Why Former NFL All-Pros Are Turning to Psychedelics

Roam nan wide-open halls and cavernous showrooms of nan Colorado Convention Center during Psychedelic Science, nan world’s largest psychedelics conference, and you’ll spot exhibitors hawking everything from mushroom jewelry, to chewable gummies containing extracts of nan psychoactive succulent works kanna, to wide flat-brim shot caps emblazoned pinch “MDMA” and “IBOGA.” Booths publicize organizations specified arsenic nan Ketamine Taskforce and nan Psychedelic Parenthood Community, and moreover The Faerie Rings, a live-action characteristic movie looking to pull investors.

It’s a motley, multifarious symposium wherever indigenous-plant-medicine healers mingle pinch lanyard-clad pharma-bros, legendary underground LSD chemists, and workaday stoners tottering astir successful monolithic reddish and achromatic toadstool hats that make them look for illustration that tiny small mushroom feline from Mario. And yet, oddest among specified oddities whitethorn beryllium nan show of enormously burly NFL reliable guys talking candidly astir their feelings.

Among Psychedelic Science 2025’s keynote talks was “Healing Behind nan Highlights.” Hosted by nan podcaster and nutritional supplement salesman Aubrey Marcus, nan sheet gathered 3 NFL stars—Buffalo Bills information Jordan Poyer, retired Raiders defender Robert Gallery, and San Francisco 49ers defender Jon Feliciano—to talk really psychedelic narcotics person benefited their lives disconnected nan turf. They talked astir their journeys to retreat centers wherever they imbibed nan heady hallucinogenic brew ayahuasca, and really these supplier experiences allowed them to reconcile their gladiatorial ideals of on-field toughness pinch nan truth that they are, astatine nan extremity of nan day, specified mortals.

The effects of psychedelics for illustration ayahuasca (and its superior psychoactive chemical, N,N-Dimethyltryptamine, aliases DMT) are reasonably good documented. It’s believed that specified powerful hallucinogens tin bring important shifts successful self-understanding, via a psychological system sometimes branded by researchers arsenic nan “mystical experience.” But Poyer and different athletes are pushing this thought moreover further. It’s not only that psychedelics tin stimulate a psychological—or mystical, aliases spiritual, aliases different metaphysical—change successful a person’s mind, but that these narcotics tin connection physical, neurological benefits to a damaged brain. It’s an thought that is particularly appealing to athletes competing successful high-contact arenas, for illustration master football, hockey, and combat sports, wherever players are routinely exposed to concussions.

Poyer says he “absolutely” buys into nan thought that psychedelics tin thief heal nan effects of repeated caput trauma. “I’ve had galore concussions,” he admits, pinch a shrug, speaking pinch WIRED aft nan panel. “But I’d for illustration to deliberation I overcame immoderate of those encephalon injuries.”

On January 22, 2023, nan Buffalo Bills squared disconnected against nan rival Cincinnati Bengals successful nan AFC Divisional matchup of nan NFL playoffs. With astir 12:54 remaining successful nan 4th quarter, and nan Bills lagging by 2 scores, Bengals backmost Joe Burrow dropped backmost and fired a heavy walk to wide receiver Tee Higgins. Attempting to extremity Higgins, Poyer and Buffalo cornerback Tre’Davious White collided connected nan separator of nan extremity zone. It was a lawsuit of “friendly fire” that produced nan large ace of head-to-head, helmet-to-helmet interaction acquainted to immoderate shot fan. “You could perceive that deed up here,” play-by-play announcer Tony Romo said from nan broadcast booth, arsenic Buffalo’s aesculapian unit shuffled onto nan snow-covered field. “That was arsenic wicked a sound arsenic I’ve heard.”

Poyer was knocked to nan ground, rising to his knees earlier sinking backmost down into nan turf, and aft a caput wounded evaluation, he was forced to exit nan game. But his issues pinch concussion predate that particularly sadistic hit. Before that game, he recalls bouts of utmost anger and irritability, and cluster headaches: each symptoms of repeated trauma to nan head. While improved information instrumentality and cardinal norm changes person decreased nan incidence of concussion successful nan NFL, neurotrauma remains an unavoidable fact—or, for fans, players, owners, and convention executives, much of an inconvenient truth—of specified a fast, crunchy, highly beingness sport. NFL wounded records reported immoderate 692 concussions complete a five-season play betwixt 2019 and 2023.

Concussions are a shape of traumatic encephalon injury—the wide aesculapian word for harm caused to nan encephalon by an outer force—that tin consequence successful nan loss of neurons successful nan encephalon arsenic good arsenic different neurological disorders and cognitive deficits. Concussions have been linked to some short- and semipermanent impairment, nan astir terrible of which is chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative illness believed to beryllium caused by repeated caput trauma. CTE affects memory, judgment, and executive function, and it occurs astatine an alarmingly precocious rate among erstwhile NFL players.