Friday 5 August 2022 03:31 PM As NFL star joins list of psychedelic-endorsing celebrities, are the drugs ... trends now
Revelations that NFL star Aaron Rodgers used psychedelic drugs to boost his performance were just the latest celebrity endorsement of mind-altering drugs, which were for decades taboo but are fast entering the American mainstream.
Rodgers, 38, who says the South American hallucinogen ayahuasca aided his 'best season' in the NFL, joins a growing list of athletes, celebrities, and California technology mavens who vaunt the performance-enhancing virtues of psychedelics.
The Green Bay Packers quarterback was comfortable discussing his drug dabbling openly on a podcast — a sign of the growing social acceptance of psychedelics, which were for decades frowned upon and landed users in jail.
The drugs are also winning fans among scientists, politicians and therapists who treat depressives and veterans with PTSD. But for many parents, they are a danger that can suck their children into a gritty underworld.
‘There’s a big shift, but it's a shift back to normal,’ Dr. Zach Walsh, a University of British Columbia scientist who studies how psychedelics counter stress and boost mood and performance, told DailyMail.com.
A healer serves up a hallucinogenic ayahuasca brew in South America; and a jar of psilocybin mushrooms alongside a pill form of the drug, which therapists say can help sufferers of depression and PTSD
‘For thousands of years these drugs were part of civil society, rites of passage and medicine. One day, we’ll look back and be confused by why we prohibited psychedelics and allowed substances like alcohol.’
Speaking on the Aubrey Marcus Podcast this week, Rodgers opened up about his use of ayahuasca — a psychoactive tea containing the hallucinogen DMT — during a trip to South America before his celebrated 2020 and 2021 seasons.
The drug — a controlled substance that is illegal to possess or distribute in the US — helped him twice win the MVP award, buoyed his mental health and taught him to ‘unconditionally love’ himself, he said.
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He joined such ayahuasca-sipping celebrities as pop-punk musician Machine Gun Kelly, Miley Cyrus, and Will Smith, who in his 2021 autobiography, Will, called its high the ‘unparalleled greatest feeling’ of his life.
Gwyneth Paltrow’s wellbeing website Goop.com promotes a fancy ayahuasca retreat in Costa Rica, Joe Rogan often "lauds DMT in his podcasts and Tesla founder Elon Musk has posted that psychedelics make a ‘real difference to mental health … we should take this seriously’.
Even Mike Tyson, the boxer from Brooklyn, last year gushed about the ‘amazing medicine’ of psilocybin, the psychedelic in magic mushrooms, that helped him recover from dark times, like the infamous ear-biting moment in his 1997 fight against Evander Holyfield.
Psychedelics — mind-altering drugs including DMT, psilocybin, LSD and MDMA — have come a long way from
