Aaron Rodgers, an extremely talented quarterback for the Packers, has opened up about his experiences with psychedelics on Aubrey Marcus’s podcast.
What started with a psilocybin experience on the beach transformed into a fascination with what other plants could do. That led him to ayahuasca, which was the real transformative experience for the athlete. In fact, he credits the plant for two MVP seasons in football.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence…For me I didn’t do that and think ‘Oh, I’m never playing football again.’ No, it gave me a deep and meaningful appreciation for life.”
“I want to feel what pure love feels like. That was my intention. And I did. I really did.”
With this comes a bit of backlash from the sports community, which is enlightening on its own.
Colin Cowherd, for example, responded with a large whiff of dismissal.
“So Aaron drank a psychedelic tea that made him hallucinate and said it took him to a different realm… Aaron, I’m older than you and it happened to me too – it’s called college. I had six rum drinks in 90 minutes… I saw weird things too. I moved into a different realm, it was ‘that was the worst damn hangover I’ve ever had in my whole life.’ It changed me, the next morning I absolutely made a point in my life to never drink Captain Morgan’s again. Aaron, lots of people have tried this psychedelic tea; they’re called hippies, burnouts, and affluent White people with too much time on their hands, and nobody in their life to call out their crap.”
His comments reveal a very old viewpoint on psychedelics – that it’s for hippies and slackers who aren’t adding much to society. It’s a stigma that isn’t going anywhere soon, even with people like Aaron Rodgers facing the criticism.
