Pro football player Jordan Poyer has enjoyed a successful 12-year career on the field, playing as a safety most recently for the Miami Dolphins. Poyer is also an alcoholic who says he hit rock bottom in 2020, joined AA, and got sober.
"But even after I was done with drinking, I still had a lot of questions about why I was feeling the way I was," Poyer says. "I had everything in the world: a beautiful family, a beautiful daughter, a great career. But I still didn't feel fulfilled. Usually, I'd turn to alcohol but I didn't have that any more."
Then Poyer heard NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers on a podcast describing the benefits he received from drinking ayahuasca, the South American psychoactive brew, in ceremony. Poyer identified a shaman in Costa Rica and embarked on his own journey with the plant medicine. At first, he says, his mom thought he'd "gone off the deep end." Eventually though, she joined Poyer in a ceremony as did his brother. Jane C. Hu interviewed Poyer at The Microdose:
On the first night, it was hard letting go of my worry for [my mom and brother during the ceremony]. I really wanted to make sure they got what they wanted out of it, so much so that the medicine didn't even really hit me. But I saw both my mom and brother really going through some tough moments during those six hours. So then on the second night, we did another ceremony and I went in with the intention that I was going to just let them go through their own processes, and not worry as much about them.
My mom had a lot to work through but she's a trooper. There was stuff that she needed to let go of in her life that she was holding on to, the trauma of past relationships and heartbreaks that we hold on to, which then affects us subconsciously. In the end I think my mom would tell you that it's one of the best things she's ever done. She used to be very closed off, a fly on the wall; in a group of people she wouldn't be one to talk. But now you can't get her to be quiet! She's a talkative, social butterfly, who just wants to chit chat with everybody. My younger brother still has some work to do, but he's on his way; I'm helping him with the integration part of things.
We all realized that whatever we were holding on to just didn't matter.
Previously:
• Netflix's 4-part adaptation of Michael Pollan's book on psychedelics, 'How to Change Your Mind'
• How the Black psychedelic revolution can heal and liberate
• Ancient psychedelic wisdom for modern medicine
• A magician-psychologist designed a study to trick sober participants into thinking they were tripping on psychedelics
