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Susannah Cahalan

@suscahalan

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Brain on Fire. The Great Pretender. The Acid Queen. On the hunt.

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The Acid Queen is out today. The book took me four years to research and write, but it’s really been sixteen years in the making. It all started with the visions and hallucinations I experienced when I was sick with autoimmune encephalitis back in 2009. All of my books came out of that experience. And I think they represent an evolution in my understanding of the brain/mind/spirit. Brain on Fire is a very rational book. It’s about neuroscience and the possibility of great medicine. It is concrete, a straightforward success story. The Great Pretender is the mind. It’s a corrective to the optimism of my own miraculous (and unusual) experience with mental health care. It’s an education in how much we still don’t know. The Acid Queen is more interested in the ineffable—the soul, perhaps. This story has many fewer hard-lines. It’s a metaphysical tale about the pursuit of happiness for a woman searching for meaning. It’s about the importance and impossibility of such missions. It’s about love and survival. I like to think that each book is a step further into the great mystery of being a human. So can I call them a trilogy? Or is that taking the whole thing too far? Thank you to all who are reading! I’m excited to start yammering on about Rosemary with you. xo by @suscahalan

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a year ago

🔈“Turn on. Tune in. Drop out.”

If you’ve ever read anything about the history of psychedelics, the name Timothy Leary will probably sound familiar. He was a Harvard psychologist who researched psychedelics within academia before getting fired in 1963 and taking his experiments underground. But you might never have heard of Timothy’s wife, Rosemary Woodruff Leary.

In the latest Distillations podcast episode, we talk with author Susannah Cahalan @suscahalan about her book on Rosemary and how she played a quiet but foundational role in our early understanding of LSD.

😵‍💫 Tap the link in bio or visit sciencehistory.org to listen now! by @suscahalan

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13 days ago

There’s something especially delightful about having a great relationship with a stepparent. They don’t have to love you, but they choose to. Not everyone wins the stepparent lottery, but I did. I have always known that Allen Goldman got a genuine kick out of me.

Rest in peace, Allen. I hope you’re drinking Cokes and placing bets and eating gefilte fish wherever you are.

Allen Goldman, born June 21, 1945, died at his home in Hoboken, New Jersey, on September 28, 2026, surrounded by family. He was 81.

Allen was born in the Tremont section of the Bronx, the child of immigrants from Eastern Europe. His playful streak showed up early. He spent his free time playing basketball, handball, punchball and pool on the streets of New York. He went on to Pace University, where he earned a degree in accounting.

Beginning in 1976, Allen spent more than three decades at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, where he rose to head of audit and worked closely with District Attorney Robert Morgenthau. He also worked with the Police Athletic League, helping to get its books and records in shape.

Allen loved the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and often quoted him to his children and stepchildren. One line reflects his creed: “We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.” He loved to laugh and loved making others laugh, often with stories about his kids and his own life. His enthusiasms ranged from Bob Dylan to Barbara Stanwyck, from Woody Allen to Clueless. He got a kick out of so much. He drove fast (and badly).

His friendships stretched from fifth grade to his colleagues at the DA’s office. He loved poker nights and betting on the Yankees and the Giants, and he enjoyed the game even when he lost the bet. He was a man with a twinkle in his eye and friends and family often came to him for advice.

“Make it smaller,” he would say. by @suscahalan

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13 days ago

It was, one audience member said, “an emotionally shattering night.” I call that a win!

@bobkolker thank you for trusting me to moderate the launch of your remarkable book at the fabled @92ndstreety.

THE VANISHING FAMILY is out today. @nytimes gave it a rave calling it “gripping” with Kolker’s “genius for immersive detail.”

The book follows three generations hit by the brain illness equivalent of a natural disaster. One by one, doting parents and high achievers turn into strangers. The cause is a highly heritable form of frontotemporal dementia, which strikes in a person’s forties, and can be detected in a test before onset. Each child has a 50/50 shot of inheriting it. Would you want to know?

Bob, I said it last night and I’ll say it again: you’re one of the greats. Don’t miss this one. by @suscahalan

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20 days ago

I’m so excited to interview @bobkolker at the @92ndstreety TONIGHT about his extraordinary new book THE VANISHING FAMILY. Tickets in stories! (I promise my hair won’t look this bad tonight!) by @suscahalan

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21 days ago

Susannah Cahalan on psychedelics, counterculture, rebellion, historical erasure, and the untold story of Rosemary Woodruff Leary.

From Episode 989, my conversation with #1 New York Times bestselling author and journalist Susannah Cahalan (@suscahalan), author of THE ACID QUEEN (Viking).

🎧 Listen to the full conversation wherever you get your podcasts.

#SusannahCahalan #TheAcidQueen #RosemaryLeary #Psychedelics #Counterculture #Nonfiction #Writers #writing #books #OtherpplPodcast by @suscahalan

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25 days ago

This is a PSA for going to the show on a school night.

I was tired last night. All just wanted to watch Survivor and go to sleep by ten. But months ago, a more ambitious version of me bought tickets to see @aldousharding.

I first heard “Imagining My Man” on Woodstock Radio’s now defunct HeavyLight Show years ago. It is a strange, unnerving song and the rest of the album proved just as strange and unnerving. Harding can sound like an angel, a bird, a demon, water plopping from a faucet. She can be man, woman, or child—all in the same song.

She’s also a mystery. There’s very little detail about her life online. Her Instagram is a cipher. And this made me love her more: to be mysterious! It’s a lost art these days.

A friend posted a clip of Harding playing “Imagining My Man” at a recent show in Brooklyn and so I decided to rally, put down the remote, and board a train to Boston to see Aldous Harding at the @thesinclair. The show started off—bang!—and I was transfixed. She sat for most of it with a left leg (but not the right) doing what I can only describe as a jig as she played guitar. She lay down on the floor. She hulked and skulked awkwardly contorting her body. She barely spoke, and when she did, her New Zealand accent made it difficult to understand. But the voice. THE VOICE. And the band—a harpist/pianist, and a pedal steel player, exceptional. I took one video all night because I couldn’t look away long enough to hold up a phone. Barely anyone looked at their phone. We were all transported. I forgot I was tired. I forgot about the 6am wake-up waiting at home.

Catch her if you can. She has a few more US and Canada dates. Even if you know none of her songs. Best show I’ve seen in ages. by @suscahalan

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a month ago

Fall has barely kissed the back of our necks, and my family is already deep into spooky season: last weekend we visited the @edward.gorey.house on Cape Cod. If you’re of a certain age, you might remember Gorey from the fainting woman animated opening of PBS’s Mystery!
Lesser known fact: Gorey spent around fifteen years living full time on the Cape. A delightfully curmudgeonly tour guide gave me some more fun factoids:

Gorey wrote and illustrated more than 100 books and almost none of them sold, despite now being a household name. He kept six cats, and each had a death dowry—money set aside for the adopter after Gorey’s death, in amounts that varied according to how much he liked the cat. In flush years, he spent around $100,000 on fur coats. He ate two meals a day, every day, at the same restaurant, Jack’s Outback down the street in Yarmouth. He watched 1,000 movies a year and attended 160 @newyorkcity.ballet performances a year during the three decades he lived in Manhattan. He owned 20,000 books. He loved a yard sale.

My favorite of his books? The Doubtful Guest, which features a creepy aardvark-like creature who arrives at a family’s home with no explanation and never leaves. by @suscahalan

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a month ago

I stepped away from my desk and returned to this lovable MESS and against my better instincts had to share. Here’s my problem—I grew up in a newsroom where you guard your scoops. I’m resistant to sharing too much too soon. And that really doesn’t work these days. Some much smarter friends have convinced me to stop hoarding the work and start sharing a bit more. So that’s what I plan to do. Show the archives and the books and the research trips and even some synchronistic tarot pulls and hope you enjoy the hunt. In the meantime, I swear that everything is in its right place. by @suscahalan

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2 months ago

I had the most magical eight days @hewnoaks artist retreat in Maine. Wrote dozens of pages by hand. Read a cabin full of books. Swam in Kezar Lake every afternoon. Visited a local bookstore with nearly an entire bookcase full of @stephenking books. Read almost zero emails thanks to the lack of WiFi. Listened to old CD mix tapes on a boombox. If you need a moment away from it all to breathe, swim, and get some serious deep work done, APPLY for next year. I know I will!! #writersretreat by @suscahalan

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2 months ago

Happy pub day to one of the most beautiful humans I know, @jamielynnsigler. 🖤 Two years ago, Jamie’s editor Karen Rinaldi connected us while Jamie’s son was in the hospital with a rare autoimmune disease of the brain. I watched her channel that experience into something wise, raw, and deeply felt. And also WILD! There’s some great Sopranos tea, which I for one can’t get enough of. Her book #ANDSOITIS is out today. Go get a copy! 💫 by @suscahalan

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5 months ago

Happy new year to friends and family near and far! 2025 wasn’t easy—it was a year of change with a dash of chaos and upheaval. There was a move and a book and a major loss. But through it all we learned how gosh darn lucky we are to love so many great people. Thank you for loving us back ❤️ by @suscahalan

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10 months ago