It’s not just hard work and skill that one of the biggest NFL stars attributes his success to. Aaron Rodgers is an ardent advocate of psychedelics and has been candid about his healing journey with ayahuasca. Apart from A-Rod, multiple athletes have opened up about their experience with the South American brew, which is believed to help with a number of mental health issues.
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Rodgers had his first tryst with the psychedelic back in 2020 in Peru, on the recommendation of his friend, as per USA Today. He credited his back-to-back MVP titles to the experience and tried it again in 2022.
The Super Bowl champion has since made it clear that he doesn’t support the use of the word “drug,” preferring instead to refer to ayahuasca as “plant medicine.”
In a previous interview, Rodgers said that “the most important way was really that self-love part,” referring to how the experience helped him become less critical of himself.
He further added:
“I was very self-critical. When you have so much judgment on yourself, it’s easy to transfer that judgment to other people. When you figure out a better way to love yourself, I think you can love people better because you’re not casting the same judgment you cast on yourself on other people. I’m really thankful for that.”
A-Rod also shared how multiple other athletes from the NFL showed their interest in ayahuasca and have positive stories to tell about it as well. For instance, a former NFL star who opened up about his experience with psychedelics is former Saints wide receiver, Kenny Stills.
Having dipped his toes into a wide variety of drugs including cannabis, ecstasy, and LSD, in his youth, Stills hasn’t been shy of crediting his mental health journey to substances. He tried ketamine in 2022, which he described as a “very intense” experience for his mind and body, as per the InsideHook.
“Ketamine separates you from you, in a sense. You’ll find yourself wondering if you’re still in the same room or in the same dimension. The very first time I had a visual experience with it, I felt like I was on the other side, however, you want to think about that.”
“I really, really felt like I wasn’t here or wasn’t on earth. Psychedelics affect us all differently because of our brain chemistry and I have known how they can help me for five or six years now,” Stills continued.
The former wide receiver who’s been active in his support of social issues feels it’s his “duty as a human being” to share his learnings with people. Stills has also shared how he developed more empathy and joy after trying the substances and that he was able to break some detrimental patterns that were passed on to him from his parents and the generations before.
Kerry Rhodes’ experience with ayahuasca, however, was quite different and tumultuous. On the first day, the former Jets safety hallucinated throwing up a fetus, which his shaman reassured was a “good thing,” as he relayed to The Guardian. The fetus returned in the next day’s vomiting as well, which led to a self-realization for the athlete.
“I go in and I connect with it. Cut to: I wake up and I’m a baby in the crib, and I’m looking out, and I’m crying, and at that moment nobody picked me up.”
“And I had a moment, half in the hallucination, half in the treatment room, where I was like, ‘Oh sh*t, I don’t need anyone to pick me up,’ and I put my thumb in my mouth, and I stopped crying. I realized that I didn’t need anyone. The thumb grew, and it killed that moment – it killed that need,” Rhodes further added.
This learning Rhodes carries with him, which even helped him after his playing days were over. In his own words: “Once your career is done, it’s done – and for many of us it can be a real struggle to come to terms with that,” followed by, “But there are other things we can do, we have other talents we can contribute to the world. We are not robots.”
While psychedelics remain a polarizing subject for many, Aaron Rodgers, Kenny Stills, and Kerry Rhodes attribute some integral life lessons to trying “plant medicine,” as A-Rod so lovingly puts it.
