Celebrities Who’ve Tried Ayahuasca & Talked About Their Experiences

If you are going to buy an independently reviewed services or products via a hyperlink on our web site, SheKnows could obtain an affiliate fee.

Likelihood is, you’ve heard about Ayahuasca and the way it offers folks the wildest drug journeys that may, doubtlessly, 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 mentioned about their Ayahuasca journeys, although, we have to speak about what it even is — and why it’s so polarizing.

Ayahuasca is a kind of brew created from hallucinogenic components and vegetation, sometimes together with the Psychotria viridis shrub, per Healthline. Whereas Ayahuasca is prohibited in america, it’s used for religious, non secular, and ceremonial functions by quite a few tribes in North and South America.

So what occurs while 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 anxiousness — or the entire above.

Vomiting and diarrhea are regular elements of the expertise, which might last as long as six hours. Nevertheless, some folks discover Ayahuasca to be useful with mental health conditions and common well-being. In truth, in 2022, a gaggle of students did a study through survey and found that respondents who usually 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 problems, and a few research has discovered that it may possibly trigger cardiac points. There have additionally been a number of stories of loss of life throughout an Ayahuasca ceremony, although “there has by no means been a loss of life noticed throughout a scientific research,” researchers famous in a single 2018 paper. In different circumstances, Ayahuasca has been blamed for a loss of life that occurred after the ceremony, generally lengthy after — as within the case of 1 celeb forward.

Many celebrities who’ve had Ayahuasca experiences speak about each the nice and the unhealthy, however all of them have careworn that their experiences came about both overseas or with a tribe doing a ceremony. Forward, these stars’ tales present simply how large the vary of experiences on Ayahuasca could be, from scary to complicated to life-changing.

Stephen “tWitch” Boss

Picture Credit score: Dee Cercone/Everett Assortment

In accordance with 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 mentioned, “I believe it was a really huge 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 form 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 mentioned 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 mentioned. “So [my experience] was very a lot about opening my thoughts to loving my sister, and never being so laborious on her.”

However she additionally mentioned there was plenty of 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 mentioned it was like “going to hell for eternity.”

“Simply figuring out eternity is, like, torture in itself, as a result of there was no starting, center, or finish,” Fox mentioned. “So you’ve got, like, an actual ego loss of life.”
Miley Cyrus

Picture Credit score: Gilbert Flores

Talking to Rolling Stone in 2020, Miley Cyrus mentioned she had a really intense expertise with Ayahuasca. In truth, she mentioned the shaman she did it with claims it may possibly take folks as much as 30 tries to get the form of expertise she had. “It was fairly loopy,” Cyrus mentioned, speaking about how snakes introduced her to “Mom Ayahuasca.” “I liked it, although.”
Ricki Lake

Picture Credit score: Priscilla Grant/Everett Assortment

Ricki Lake has carried out Ayahuasca 11 instances. In a 2018 look on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, Lake mentioned 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 mentioned.
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 medicine. 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 medicine within the outdoor — 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 instances 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 motion pictures to be ok with myself,” he wrote of his revelations. “If I’m this lovely, I don’t want hit data 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 having 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 biggest 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 entire 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 mentioned 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 trying 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 instances previously decade. Radnor wrote about his expertise with the brew in a 2020 problem of the journal Oneing from the Heart for Motion and Contemplation, noting that he was at all times “led by a shaman” and approached the journey with “nice seriousness of function.” Radnor “took so ferociously” to Ayahuasca, he mentioned, partly because 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 that means and reality 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 power dwells therein, held me… I proceed to really feel that ayahuasca is, in some ways, an antidote to what ails the fashionable soul, a fiercely deep trainer of generosity, selflessness, and forgiveness. It provided me a glimpse of my finest and bravest self.”
Tori Amos

Picture Credit score: Photograph By: Derek Storm/Everett Assortment

Tori Amos did Ayahuasca so many instances within the Nineteen Eighties, that even years later, a sure odor may take her again to these journeys.

“The drug which had an enormous 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 mentioned in an archived 2001 Q journal interview through Yes Said. “It isn’t like acid. It’s extra emotional, extra psychological. However it may possibly 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 often described as a grandmother spirit, and I met her and walked together with her via previous, current, and future lives, and it was probably the most lovely expertise I may probably think about,” he mentioned on the Audrey Marcus podcast in 2022. “My intention the primary night time stepping into was I need 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 fingers 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 find out how to unconditionally love myself. It’s solely in that unconditional self-love, that then I’m capable of actually have the ability to 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 mentioned his experiences with the drug have compelled him to confront his mortality. “I believe it’s a means 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 when you’re lifeless, out of time. Your entire life passes entrance of you on this different realm.”

It’s a daunting expertise, however Sting believes Ayahuasca could assist us method loss of life in a different way. “Most individuals die in complete panic. Terror,” he mentioned. “I believe there’s one other means. We’re speculated to die. There have to be a method to die peacefully and welcoming.”