How Do Psychedelics Influence Comedy

I’m sure we can all agree on how difficult it is to suppress laughter, and certainly, the euphoric and joyous effects that we experience make us want to do it more. There’s something uniquely human about this kind of laughter, especially if we’re attending a live stand-up comedy performance where we’re in unison with others in the laughter.

The 20th-century French philosopher Henri Bergson explored the concept of laughter in his 1900 writings, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic. Paramount to Bergson’s understanding of laughter was that it could not exist outside the human realm. We may find our natural environment to be beautiful or inspiring, but we never laugh at it. If we have ever laughed at animals within our environment, it is only because we have attached some form of human characteristic to them. (I myself once had a thoroughly enjoyable experience on a large dose of mushrooms, where I had a vision of a friend talking to me in the form of a water vole, which made me cackle with delight after having previously been stuck in a philosophical conundrum about the nature of the universe.)

Laughter is inherently human and relates to our feelings towards something or a situation. Bergson makes the comparison of one entering a room full of people dancing to music that we are unable to hear – the people dancing would obviously look quite ridiculous. In this sense, laughter appeals to intelligence rather than to sentiment. The intelligence that laughter appeals to is interrelated with other intelligences. There is always a sense of complicity with others when laughing, as an appreciation of humour would be extremely difficult in isolation from a group. Laughter does not just serve to satisfy the intellect, but instead has an important social and moral function to keep our minds in a state of elasticity. 

Could this elastic mind state have parallels with the neuroplasticity we experience under the influence of psychedelics? It could be that laughing has a similar effect in developing neural pathways that can provide us with new perspectives. Perhaps comedy has the power to break us out of ordinary thought patterns and reframe situations where we might find some comfort in that new perspective. 

In the moment of laughter, we’re able to undermine the power of what we’re resisting against, rather than fueling it through engaging in conflict. Laughter can’t be fought against because it simply doesn’t engage with the fight to begin with. The moment when one is actively seeking to laugh and being consciously made to laugh creates an opportunity to engage in creative resistance, rather than attempting to destroy something through force, or hoping that this thing will simply go away if you don’t pay attention to it.

Could the combination of psychedelics with laughter provide a synergistic effect to increase neuroplasticity within these moments? When looking at the introduction of psychedelics into popular culture, we can see where they might have influenced the work of certain comedians.

In the late 1950s, the stand-up comedian, satirist, and social critic Lenny Bruce began talking about things that challenged the overwhelming post-war confidence in the American way of life. His edgy persona and profane way of delivering his material were often antithetical to this perceived confidence, where Bruce would uncover the growing social unrest during a politically uneasy time heading into the 1960s. The growing countercultural movement, which rejected war, consumerism, and social norms, provided an arena for Bruce to thrust himself into, and with this came the consumption of drugs. Unfortunately, this resulted in his untimely end due to an accidental morphine overdose in 1966 at the age of 40. While not especially known for consumption of psychedelics, he did mention smoking DMT and jumping out of a window during a lecture that same year when asked if he’d ever taken LSD.

This energy that pushed the boundaries regarding social norms might have been fuelled by drugs, and comedians who came after Bruce, such as George Carlin, were rather open about the impact that psychedelics in particular had on their stand-up material. In the 1960s, Carlin was something of a “middle-American” comic, while others around him began to engage more in the countercultural movements. This started to become uncomfortable for him when he realised his propensity for anti-authoritarianism made him resonate more with younger people, rather than those he was entertaining at the clubs. His encounters with LSD and mescaline seemed to amplify these sentiments and accelerate his transformation into someone who created comedy which challenged certain aspects of society, stating that:

LSD was a much stronger experience [than marijuana], and the mescaline, and I don’t know what they did or how they did it, I just know that going through that gave me the confidence in these changes I was feeling, in this direction, this metamorphosis, I was in the middle of. I gained confidence in it and I took strength from it, feeling that I was right, that I was really on the right path, that I was being true to myself. And that was what counted to me, to be true to myself—my mother had always said that. To thine—Shakespeare—“To thine own self be true.” She loved quoting the classics, and she quoted Emerson or Shakespeare or whoever it was she thought was appropriate for her lesson. And to thine own self be true. And I just—I just had to be who I felt like I was, not who I had led them to believe I was.

The psychedelic philosopher and ethnobotanist Terence McKenna spoke about culture in a negative light, stating that:

Culture is not your friend. Culture is for other people’s convenience and the convenience of various institutions, churches, companies, tax collection schemes, what have you. It is not your friend. It insults you. It disempowers you. It uses and abuses you. None of us are well-treated by culture.

Hicks’ comedy began to take shape in the early 1980s; however, he felt that despite this development, there was an inability to move on to a different level. During this time, drug use – particularly cocaine - amongst comedians had increased significantly. Individuals such as Richard Pryor, John Belushi, and Robin Williams had become very fond of cocaine, talking about it often in their material. Despite his own personal spiritual discovery during his teenage years, Hicks had not encountered any drugs or mind-expanding substances until 1982, when he first took a dose of LSD.

For Hicks, such experiences made room for comedy that he perceived to be free from previous barriers and helped bring in new ideas within a different level of awareness. His use of drugs was no secret, and he was clearly a strong believer in the creative potential that this exploration could produce. In his 1992 live show, Relentless, Hicks states that:

Drugs have done good things for us. If you don’t believe they have, do me a favour – take all your albums, tapes, and CDs and burn ‘em, cause you know what? The musicians who made that great music that has enhanced your lives throughout the years? Rrrrreal fucking high, ha ha ha…The Beatles were so high they even let Ringo sing a couple of tunes… OK, and these other musicians today who don’t do drugs, and in fact speak out against them? Boy, do they suck! What a coincidence!

I'm glad they're against the law, 'cause you know what happened when I took 'em? I laid in a field of green grass for four hours, going "My God, I love everything." … It is only our illusion that we are separate from God, or that we are alone. In fact the reality is we are one with God and He loves us. Now, if that isn't a hazard to this country... Do you see my point? How are we gonna keep building nuclear weapons, you know what I mean? What's gonna happen to the arms industry when we realize we're all one. Ha ha ha ha ha! It's gonna fuck up the economy! The economy that's fake anyway! Ha ha ha! Which would be a real bummer. You know. You can see why the government's cracking down on the idea of feeling unconditional love!

Any, ANY performer that ever sells a product on television is – for now and all eternity – removed from the artistic world. I don't care if you shit Mona Lisas out of your ass on cue; you've made your fucking choice!

I’m sure we can all agree that having a good laugh is a healing experience. When we throw psychedelics into the mix, the laughter can be intensely enjoyable, as well as providing a bonding experience between yourself and others. Humour can become a useful tool in psychedelic communication, where people are more likely to remember information and potentially have their minds changed about any stigma. It can also serve a function within the therapeutic space, where practitioners are able to connect more easily to the clients. Humour has the potential to also break the cycle of trauma, and allow it to be processed more easily, as well as preventing dogmatism relating to the way in which we feel we should heal.

Perhaps the humour can open us up to ideas surrounding the concept of the ‘cosmic joke’, where we might understand that we’re part of a wider, unifying consciousness. Although we’ve been totally convinced otherwise this whole time, the more we can utilise humour in this way to break out of ordinary thought patterns and challenge certain structures, the more we can empower ourselves to find peace and healing. 

Oli is one of our community bloggers here at Chemical Collective. If you’re interested in joining our blogging team and getting paid to write about subjects you’re passionate about, please reach out to Sam via email at [email protected]