If you buy an independently reviewed services or products by way of a hyperlink on our web site, SheKnows could obtain an affiliate fee.
Chances are high, you’ve heard about Ayahuasca and the way it offers folks the wildest drug journeys that may, probably, change the course of their lives. However do you know that fairly just a few celebrities have tried Ayahuasca and shared their experiences? Earlier than we get into what celebrities have stated about their Ayahuasca journeys, although, we have to discuss what it even is — and why it’s so polarizing.
Ayahuasca is a sort of brew created from hallucinogenic substances and vegetation, sometimes together with the Psychotria viridis shrub, per Healthline. Whereas Ayahuasca is against the law in the US, it’s used for religious, non secular, and ceremonial functions by quite a few tribes in North and South America.
Related story
More Teens Are Saying No To Drinking & Drugs — But One Trendy Product Is an Exception
So what occurs if you take Ayahuasca? Experiences can actually differ. By that, we imply that somebody can have a visit that’s stuffed with ecstasy, enlightenment, panic, or nervousness — or all the above.
Vomiting and diarrhea are regular components of the expertise, which may last as long as six hours. Nevertheless, some folks discover Ayahuasca to be useful with mental health conditions and common well-being. In actual fact, in 2022, a gaggle of students did a study through survey and found that respondents who repeatedly used Ayahuasca displayed decrease ranges of anxiety.
Nevertheless, with such excessive highs come some severe lows. Together with vomiting, diarrhea, and potential paranoia, some folks have reported that Ayahuasca can worsen sure psychological issues, and a few research has discovered that it may trigger cardiac points. There have additionally been a number of studies of dying throughout an Ayahuasca ceremony, although “there has by no means been a dying noticed throughout a medical research,” researchers famous in a single 2018 paper. In different circumstances, Ayahuasca has been blamed for a dying that occurred after the ceremony, typically lengthy after — as within the case of 1 celeb forward.
Many celebrities who’ve had Ayahuasca experiences discuss each the nice and the unhealthy, however all of them have careworn that their experiences befell both overseas or with a tribe doing a ceremony. Forward, these stars’ tales present simply how broad the vary of experiences on Ayahuasca may be, from scary to complicated to life-changing.
-
Stephen “tWitch” Boss
Picture Credit score: Dee Cercone/Everett Assortment In response to his widow Allison Holker, the late Stephen “tWitch” Boss went on an Ayahuasca journey earlier than he died by suicide in 2022. Whereas selling her 2025 memoir on The Jamie Kern Lima Show, Holker recalled that Boss “wasn’t the identical afterwards.”
Holker stated, “I feel it was a really massive turning level for him. I really feel like his coronary heart was by no means actually in the identical place when he got here again. There was one thing lacking in his eyes. It simply sort of appears like he opened one thing as much as himself that he by no means healed and by no means totally escaped.”
-
Chelsea Handler
Picture Credit score: Elizabeth Goodenough/Everett Assortment Chelsea Handler revealed on her Chelsea Does docuseries, through New York Post, that she tried Ayahuasca twice. Whereas she didn’t really feel something the primary time, Handler stated that in her second expertise, she noticed a “mild present” of colours. “I had all these lovely imageries of my childhood and me and my sister laughing on a kayak, and all these lovely issues with me and my sister,” she stated. “So [my experience] was very a lot about opening my thoughts to loving my sister, and never being so arduous on her.”
However she additionally stated there was numerous vomiting, too!
-
Megan Fox
Picture Credit score: Kristin Callahan/Everett Assortment On a 2021 episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live, Megan Fox revealed that she and her ex MGK went to Costa Rica to attempt Ayahuasca. She stated it was like “going to hell for eternity.”
“Simply realizing eternity is, like, torture in itself, as a result of there was no starting, center, or finish,” Fox stated. “So you have got, like, an actual ego dying.”
-
Miley Cyrus
Picture Credit score: Gilbert Flores Chatting with Rolling Stone in 2020, Miley Cyrus stated she had a really intense expertise with Ayahuasca. In actual fact, she stated the shaman she did it with claims it may take folks as much as 30 tries to get the sort of expertise she had. “It was fairly loopy,” Cyrus stated, speaking about how snakes introduced her to “Mom Ayahuasca.” “I beloved it, although.”
-
Ricki Lake
Picture Credit score: Priscilla Grant/Everett Assortment Ricki Lake has carried out Ayahuasca 11 occasions. In a 2018 look on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, Lake stated that she wouldn’t say she loves Ayahuasca, however that it’s been a tremendous therapeutic device. “It’s a really, very highly effective drugs that has been very useful in my life,” Lake stated.
-
Susan Sarandon
Picture Credit score: Kristina Bumphrey Whereas Susan Sarandon hasn’t gone in-depth on her expertise with Ayahuasca, she did reveal that she does partake in additional pure typed of medication. In a 2014 interview with Daily Beast, Sarandon defined that she’s “carried out Ayahuasca [psychedelic tea] and I’ve carried out mushrooms and issues like that. However I like these medication within the outside — I’m not a city-tripper.”
-
Will Smith
Picture Credit score: Gilbert Flores Will Smith wrote in his 2021 memoir Will that he tried Ayahuasca 14 occasions amid a breakup with Jada Pinkett-Smith, and that he noticed a determine named “mom” who helped him uncover self-love.
“If I’m this lovely, I don’t want #1 films to be ok with myself,” he wrote of his revelations. “If I’m this lovely, I don’t want hit information to really feel worthy of affection. If I’m this lovely, I don’t want Jada or anybody else to validate me. It’s about with the ability to discover that contentment inside your self — not with exterior stimuli. In my 5-plus years on this planet, that is the unparalleled best feeling I’ve ever had.”
-
Lindsay Lohan
Picture Credit score: Swan Gallet Lindsay Lohan described her expertise with Ayahuasca as a type of rebirth.
“I labored with a shaman doing a cleanse,” she recalled on Lindsay in 2014. She described it as an “eye-opening” and “intense” expertise, the place she noticed her complete life in entrance of her and realized she “needed to let go of issues I used to be making an attempt to carry on to that had been darkish in my life.” Lohan stated the entire expertise was like being reborn. “It was as if I had fully left behind the weights that I personally had created in my previous and now I’m solely wanting ahead,” she defined. “It’s a distinctive expertise and it’s modified my life.”
-
Josh Radnor
Picture Credit score: Christina DeOrtentiis/Everett Assortment How I Met Your Mother alum Josh Radnor hasn’t simply dabbled in Ayahuasca — he’s carried out it over 100 occasions previously decade. Radnor wrote about his expertise with the brew in a 2020 difficulty of the journal Oneing from the Middle for Motion and Contemplation, noting that he was at all times “led by a shaman” and approached the journey with “nice seriousness of objective.” Radnor “took so ferociously” to Ayahuasca, he stated, partly as a result of being “rattled” by his profession success and the lack of his privateness and anonymity. “Ayahuasca turned my refuge, a factor that felt significant and true at a time when which means and fact felt in brief provide,” he wrote. “I bumped into its arms and vomited up—oftentimes fairly actually—my fears, obsessions, regrets, and insecurities. And the medication, or no matter pressure dwells therein, held me… I proceed to really feel that ayahuasca is, in some ways, an antidote to what ails the trendy soul, a fiercely deep instructor of generosity, selflessness, and forgiveness. It supplied me a glimpse of my greatest and bravest self.”
-
Tori Amos
Picture Credit score: Photograph By: Derek Storm/Everett Assortment Tori Amos did Ayahuasca so many occasions within the Nineteen Eighties, that even years later, a sure odor may take her again to these journeys.
“The drug which had a giant impact on me was Ayahuasca… I used to be very lucid however felt like I used to be strolling round in Fantasia, having a dialog with myself,” she stated in an archived 2001 Q journal interview through Yes Said. “It isn’t like acid. It’s extra emotional, extra psychological. However it may seize you by the balls and simply shove you up in opposition to the wall.”
-
Aaron Rodgers
Picture Credit score: Photograph By: Kristin Callahan/Everett Assortment Aaron Rodgers drank Ayahuasca with a shaman of Quechua lineage along with his then-girlfriend NASCAR star Danica Patrick, and it taught him all about self-love.
“I began deep on a journey the place Ayahuasca is normally described as a grandmother spirit, and I met her and walked along with her by way of previous, current, and future lives, and it was probably the most lovely expertise I may probably think about,” he stated on the Audrey Marcus podcast in 2022. “My intention the primary night time moving into was I wish to really feel what pure love appears like. That was my intention and I did, I actually did. I had a magical expertise with the feeling of feeling 100 totally different arms on my physique imparting a blessing of affection and forgiveness for myself and gratitude for this life from what gave the impression to be my ancestors.”
He added, “That’s what ayahuasca did for me, was assist me see how one can unconditionally love myself. It’s solely in that unconditional self-love, that then I’m capable of really be capable of unconditionally love others.”
-
Penn Badgley
Picture Credit score: John Nacion Penn Badgley not solely tried Ayahuasca, however he spoke on the 2012 Ayahuasca Monologues about it, calling the brew a “glittering religious device,” per the New York Times.
-
Sting
Picture Credit score: Kristin Callahan/Everett Assortment Sting has been fairly open about his ayahuasca expertise, and even wrote in his autobiography Broken Music that he considers it to be the one non secular expertise he’s ever had. In a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone, the rock star stated his experiences with the drug have compelled him to confront his mortality. “I feel it’s a approach of rehearsing the sensation of being lifeless,” he defined. “Each time, I’ve to work up the braveness to do it… [I]t’s as for those who’re lifeless, out of time. Your complete life passes entrance of you on this different realm.”
It’s a daunting expertise, however Sting believes Ayahuasca could assist us method dying otherwise. “Most individuals die in whole panic. Terror,” he stated. “I feel there’s one other approach. We’re presupposed to die. There have to be a option to die peacefully and welcoming.”
