedy writer, did this kind of like become a deeply ingrained way of thinking for me.
Trey:
There are so many tangents we're going off on here, but, I love it. Who are some of your comedic inspirations or do you have some stand-ups that you love?
Sarah:
Well, I will say if you ask any like comedian or comedy writer, who's the funniest person you know, the answer will always be somebody you don't know. Some nobody like an older brother is usually a common motif, For me is my oldest sister, Leah. There's something about growing up and just wanting to impress a family member that like really puts its stamp on you.
But in terms of like professionals in the field, Tina Fey is just an obvious one because she is just a genius, I think a lot in terms of writers, there's a lot of writers at SNL that really just captured my heart. Like, Sarah Schneider, who was the head writer and Chris Kelly was her partner. And then, Key and Peele are like up there. I mean they're mostly performers of course, but they clearly are writers as well. I think for the both, it's like, so entwined, cause they're improv guys that they're writing while they're performing and I endless devotion.
Trey:
When I lived in New York a few years ago and I lived in the same apartment building as John Mulaney and I...
Sarah:
Oh my.
Trey:
I never said anything to him. I don't know why, but I would always share the elevator with him and his dog Petunia, and I just never got the courage to, to say hello.
Sarah:
Oh my God. I love John Mulaney. That's incredible. No, I can't do a good impression. I was trying I'm not an impression comedian. He has this incredible intonation that it's like, it's a perfect impression in my head.
It sort of comes out like Katherine Hepburn.
Trey:
He's hosting this weekend. I believe.
Sarah:
Oh yeah. God. In two days, boy, I, that is the one thing that makes me miss New York, I have to say is literally just Saturday Night Live like being in the vicinity of Saturday Night Live. I've been lucky enough to go to a couple, go to a show and go to a couple after parties and I vomited. I was that excited.
Trey:
Who were the hosts? Do you remember?
Sarah:
Oh yeah. It was James Franco was the show that I went to, I went to a couple of different after parties and when I was there for the after parties, it was, God, this was like a couple of years ago. It was, I think Seth Rogan was one of them. The problem is they weren't the hosts that usually don't go to the after parties or like aren't there for that long. So I don't remember who it was for the other two after parties, but it's sort of like, it was a little bit devastating, frankly, to be there because I was so physically close proximate to these people. And so far away in terms of my career and that weighed heavily on my heart. And it kind of counteracted the elation of being there and in the presence of such talent.
I felt like it's weird, but that's actually a huge trigger for me is like deep compliments or deep successes. In the wake of them, the immediate wake I'll just get the biggest possible crash. So it's horrible.
Trey:
Of your own successes.
Sarah:
I feel like in my past life I had a Greek mythology type curse put upon me that my greatest successes would be the cause of my greatest depression. Like, can you believe the irony of that? That's so fucked up.
Trey:
I mean it's, it sounds exactly like what you described with running the ultra marathon, right?
Sarah:
How do you meet?
Trey:
You mentioned getting near the end and there was sort of a, a comedown, basically, right after you've achieved something. You immediately, sort of almost regretting that it's over, Right?
Sarah:
Absolutely. Yeah. I don't have a good afterglow. And it's funny because this also extends to psychedelics. There is a common misperception that MDMA has a serotonergic depletion effect on your brain. I think that's a misperception because most of the time people will take it when it's late at night or they're super drunk and there are other factors involved.
So that, of course they're going to be tired the next day. Like mostly psychedelics do not actually cause a physical depletion other than just natural tiredness from physical exertion. But they do for me create, I have an organic sort of low, which has to do with like any, you know, if I go in super vulnerable on something the next day I have what I like to call a vulnerability hangover where I'll just be like, Oh God, did I open up too much?
Did I like burden somebody with something? And it's like, no, usually, you know, it was a sham and I paid good money to cry, too. So I'm sure I was fine objectively, but subjectively I always, invariably I have a difficult integration.
Trey:
Was this the first time you tried psychedelics after this transitionary period you spoke about or had you done it before sort of recreationally and then done it therapeutically after that?
Sarah:
No, it was after. There was one time, there was one outlier where I tried LSD, right at this point, not therapeutically, just recreationally. And then it was years up until I was, well, actually, no, it was only a year, until I was 25 or 26 that I started getting interested in them much more seriously, academically in therapeutic.
Trey:
And so what was that? Tell me about that. I guess that first time at that point, what did you decide to try and was it, was this very intentional? I have depression. I'm trying to solve this...
Sarah:
No, no. This was like, I didn't at this point when I was 24, I didn't really know that I had depression. I just knew there were certain behaviors that were indicators. Like for example, I would be the last person to leave every party because I could not be alone with myself. And so I would not have thought about that as a indication of depression. That's me being a huge extrovert. Depressed people stay home and don't eat or something. So at this point I had depression, but I did not quite know it and I was just at a art festival in Bushwick and it was in this like, empty lot with a bunch of construction materials is very Bushwick straight out of a Girl's episode.
And a friend of mine named Yusef, who's just like the smartest guy I know, offered me to try some acid. And it was a fascinating experience because I went into a bouncy castle. Like one of those, it was like a giant inflatable castle, where people are bouncing around. And I came out, not with like a fun, bouncy experience, but an extremely intricate theory about game theory and mathematics.
Because I want us the bouncy castle and I started observing patterns of behavior, of how people were bouncing. Because everybody went in assuming there was an objective and assuming, universalizing, assuming everyone else knew this objective, one person thought it was a competition to see who could bounce the highest another person thought it was who could bounce in the center.
And then the third person thought it was who could bounce another person the highest.
But what was interesting is these various objectives didn't interfere with each other. In fact, they created little patterns of behavior, where they were getting by not noticing that somebody else had a different objective. But you know, sort of like coexisting and I realized there were like analogies to this type of game, theoretic behavior in life. The way real estate agents, you think of the exact same objective as you do have a slightly different objective to turn over houses quickly. And so they may actually get you a worse price for your house, but you would never know that because of how they interact with you.
So I had this like theory about game theory. And years, like about a year later, I met this guy, Spencer Greenberg actually, for coffee. And I remember he was a PhD in mathematics at NYU at this point. And I was like, Hey, this is crazy. I came up with this idea about game theory once while on acid. And I, I really did expect him to be like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. Just so I could confirm it was dumb, but he wouldn't do that. He was like, no, that's genuinely interesting. That's like he even said at the time, like that is something you could write a PhD on. And it was at that moment that I was like, Oh, Holy shit. This is like this, these materials are extremely powerful.
Trey:
Wow.
Sarah:
Yeah, it was. And so I'm very, I'm deeply indebted to that experience in a lot of ways. And to use it, will say, one thing that happened to me at, towards the end of that experience with Yusef was that we were walking home at night and I had known him for a couple of months and we'd become close, but we weren't quite fully close yet.
So I do caution people to take psychedelics with somebody, you know, really well. And then maybe a new friend. we're walking home and it dawned on me suddenly that like, he's a man and he's taller than me and he could kill me if you wanted to. And I just couldn't stop thinking about this. And you know, we would just be like talking about like the colors and the grass, and I'd be like, Oh my God, he could kill me if he wanted to with his bare hands.
And I got it. Like, I couldn't stop thinking about this. And so eventually I got to the point where I was like, you just have to do something about this, but was worried he would think I was racist because he's black. And so I reconciled this great, know, dilemma in my head by running away from him screaming "It's not because you're black. It's because you're a man", which is just the most delicate way of handling that situation. Just so refined. Anyway, we met up later and he was like, yeah, what was that about? And I was like, I'm sorry, I got worried about men and we hashed it out. It was okay. And he's still a very good friend.
I love him. But it was, yeah, definitely a lesson that day.
Trey:
In the same night, in the same experience?
Sarah:
Yes. Very profound.
Trey:
Some highs and lows. So how did you go from that experience of solving the world's math problems to solving your own problems?
Sarah:
Well, I realized that it's not alcohol. I think that's so many people, They will consider the most accessible, nearest chemical. When they think about a chemical, they haven't tried. So a lot of people, when they think of psychedelics myself included assume that it was a combination of alcohol and aspirin and pot, all of the things I'd tried where it's just kind of like, it numbs you. It makes you lose control. It makes you kind of like forget stuff.
And it's none of those things. Like it changes the way you think it's psychoactive, just like all those other substances, but it mostly enhances your perception, physical perception, and in terms of rationality, it's not that you're irrational. You are just differently, rational in some ways. You're just thinking in patterns that you haven't thought in before. So I was deeply moved and impressed by the way that I was still myself. And I was not a lesser version of myself.
I was in some ways, especially with acid, I found a much truer version of myself.
Trey:
So did you try other things along the way, too, on some sort of regular intervals, That over time you realized you were not as depressed? How did you actually, I guess, solve that over time or sort of experiment with things that seem to help?
Sarah:
Well, a watershed moment occurred, I think it was December of 2017. I went to a sort of controversial Ayahuasca ceremony in Brooklyn because my depression had become unavoidable and was hurting relationships. When I went there I discovered that the shaman was a bit unorthodox in that he would hand out medicines at his discretion that he created himself.
He was a graduate of Cal poly in addition to having, you know, shamanistic, lineage. Pretty interesting guy anyway, but isn't Orthodox and somewhat controversial for handing out personalized medicines after having a very brief talk with you. I came to this community, extremely nervous. I felt like I was a novice in an AP class because the shaman proceeded to give a lecture for about an hour and a half before we even ingested anything that made so little sense that I would scrutinize the beginning of the sentence, and by the end of the sentence, clearly lost the thread of what was going on. It would be things like "the fractals diminish as the magnification of entities, quiver, and existence". It's just kind of like "what"?
So fast forward to after we've actually taken the medicine. I'm finding that people are starting to have good experience and I'm starting to feel really good, but I am not throwing up. I'm not purging. Like I'd read about happens with Ayahuasca and I'm not, writhing in pain. So I go up to the shaman and I asked for more and I'm giving it. And once again, I find that I feel good. And I am not writhing around in pain.
So I go up once more and I ask his apprentice, who was my friend. I think it's not working. she just said "why?" And there was something in that moment where I understood, I had spent all this money and researched all this and come to this place. So I could feel bad. I wanted to vomit and I wanted to see Jaguars and I wanted to writhe around in pain because ultimately I feel like I deserve it. And that is the root of my depression and that I was being cursed with feeling good.
That was my burden to bear in this moment. Could you actually be kind to yourself for like a second? Like, instead of working hard to earn something, what if you just felt good about existing? And I still find that excruciatingly painful, but it was such a revolutionary moment in my life that I, it was like I looked in and saw the core seed of my depression you know, it. Like anything, psychedelics are not a silver bullet because you have to work at it.
But now I know how, and I know how to distance myself from my thoughts instead of becoming my thoughts.
Trey:
So how does that play out practically when you do psychedelics now? Is it a thought process while you're doing them or before you're doing them in terms of your intentions?
Sarah:
Yeah. I mean, it certainly helps with planning. Like what I had discovered by the way, ad hoc after that ceremony is that I had not been given Ayahuasca. I had been given essentially combination of psilocybin and sassafras, which is very close to MDA, which is a little bit like MDMA, or actually it's it's a lot like MDMA. And so it was a combination of those two things.
I think the street term is hippie flipping or maybe it's candy flipping, anyways, one of those. So what I've learned since and how I kind of put this into work practically is psychedelics are like to therapy what fins are to swimming, It's an expedition or a way of expediting therapy. It just chemically helps you dwell on difficult truths.
For me, frankly, just existing in a place of self love was difficult. I'm still chasing it to be honest. I still don't think I have held onto it for longer than an instant. But I kind of have my assignments now, whereas before I felt I was floundering.
Trey:
So how do you maintain that? You say you don't think you've held onto it for more than an instant. How do you try to recapture that for longer periods of time? Are you, are you trying to regularly, you know, have psilocybin sessions or other psychedelics every so often as a way of sort of just keeping a pulse on things?
Sarah:
Yeah. I mean, I will. The thing about MDMA is it's one of those, it's the only one of the classics of the major psychedelics that you shouldn't use too much, because it can be neurotoxic. And I'm talking about habitual use. Like there have been negative effects if you use it many times a week for several weeks.
I recommend people, to kind of, my benchmark is like no more than once a month. To give your brain time to recover or whatever it is in between sessions. Also time to think and process, because the, you know, the key is you. When you're in this experience, you develop a new pattern, a way of thinking, Like I'm going to meet this mistake with love instead of with hatred, and then you learn that behavior so that you can repeat it when you're sober, because you already have.
Essentially the psychedelics work by increasing neuroplasticity. So you've created a new correlation, Mistake and self-love and ideally, theoretically, it will be easier for you to go there after your psychedelic session, when you're sober, you know, where people get a little abusive towards these substances is where they start thinking.
The only way to feel to meet like a mistake with self love is through psychedelics.
Psychedelics are supposed to be, you know, just the classroom where you're learning a lesson that you then employ in real life. You know, it is important not to abuse them. And I think that is how they work practically is really just creating a space for neuroplasticity.
And that neuroplasticity works on two levels. Chemically and sort of like figuratively chemically. Especially with MDMA it lowers cerebral blood flow to your amygdala, which is correlated with fight and flight. So you'll have less adrenaline and less cortisol, stress, chemicals, and energy. Like you'll have less of a autonomic response when you think of trauma or when you think of something embarrassing that may stress you out and it increases cerebral blood flow to different parts of the brain that start interacting with each other. So you may get new thoughts, essentially new connections and so that is the way that it works chemically.
But then figuratively it's frankly, an alibi, an excuse like you're you created this time for yourself. You have the set and setting, right? To some extent, without even the chemical being introduced, you're already in a heightened place where you are allowing and readying yourself to think differently and to excuse yourself, if you think incorrectly, you know, because you have the alibi, I was on drugs.
You know, if you, for example, this, like say I'm going to meet every mistake instead of with self-love with self aggrandizement, you know, that's maybe not a very good habit because you'll be Donald Trump. But you have that space to be like, okay, I overshot it there. You know, cause I was on drugs and maybe a little too manic or something like, so you have a figurative as well as chemical, excuse to challenge narratives and to think differently.
Trey:
So you know a lot about this now, obviously from personal experience, but you're also, and I want to hear about what you're up to now, but you're say you're a psychedelic educator. How did you learn all this? Did you intentionally go and study the science of the various psychedelics?
Sarah:
I was, I'm very autodidactic but the way. I frankly learned best is by teaching. So the very first thing I did was I held a psychedelic book club and I invited all the smartest people I know. And we read Michael Pollan's "How to Change Your Mind", which I didn't realize would be a seminal text.
Like I it's kind of like the text I recommend everybody start off with it is the most comprehensive, wonderful exploration of psychedelics I've yet seen. And then the rest is like more advanced in some ways, and so when I had this book club, I found that, people started looking to me as an authority because people genuinely did not know about this stuff, and I felt propelled into this, to the mantle of expert, with people who are professors at esteemed universities were looking to me to answer their questions already.
Just by sheer dumb luck, I was put into that position and found it really, really gratifying. There was something about the combination of chemistry and neuroscience, philosophy, therapy and history, that I found, like I've always been.
a Jack of all trades type learner. I don't like going deep on stuff, but I do like learning about, a lot from, a little, from a lot of fields. And so I've just gradually been increasing my knowledge in like every area.
After starting this book club, then I started doing a newsletter where I was like posting out about events. I went to events, I started going to conferences and going to workshops for clinicians. I would be the only patient in an audience of clinicians. I felt like a lamb among wolves. Because when we would all go out to lunch, I would just essentially leach free therapy off of all these but they, you know, they're so used to it, like it's like popping a pimple for them.
Anyway, so I was going to workshops and then I started my show, which was the ultimate way to learn is when you're getting up on stage in front of people, you really don't want to look like an idiot. And then finally, I actually audited a class at Columbia for a little bit before the lockdown happened that was taught by an absolutely brilliant chemist whose very interested in psychedelics. So I really have tried to delve as deep as possible. I read a lot still about psychedelics. I watched a lot of movies and I also help people. I've talked with a lot of new businesses in the psychedelic world about things to consider when entering the psychedelic space.
That's another thing I didn't think would be helpful that I've learned a lot about is economics. Cause there's a lot of resources being thrown at psychedelics and a huge demand in a very little supply in the market. And so I do think that's an important area also to consider.
Trey:
You mentioned your show. What show? Tell us about that.
Sarah:
Drug Test. So Drug Test is a show I'd been doing for two, two and a half years in a wonderful science comedy bar in the lower East side called Caveat. And it's a live monthly comedy show about psychedelics. And each show would be about a different drug. And I would do that drug with a person on camera and then show clips of us doing that drug. We had scientists come on and talk about what's happening in our brains and we would do things like, a field sobriety test, we would, I've taken an SAT on MDMA.
Trey:
Wow.
Sarah:
You know, we've taken like Rorschach tests. A lot of what, you know, one of the most interesting ones is like, there's a task for appropriate section. I would use where people would, I would trace along their wrist up to their crook of their elbow and they would have their eyes closed and they would have to guess when I got to the crook of their elbow. And people universally performed significantly better on psychedelics than they do when sober, because they know their bodies better.
They're feeling things more intensely. I also had musicians play music sober and then play music on mushrooms. This one guy was so talented. He was my guinea pig. One show, I had him play piano on mushrooms, and I also had him run lines, like in a scene, sober and on mushrooms, it was truly a fantastic experience.
I was just editing my website yesterday, you know, to take down all the events. I've very lazy about editing my website. And so as you know, taking on all the future events I had on there, and I went through some of the old clips and I have just been unbelievably blessed with the people who have been on my show.
I just feel like an absolute, I don't know, even the words to describe it. Like, I feel like, if you watch some show, like the Dana Carvey show, you'll see every comedian that ever was going to exist was on that show. At one point, I felt kind of like that, where even though a lot of these people are not famous yet in their respective fields, that I knew it was imminent and that they had all been together in this platform and it was a deeply gratifying feeling.
Trey:
So it had to, had to go on pause because of COVID? You're planning on bringing it back or doing it virtually?
Sarah:
"Planning" is pretty high of a commitment term. I have too many files on my computer that I can't delete. They are all the video files for my show. And I am desperate to do something with it. I think I may turn it into a web series or a podcast. I haven't quite decided. And the show itself was meant to be live.
And so part of me doesn't want to desecrate its memory by trying to revamp it as something it's not. But I think there is a deficit in the market of like very physical, psychedelic education that shows people what it actually looks like. So I've been, I'm loosely thinking about it. Any collaborators, please reach out to me because I would love some help if you have a platform or editing skills.
Trey:
So at some point in your career you worked with and wrote for Neil deGrasse Tyson. Is that right?
Sarah:
That is correct. Yep.
Trey:
Tell me about that. Did any element of that influence how you created that show Drug Test?
Sarah:
100%. I'm so glad you phrased it that way. So I'd worked with Neil for a couple of years. I was lead writer or comedy writer, for this late night science talk show called StarTalk. And it was just a blast. Oh my God. We were an Emmy nominated show, very low, low ratings. Just a critics favorite, not the people's favorite. And, we would have scientists on and Neil would just interview them. And we would do little like skits and game shows and stuff, and it was so much fun. And I learned it was helpful for me because I could apply my skills from working in TV before, which is to say one thing Fox drilled into me was, my boss, when I was talking, take a remote and put it in front of me and just be like, what else is on? And would imitate somebody changing the channel on me when I was taking too long to pitch. And his point was like, people's attention spans are nothing.
And these are old people watching Fox, like their attention spans are nothing.
Can you imagine what you know, young people do? Like, so I have a strong sense of like every time I'm on stage, every time I'm writing something for somebody to watch do it on waste their time. These are heart surgeons that should be doing heart surgery, you know, like they shouldn't be watching comedy, so you better make it good.
So I was able to use that skill, but I was also able to learn. Like the physicality, like the way in which people learn, you know, people like to learn when things are demonstrable and physical and explosive and visual and scandalous and, you know, loud and catchy and you know, all these different ways of learning are wonderful and tremendous. And the greatest crime you can do is not go for at least a couple of these things, you know, while trying to impart something. Otherwise you just wasting people's time, unless you're giving me directions, you know, give me, give me some cartoons while you're talking or something.
Neil is great, but he was such a great boss. I had just like one, one quote that he gave me that I love, he would just say, you know, cause I, was so honored to be around him and to be around all those wonderful people. I'd be like, man, I feel like the, you know, like the party crasher here, like, you know, the odd man out because everyone here is so accomplished and he would never let me get away with.saying such self-effacing things, even when they were jokes, because he would say he really would take care to remind me that my job was important because he would say "people can't laugh and be afraid at the same time", which I really loved. And then I Laughed fearfully at because Neil deGrasse Tyson.
But the point remains underneath it, which is that like comedy is a backdoor into consciousness and it is a way of getting through the dry and the mundane to get at, you know, a truth. So it, it makes something relevant to people.
Trey:
So bring us to present day. What do you, what are you doing right now?
Sarah:
Carrying on the torch. I have a company called HelloSci.com where I consult scientists on how to be funny and, it's going great so far we have zero clients. Just kidding, we've got a couple of clients. As a matter of fact, we have a lot of psychedelic oriented clients, but it's been a lot of fun because I get to carry on my my love of science education, but also comedy, which I think is instrumental.
Trey:
What do you mean? What's an example of that. Why does a scientist need to be funny? In what context?
Sarah:
Well, you don't have to be funny, but you also don't have to have your students learn anything. A lot of people talk to hear themselves rather than talking, talking so other people will listen. So it really has to do with like, do you want to make sounds or do you want to change minds?
And I remember like one day we were talking about Physics on StarTalk. And we were talking about different types of flow, like laminar flow. And we were trying to get through like how the exposition of the scene, how are we going to explain this to our audience? And one of our guests on this show was bald, wonderful comedian named Scott Adset. And I was like, what if we demonstrated on Scott's head on his dome? Like how different air molecules will flow over his head. And so we were like, okay, over the smooth part of his head is laminar flow. And then once it hits this, like he had like a tiny strip of hair, he was very proud of in the back. We were like, then it becomes turbulent flow because it, you know, it gets caught in the hairs.
And so the air starts to create turbulence and I made these diagrams. And, you know, by the way, I am the biggest fan of Scott Adset, I've seen so much of his performances. And when I finally met him, I had to be like, so I wrote this sketch about how you're bald and he couldn't have been nicer about it. I like, Oh God, my heartbeat out my chest.
Trey:
I love it. I know you have to go. I want to be mindful of your time before you go. I can't let you go without asking about the joke or jokes that you wrote for the White House Press Correspondents' Dinner. What what were those?
Sarah:
I will put into this way. I wrote certainly a lot of jokes. I'm going to be very cautious around whether I use the singular or plural for how many joke and or jokes got into the white house, dinner, white house, press correspondents' dinner. I will say, I am friends with Ron Chernow and he happened to be the first host of the White House Press Correspondents' Dinner who isn't a comedian. And he's the one I wrote for. So it's really like, you know, not as big of a deal as it sounds. It's one of those things that I write on my resume and then I hope nobody looks into too hard. But I did in fact, send him pages and pages of jokes and he did incorporate some of that into his routine, but I can't, I'm under strict discretion.
So I can't tell you what made it and what didn't, I will say there is one joke in his speech. So maybe I wrote that maybe I didn't, I don't know.
Trey:
I'm going to do some digging after for sure. Well, Hey, this has all been so awesome. Thank you so much for doing this. Anything you want to leave us with and share? Where can people find you?
Sarah:
Yeah, I guess in the words of Ram Dass, follow me on Twitter. Uh I'm @srSiskind. Yeah. That's it.
Trey:
Awesome. Thanks so much, Sarah.
Sarah:
Alright, thank you.
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