PODCAST · health
Highly Functional
by Sarah
For high-functioning folk, one honest conversation at a time. This is safe space for those who are the quietly prescribed, professionally exhausted, and chronically curious.
Episodes
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24. Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History: Medicine, Mutual Aid & the Case Against Compliance
Medicinal cannabis is now a huge commercial market in Australia, but the people who risked everything to supply it first were often women giving it away for free. So who is this system built for, and who paid for it to exist? 🌿 What we cover Jenny Hallam, Brownie Mary and Valerie Corral: the...
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23. The Advocate's Tax — When the Fight Is the Job
What happens when advocacy stops being a choice and becomes the price of admission for care? This week: advocacy burnout, the hidden administrative load on people with disability and patients, what Tasmania's medicinal cannabis driving defence shows about unpaid advocacy, why mutual aid isn't...
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22. Missed, Masked & Medicated: ADHD, Autism & Medicinal Cannabis
Part One is why so many women and gender-diverse people carry a late ADHD or autism diagnosis, the "Masking Tax" that comes with decades of performing fine, and how eerily similar trauma symptoms can look to neurodivergence on paper — hypervigilance, scanning a room, the lot. Part Two picks up...
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21. The Empathy Overdraft - What Compassion Fatigue Actually Costs
What we cover: 🧠 The (contested) neuroscience of empathic overactivation — what mirror neurons can and can't explain 📖 Untangling three terms that get used interchangeably: secondary traumatic stress, vicarious traumatization, and compassion fatigue 🏛️ Why burnout research actually started in...
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20. Baduizm & the Botanical Ritual
Episode 20: Baduizm & The Botanical Ritual Nearly thirty years after Baduizm, Erykah Badu is still writing the rulebook on her own terms — from the ritual she built her debut around, to That Badu (her own cannabis strain), to Before the World Blows, her brand-new album with the Alchemist. This is...
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19. F*ck Optimisation, I Want to Live (The Case Against Being the Best Version of Yourself)
Episode 19: F*ck Optimisation, I Want to Live(The Case Against Being the Best Version of Yourself) We've turned rest into a deliverable. This week: why busyness became a status symbol, what the research actually says about time, money, and happiness, and why lying on the couch doing absolutely...
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18. The Aquarius Effect — Sowing the Seeds of Reform in Australia
A fifty-year lineage from a 1973 arts festival in a dying dairy town to the reason medicinal cannabis is legal in Australia today. This week we trace the throughline from the Nimbin Aquarius Festival including its roots as an environmental movement and the landmark 1979 Terania Creek forest...
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17. Hope is the Antidote
Hope isn't a mood — it's a practice. This week: a global survey putting women's voices at the centre of cannabis research, an honest lap of Australian cannabis law reform, and the case for building our future homes out of hemp and a hopeful book recommendation too. What we cover: Doomscrolling…
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16. Gardening Through Grief — What We Actually Know About Loss, Trauma & Cannabis
Grief isn't just sadness; neuroscience shows it activates the same reward circuitry as craving, and complex grief overlaps heavily with trauma responses like PTSD. This episode widens the lens to include climate grief and "lost future" mourning for millennials, digs into what the actual…
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15. Manifesting in the End Times — Millennials, the Lion's Gate, and Why We're All Suddenly "Into" Astrology Again
Episode 15: Manifesting in the End Times — Millennials, the Lion's Gate, and Why We're All Suddenly "Into" Astrology Again It's the 8/8 Lion's Gate, and millennial astrology culture is having a moment — but the research suggests this isn't random. We unpack why belief in astrology and "magical...
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14. Rest is resistance & other anti-capitalist love notes
"Rest is resistance" shows up on tote bags and therapist Instagram stories — but where does it actually come from, and why does choosing to stop feel so hard when you're high-functioning and professionally exhausted? This week: the real origins of the phrase, what burnout research says about why...
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13. Burnout for Millennials - CBD, Wellness Routines and Psychological Sabotage
Burnout is chronic for millennials but what does the research say about the medicine we use to help us? Today we deep dive into the real research around CBD and the psychological sabotage of optimisation, wellness routines as another contributor to the burnout cycle and more. Buy the Highly...
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12. Chronically Curious: Tailoring Your Endocannabinoid System
Chronically Curious: Tailoring Your Endocannabinoid System Everyone's endocannabinoid system is different — which means the strain that works wonders for me might do nothing for you (or the opposite). In this episode, I break down why terpenes, THC ratios, and CBD matter way more than "sativa vs...
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11. From Tim Tams to Chemo Wards: The Real Science of THC and Appetite
The "munchies" is real neuroscience, not just a stoner cliché — THC hijacks the brain's hunger and reward circuitry, and this episode breaks down exactly how. But we take it further than the joke usually goes: how synthetic THC became an FDA-approved lifeline for AIDS-related wasting in the…
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10. Budgeting, Barriers & Breaking Bias
Mid-year is hitting, the sensory overload is real, and we are officially breaking up with hustle culture. In this episode, we’re ditching the #girlboss pipeline for radical compassion, anti-burnout boundaries, and a little bit of mind expansion. In this episode, we tackle: The Power of Language:...
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9. The Green Ceiling (Navigating Medical Spaces & Self-Advocacy)
Have you ever walked out of a doctor's appointment feeling entirely dismissed, misheard, or told that your chronic stress was "just hormones"? In this episode of Highly Functional, we explore "The Green Ceiling"—the systemic barriers and medical gaslighting that women and gender-diverse…
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8. Beyond Baseline: A High-Functioning Guide to T-Breaks
Have you ever noticed a point where your routines seem to hit a wall, or what used to bring you instant calm starts feeling a little less effective? In this solo episode, we are going Beyond Baseline. We explore the science of how our bodies adapt, why an all-or-nothing approach doesn't work for...
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7. The Sobriety Paradox
In this solo episode of Highly Functional, we explore the rapidly expanding cultural phenomenon of the sober curious movement, driven heavily by high-performing millennials. We dismantle the deeply ingrained corporate and social stigmas surrounding alcohol abstinence, examine the systemic...
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6. Endocannabinology: What, Like It’s Hard?
Did you know your body produces its own cannabis-like compounds to keep your biology in a state of balance? Welcome to the Endocannabinoid System (ECS)—the master regulatory network you were likely never taught in school. In this episode of Highly Functional, we are stripping away the stigma and...
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5. The Professional Silence: Workplace, Stigma, and Your Rights
EPISODE 05: The Professional Silence: Workplace, Stigma, and Your Rights What does it actually cost your career to keep your medical life entirely off-book? In this episode of Highly Functional, Sarah steps into the glass-walled conference rooms of corporate Australia to tackle the quiet elephant...
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4. When "Having It Together" Breaks Your Brain: Insights from Millennial Burnout
Welcome to the cultural episode. This is the one about why high-achieving, Type A, care-giving women are among the most likely to live with unmanaged conditions and the least likely to seek help. Funny, warm, and deeply recognisable, this episode is an exploration of what happens when the…
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3. The Medication that Finally Made Sense
The Medication That Finally Made Sense ADHD, Anxiety, Insomnia — and Those Who Are Quietly Prescribed Over one million medicinal cannabis approvals have been issued in Australia since 2016. The most common reason? Chronic pain. The second most common? Anxiety. And behind those numbers is a...
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2. The Permission Slip
The Permission Slip You've done the research. You've read the studies. You've had the 11pm spiral. You might even have written a pros and cons list. And still — there's a voice that says: that's not for someone like you. You're managing. You're fine. This is the episode about that voice. In this...
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1. I'm Fine. (I Have a Prescription.)
Welcome to Highly Functional — the podcast for the quietly prescribed, professionally exhausted, and chronically curious. This is the trailer. Less than Five minutes. Who this show is for, why it exists, and what I actually mean when I say I'm fine. Hosted by a TGA-approved medicinal cannabis...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
For high-functioning folk, one honest conversation at a time. This is safe space for those who are the quietly prescribed, professionally exhausted, and chronically curious.
HOSTED BY
Sarah
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Highly Functional have?
Highly Functional currently has 24 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Highly Functional about?
For high-functioning folk, one honest conversation at a time. This is safe space for those who are the quietly prescribed, professionally exhausted, and chronically curious.
How often does Highly Functional release new episodes?
Highly Functional has 24 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Highly Functional?
You can listen to Highly Functional on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Highly Functional?
Highly Functional is created and hosted by Sarah.
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