Aaron Rodgers took a psychedelic journey after a very good buddy informed him he wasn’t reaching his full potential, in keeping with a brand new ebook.
In “OUT OF THE DARKNESS: The Thriller of Aaron Rodgers,” (Mariner Books, out Tuesday) former Publish columnist Ian O’Connor writes how Rodgers’ high-school teammate turned the 40-year-old NFL quarterback onto ayahuasca, a standard Amazonian beverage brewed with psychoactive components.
In 2019, Rodgers’ good buddy Jordan Russell went to the Temple of the Means of Mild, a plant-medicine shamanic therapeutic heart in Iquitos, Peru. Rodgers wasn’t there within the Amazonian rain forest with him — however over 5 nights of doing ayahuasca, Russell says within the ebook, his soccer buddy was “the star of your complete present.”
“I noticed into who Aaron is, and I noticed the rationale that his potential was not being met, as a result of his potential is just not who he’s on the soccer subject. That’s what has given him the platform and profile to provide his present, is the best way I see it,” Russell informed O’Connor. “I noticed him for precisely who he’s and it introduced me to tears. I stand in awe of him as a person, and in so some ways he’s trapped within his personal archetype, trapped inside this shell, this ego of a well-known soccer participant, when actually what he’s, is a warrior of a person who has a completely gigantic coronary heart and who simply needs to like and be liked.”
A couple of months after coming back from Peru, Russell relayed his expertise to Rodgers whereas the 2 golfed.
That impressed Rodgers to go to Peru together with his then-girlfriend, racecar driver Danica Patrick, in early 2020, in keeping with the ebook. The couple needed to reduce the ayahuasca journey brief because of the Covid-19 pandemic closing borders, however Rodgers stated that even the restricted encounters with the drug was life-changing.
“I actually really feel like that have paved the best way for me to have the perfect season of my profession,” he stated on the “Aubrey Marcus Podcast” of his 2020 season with the Inexperienced Bay Packers, for which he gained the league MVP award.
“I had a magical expertise with the feeling of feeling 100 totally different palms 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,” Rodgers additionally stated on the podcast.
Over time, Rodgers has struggled with forgiving others.
Based on the ebook, he has a infamous behavior of excommunicating family and friends — together with his personal mother and father and older brother — and placing them on “the Island.”
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His mother and father have been on the outs with him since 2014 when a go to with Rodgers and his then girlfriend, actress Olivia Munn, took a bitter flip.
“No one ever wished to finish up on Aaron’s island,” writes O’Connor. “No one was exempt from Rodgers’s draconian dogma.”
He and Russell had points years in the past.
“I used to be the primary man in his entire buddy group to get exiled,” Russell informed O’Connor. “The primary man to be placed on ‘the Island.’”
The 2 have been finest mates rising up and performed collectively on the freshman soccer crew at Nice Valley Excessive College in Chico, Calif. When Rodgers went to Berkeley to play for Cal, Russell went to culinary college close by and so they lived collectively in a shoddy one-bedroom residence.
After Rodgers was drafted by the Inexperienced Bay Packers in 2005, he lent Russell roughly $15,000 to purchase a used BMW 328i Coupe, as he thought his buddy ought to have a sweeter journey than an outdated Honda Prelude, in keeping with the ebook.
It “was the true spirit of him desirous to prop me up,” Russell stated years later, in keeping with the ebook. However, when he struggled to repay the mortgage, the 2 males had a falling out. Rodgers didn’t communicate to him for a while, then known as him out of the blue at some point.
“Hey man, look, the previous is the previous. I like you. You imply rather a lot to me. You’ve been there from the start. You’re my brother. Let’s transfer on,” Russell recollects Rodgers saying.
Ultimately, ayahuasca helped the 2 males heal.
After Rodgers’ preliminary journey with Patrick, whom he break up with in the summertime of 2020, he and Russell traveled to Costa Rica a few instances for psychedelic retreats collectively
“Rodgers sat with Russell for six ceremonies [with the drug], together with one devoted to therapeutic the trauma precipitated of their relationship when the quarterback despatched him to the Island for years,” O’Connor writes.
“I’m right here in service of his mission,” Russell says within the ebook. “This isn’t about me. That is about me serving as a buddy and brother. He was destined for the celebs from the very starting.”
However Russell notes that, after the ayahuasca retreats, he noticed a “softening of [the] coronary heart” in his well-known buddy. He hopes the Jets’ QB will sometime reconcile together with his household.
Rodgers doesn’t rule out the likelihood.
“It’s simply timing, simply timing,” he tells O’Connor. “Each time I believe it’s getting nearer, some bizarre issues occur. However I would love a relationship with my dad for positive.”
