Did NewsRadio Writers Stay Up on Drugs?

Joe Rogan says the writers on news radio did not do drugs, but they stayed awake until about 3 in the morning and then started writing the scripts. They wrote until about 6 or 7 in the morning. He would show up to do the table read, and the writers were still awake from the night before. Everybody was delirious. The writing was hilarious because it was like they were high, but they were not high. They wrote ridiculous, absurd scenarios and really hilarious lines, and they were purposely doing it under sleep deprivation to induce that state.

Bill Thompson calls the practice a heroic action, and he says it will sound paradoxical. Going into the unconscious means depriving yourself and hurting yourself, diving into the mud and the water, and pulling out something great. He connects it to fishing and to Christ saying he will make you fishers of men: a dive into the water and the abyss to pull out something of value so everyone gets to eat and be happy. The hero story, in his telling, is people going into unsavory conditions, making sense of an unknowable environment, recalibrating themselves, and then returning.

The hero gets defeated in the beginning and goes through a transformational period before he sets order and makes everything right. In Star Wars he is in the swamp. In Thor Ragnarok he goes to an upside down world and has to fight the Hulk, who is his friend. Then comes the return of the king.