Ayahuasca is a sacred plant medicine that has been used in the Amazon for centuries. In a ceremonial setting, an ayahuasquero (or shaman) traditionally uses ayahuasca to heal mental, physical, and spiritual disease. In the Western world, ayahuasca's popularity as a tool for treating depression, anxiety, addiction, and PTSD is steadily growing. Ayahuasca has been featured on many prominent television and news programs, such as BBC, CNN, HBO’s VICE and Newsweek. There are also many celebrities that have done ayahuasca, adding to its popularity as an alternative healing modality.
However, it is important to remember that one should only use ayahuasca in a proper setting with trained guides. New Life Ayahuasca in Costa Rica has been providing traditional ayahuasca ceremonies and retreats for over a decade. As the oldest operating Ayahuasca retreat in Costa Rica, we have amassed a wealth of knowledge and expertise that has enabled us to carefully create a retreat program that encompasses a balance of complimentary healing modalities, time for reflection, and community support. Through the years, we have witnessed incredible transformations through ayahuasca. Our reputation as the highest-rated retreat in Costa Rica is a testament to these life-changing experiences.
If you're interested in learning more about the benefits of ayahuasca and how it might help you enhance the quality of your life, you can read more about our Costa Rica retreat offering traditionally guided ceremonies, hatha yoga classes, therapeutic massage, small groups, integration sharing circles, airport transfers, beach trips and comfortable accommodations in one of the famous Blue Zones of the world.
Several celebrities have openly discussed their experiences with ayahuasca, while others have mentioned it only in passing. Across these various accounts, the consistent theme is the profound, often positive influence ayahuasca can have on one's life.
1. Aaron Rodgers
The famous quarterback from the Green Bay Packers recently opened up about his ayahuasca experience on the Audrey Marcus podcast about how it helped his mental health and helped him find self-love and support for his professional career.
Aaron Rodgers, drank ayahuasca with a shaman of Quechua lineage, presumably in the Sacred Valley of Peru with his then-girlfriend NASCAR star Danica Patrick. "I started deep on a journey where ayahuasca is usually described as a grandmother spirit, and I met her and walked with her through past, present, and future lives, and it was the most beautiful experience I could possibly imagine."
He elaborated by stating, “My intention the first night going in was I want to feel what pure love is. That was my intention and I did, I really did. I had a magical experience with the sensation of feeling 100 different hands on my body imparting a blessing of love and forgiveness for myself and gratitude for this life from what seemed to be my ancestors.”
Rodgers, who was previously engaged to Shailene Woodley, discussed how ayahuasca helped him embrace love for himself and love for others. “To me, one of the core tenets of your mental health is that self-love. That’s what ayahuasca did for me, was help me see how to unconditionally love myself. It's only in that unconditional self-love, that then I'm able to truly be able to unconditionally love others. And what better way to work on my mental health than to have an experience like that?" Aaron Rodgers recalled, 'I laid there afterward on my mat and then opened my eyes and it felt like I was opening my eyes for the first time."
In regards to his career, the four-time NFL MVP stated "The greatest gift I can give my teammates, in my opinion, is to be able to show up and to be someone who can model unconditional love to them. Aaron Rodgers added, "I really feel like that experience paved the way for me to have the best season of my career," " Rodgers said, who went on to win the MVP award in 2020 and 2021.
Chelsea Handler documented her ayahuasca experience in her 2016 Netflix mini-series 'Chelsea Does'. She drank ayahuasca twice in Peru with a shaman. “I didn’t feel anything the first night … so, of course, I had to take [the ayahuasca] a second night with a shaman,” Handler stated in the New York Post. “There was a lot of chanting and vomiting on camera for me, which of course I was very excited to do.”
“It tasted pretty awful, but if you’re a girl trying to look tough in front of your camera crew, you handle it,” she wrote.
Minutes later, the comedian said she experienced a “light show” of colors before vomiting into a bucket. The comedian admitted that even emptying the contents of her stomach “felt peaceful.”
During the second ceremony, Chelsea did experience some profound visions.
Ayahuasca took her back to Katama Bay, where she spent summers with her family. Her sister, Shana, made an appearance as Chelsea admitted she became “overcome” with emotions of her childhood memories.
“I had all these beautiful imageries of my childhood and me and my sister laughing on a kayak, and all these beautiful things with me and my sister,” she said. “So [my experience] was very much about opening my mind to loving my sister, and not being so hard on her.”
3. Will Smith
In his 2021 autobiography book, 'Will' Will Smith details his ayahuasca experiences in Peru. After a difficult and temporary split from his wife Jayden Pinket Smith, Will drank ayahuasca 14 times. “This was my first tiny taste of freedom,” Smith said of his first experience. “In my fifty-plus years on this planet, this is the unparalleled greatest feeling I’ve ever had.”
He went on to describe the experience as "floating deep in outer space...trillions of light years away from Earth". He detailed sensing an unseeable woman, whom he called 'mother' and that he knew would 'never leave me'. His description of a mother figure is a very common theme in ayahuasca visions. During his other 13 journies, the 'mother' appeared to him either more times.
He discovered powerful revelations of self-love. He thought to himself "If I’m this beautiful, I don’t need #1 movies to feel good about myself. If I’m this beautiful, I don’t need hit records to feel worthy of love. If I’m this beautiful, I don’t need Jada or anyone else to validate me.”
"It's about being able to find that contentment within yourself - not with external stimuli," the actor said.
4. Megan Fox
In July 2021, actress Megan Fox announced that she and her boyfriend, Machine Gun Kelly, traveled to Costa Rica to drink ayahuasca. She made the announcement on Jimmy Kimmel Live and described the experience as "going to hell for eternity. : She added, "Just knowing eternity is, like, torture in itself, because there was no beginning, middle, or end," Fox said. "So you have, like, a real ego death." She said that it felt like the ayahuasca goes "straight into your soul" and "takes you to the psychological prison that you hold yourself in."
After suffering a miscarriage on her show 'Lindsay' on the OWN network and facing a number of public arrests and legal battles, Lindsay Lohan wanted to rid herself of traumas and heal.
"I worked with a shaman doing a cleanse. It was a really eye-opening experience with ayahuasca. It was really intense. I saw my whole life in front of me. and I had to let go of things I was trying to hold on to that were dark in my life. I saw myself die, it was insane. I saw myself being born and I feel very different since that, being okay with the wreckage of my past and letting that go."
"When I tried it, I felt crazy, as if I was reborn. It was as if I had completely left behind the weights that I myself had created in my past and now I am only looking forward. It is a unique experience and it's changed my life, I'm not going to screw this up again, ever," said Lindsay Lohan.
6. Sting
Back in 2005, Sting wrote in his autobiography 'Broken Music' that his ayahuasca experiences were the only religious experiences ever had.
7. Penn Badgley
At a 2012 event called the Ayahuasca Monologues, Penn Badgley spoke about his ayahuasca experiences in the Colombian rainforest, calling the plant a 'glittering spiritual tool'. He had a difficult time purging during the experience, but when he finally did he said “I dropped into my heart, and I felt it in my blood and all of the discomfort and this mercurial nature of perceptual boundaries during these ceremonies seemed to melt away and all melt into one gleaming psychic arrow pointing towards my heart…
And that was the simplest but, to this day, the most profound moment of my life.”
8. Miley Cyrus
Miley Cyrus opened up about trying ayahuasca in a Rolling Stone article. “Ayahuasca was definitely one of my favorite drugs I’ve ever done. When I did it, I asked everyone else in the room, ‘Did your entire life just change? Are you a new person?’”
“They all looked at me and said, “No.” And they’re like, ‘You’re so extreme. Of course, you have to have the most extreme trip of all.’ Actually, the shaman said people take ayahuasca three, four times, sometimes 30 times before they have the kind of trip I had,” she adds. She goes on to describe the experience as “extreme,” saying she saw snakes immediately. “It was pretty crazy. I loved it, though.”
Cyrus said that snakes grabbed her and took her to “Mother Ayahuasca”, who walked her through her entire trip. “It was pretty crazy,” she says. “I loved it, though.”
Cyrus later told the New York Times that the experience was healing. “I loved what it did for me.” And while she stated, “Ayahuasca was definitely one of my favorite drugs I’ve ever done,” Cyrus doesn't think she'd try it again.
She drank the psychedelic brew at her home in 2013 with Flaming Lips’ leader Wayne Coyne. The two had been collaborating on tunes for Cyrus’ Dead Petz record at the time, Coyne told Rolling Stone.
9. Paul Simon
Paul Simon was inspired to write the song 'Spirit Voices' after his ayahuasca experience.
The lyrics paint a picture of his journey.
"Some stories are magical, meant to be sung
Songs from the mouth of the river
When the world was young
And all of these spirit voices rule the night
I drank a cup of herbal brew
The sweetness in the air
Combined with the lightness in my head
And I heard the jungle breathing in the bamboo"
He told Billboard magazine: "Ayahuasca has always been there. Nobody outside of the Amazon knew anything about it. And there are several main sets of healers that use ayahuasca. I wouldn't say that it heals - but I wouldn't say that it doesn't. It seems to work sometimes for some people, seemed to really not work for other people. I'm not a proponent and I'm not a detractor. I just wrote the song because this had been my experience."
10. Tori Amons
Tori Amos has done ayahuasca many times, starting in the 1980s. During a 2001 interview with Q magazine, she said:
“The drug which had a big effect on me was ayahuasca. It comes from a vine in the Amazon and you ingest it. You know that stuff they take in The Emerald Forest? It’s like that. I was hanging around with some medicine women and they suggested I try it. I was very lucid but felt like I was walking around in Fantasia, having a conversation with myself.
“It isn’t like acid. It’s more emotional, more mental. But it can grab you by the balls and just shove you up against the wall. I’ve been in a room with a woman who was literally trying to bite her own arm off. And this lasted for 15 hours. I wasn’t scared — just scared that I’d make a fool of myself. The funny thing was, I kept laughing and laughing, rather than sitting in the corner being intense. Then, every so often, I’d say, I’m in a really rough patch. And one of the medicine women would come over and reassure me that everything was going to be alright…
“I haven’t taken it in a couple of years now. You can only really do it once in a blue moon. But the wild thing is that sometimes I only have to smell something and I’m right back there again, high as a kite.”
11. Ricki Lake
In an interview on 'Watch what happens Live' with Andy Cohen, She was asked if within the last 10 years, Ricki had tried ayahuasca 11 times.
"It's true," Ricki said.
Andy asked, "Do you love it?"
"I wouldn't say I love it," she replied. "But it's a very, very powerful medicine that has been very beneficial in my life."
12. Robin Quivers
The famous radio show personality from The Howard Stern Show, Robin Quivers
“I went to a retreat in the Sacred Valley and I had to stay in silence the whole time. I was hardly talking. And, like I said, sleeping on a mattress on the floor.”
Robin wanted to learn more about herself: “I had been suffering from some depression lately.”
She drank under the guidance of a shaman, “He’s a master. He’s revered there.” Robin said.
“I am very, very pleasantly surprised that I came home feeling great,” she told Howard.
13. Josh Radnor
Josh Radnor, the actor best known for his role as Ted Mosby on the America tV sitcom 'How I met your mother' drank ayahuasca over 100 times in a ten year period.
He said "I did over a hundred ayahuasca ceremonies over a ten-year period, always led by a shaman and undertaken with great seriousness of purpose. I’m not sure why I took so ferociously to it, but I suspect it was partly due to being rattled by the success of a television show I was on and the attendant newfound visibility and erosion of anonymity. Ayahuasca became my refuge, a thing that felt meaningful and true at a time when meaning and truth felt in short supply. I ran into its arms and vomited up—oftentimes quite literally—my fears, obsessions, regrets, and insecurities. And the medicine, or whatever force dwells therein, held me. I never felt unloved, punished, or rejected by it. I continue to feel that ayahuasca is, in many ways, an antidote to what ails the modern soul, a fiercely deep teacher of generosity, selflessness, and forgiveness. It offered me a glimpse of my best and bravest self."
Josh Radnors story is an interesting one. As a Jewish man, he had an encouter with Jesus during his experiences.
"It was through ayahuasca that my relationship with Jesus began in earnest. During a ceremony one night in 2009, I experienced a vision of myself at the crucifixion. Jesus was on the cross, near death. My heart was heavy with grief. Soon, I was in a small hut with a few people as we laid Jesus’ lifeless body out on a stone bench. My grief deepened and tears began to fall. Then, very suddenly, I was inside my chest and, in the darkness of my heart, there appeared a tiny light which began to grow and grow. I knew this light to be “Christ.” This Christic light then began growing brighter and brighter, spreading throughout my heart, slowly occupying every last nook and crevice. I recall a moment of panic as the light began to spread, horrified at the thought that I was undergoing a conversion. How was I going to tell my parents that I was now a Christian? But the next thought calmed me. This vision, I came to understand, was not about tribe or sect or religion. It was bigger and more transcendent. Christ—as Richard Rohr so beautifully maps out in his recent book, The Universal Christ—is distinct from Jesus. I saw that the “Second Coming of Christ” is not a literal, material event. Rather, it will be taking place in the realm of consciousness, in the hearts and minds of human beings. The prophecy is that the compassion, wisdom, and healing capabilities of Jesus will one day be available to all of us—or could be. What else could Jesus have meant when he said, in John 14:12, “All these works I do you shall do, and greater works than these you shall do”?
14. Terrance Howard
In 2014, Terrance Howard told The Rolling Stone Magazine that he had tried ayahuasca once.
"I took ayahuasca once. The only answer I got was ‘Keep following your hands.’ ”
15. Chris Robinson
The frontman of The Black Crows and former husband of Kate Hudson, Chris Robinson said “I was very lucky getting near eight or nine years ago to have an ayahuasca experience. Even though a lot of my belief systems had let me up to that day and believing in the esoteric realities of aggressive psychedelic and entheogen-driven experience, that was the literal opening up of all my minds and hearts.
Where my mind and heart and soul all coalesce of having at least the initial understanding of the interconnectedness of all living entities in the universe, really.”
16. Michelle Rodriguez
In the documentary 'Reality of Truth,' actress Michelle Rodriguez said ayahuasca helped her cope with the death of fellow Fast and Furious actor, Paul Walker.
Rodriguez said “I have to say, you know, when I lost Paul, I went through about a year of just being like an animal. Like, what could I do, physically, to just get my mind off of existentialism? Get my mind off of how transient life is and how we just come here and can just disappear at any moment. How could I get my mind off that? ... I did everything I could possibly do to hide from myself and I'll tell you that my Ayahuasca trip made me sad that he left me here. It wasn't a sadness that he's gone, it's more like a jealousy that he's there first."
Although after the release of the documentary, Michelle claimed her comments were used out of context.
17. James Scott
Soap opera star James Scott famously quit Days of Our Lives after his ayahuasca experience.
In 2014 he said, “I just got back from Peru. I spent six days in the jungles of Peru doing Ayahuasca with the shaman. It was the single most positive experience of my life. Ayahuasca is this hallucinogenic. I sat in a tent, in a hut, in the jungle, on the amazons with three shaman blowing tobacco smoke into my crown, realigning my chakras and my energy, while I hallucinated for four to six hours. I mean, this is all hard to explain. It’s very spiritual and very interesting. This is a medicine that the people of South America have been using for years to have a relationship with a higher consciousness. It sounds wacky when you say it, but it was truly the most important thing I have ever done. I came back a very different person.”
“Ayahuasca has brought me close to something, something fearful and profound and deadly serious.”
18. Susan Sarandon
In 2014, Susan Sarandon briefly discussed her ayahuasca experience with the Daily Beast.
She talked about attending Burning Man in Nevada. When asked if she tried any psychedelics while she was there, Susan answered, “Well, it's pretty psychedelic to begin with. But, yeah, I'm not new to the idea of mushrooms. I don't really like chemical things, really. Timothy Leary (a psychologist and writer known for advocating psychedelic drug use) was a friend of mine so that acid was nice and pure, but I'm not really looking for chemicals, and I don't like to feel speedy. But I've done Ayahuasca and I've done mushrooms and things like that. But I like those drugs in the outdoors -- I'm not a city-tripper.”
She added, "My attitude about marijuana or anything is, “Don’t be stoned if you have to pretend you’re not,” so I’d never do drugs if I was taking care of my kids. I like doing it in the Grand Canyon, or in the woods. You want to be prepared and not have responsibilities. It does remind you of your space in the universe—your place in the universe—and reframe things for you. I think you can have some very profound experiences."
19. William Burroughs
The famous beat generation author of books such as Naked Lunch and Junkie also published The Yage Letters in 1963, a series of correspondence between Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg detailing Burroughs' quest to find ayahuasca (yagé) and get off heroin in the Amazon Rainforest.
"This is the most powerful drug I have ever experienced. That is it produces the most complete derangement of the senses. You see everything from a hallucinated viewpoint. Yage' is not like anything else. This is not the electric euphoria of coke which activates channels of pure pleasure in the brain, the sexless, timeless, negative pleasure of opium."
20. Ben Lee
Australian musician Ben Lee released a whole album titled '"Ayahuasca: Welcome to the Work," about his experiences.
"I'm cautious of putting the medicine on a pedestal because I think the medicine is used in a lot of different ways. I don't think the answer is that everybody is to take ayahuasca. I don't think drinking ayahuasca is going to immediately solve all your problems, but within the context, I was exposed to it -- with a teacher/shaman who I've continued to work with -- it's taking me into a study of the systematic hunting down of our egos and our fantasies and almost like a samurai practice of trying to maintain awareness under incredibly adverse situations and noticing when we are asleep -- in those moments, sensing the urgency and attempting to wake ourselves up again."
21. Ron White
Comedian Ron White recently went on the Joe Rogan Experience and talked about his ayahuasca experience in Costa Rica. He disclosed he wanted to try ayahuasca to help reduce his alcohol consumption. The comedian is well known for drinking scotch and in his comedy routine. “People sаy I’m аn аlcoholic, but thаt’s not true; I only drink when I work,” Ron sаid in 2014. I’m а workаholic who cаn’t stop working. ”
He described the ayahuasca brew as “mud, аwful tаsting stuff.”
The trip begаn to feel like а mushroom effect, but when he opened his mouth, “the entire forest poured into it.”
Ayahuasca comes with a purge, either vomiting or diarrhea, and Ron got the latter.
During the experience, he reported not knowing how to use his own hands and that people's faces became distorted. Still, he drank ayahuasca again with a lower dose the second time.
22. Jim Carrey
Jim Carrey has never publicly spoken about taking psychedelics, but it is rumored that while on ayahuasca, the comedian refused to get off a mountain until he believed he could earn $10 million a picture — which, eventually, he did.
