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Chances are, you’ve heard about Ayahuasca and how it gives people the wildest drug trips that can, potentially, change the course of their lives. But did you know that quite a few celebrities have tried Ayahuasca and shared their experiences? Before we get into what celebrities have said about their Ayahuasca journeys, though, we need to talk about what it even is — and why it’s so polarizing.
Ayahuasca is a type of brew made from hallucinogenic ingredients and plants, typically including the Psychotria viridis shrub, per Healthline. While Ayahuasca is illegal in the United States, it’s used for spiritual, religious, and ceremonial purposes by numerous tribes in North and South America.
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So what happens when you take Ayahuasca? Experiences can really vary. By that, we mean that someone can have a trip that’s full of ecstasy, enlightenment, panic, or anxiety — or all of the above.
Vomiting and diarrhea are normal parts of the experience, which can last up to six hours. However, some people find Ayahuasca to be helpful with mental health conditions and general well-being. In fact, in 2022, a group of scholars did a study via survey and discovered that respondents who regularly used Ayahuasca displayed lower levels of anxiety.
However, with such high highs come some serious lows. Along with vomiting, diarrhea, and potential paranoia, some people have reported that Ayahuasca can worsen certain mental disorders, and some research has found that it can cause cardiac issues. There have also been several reports of death during an Ayahuasca ceremony, though “there has never been a death observed during a clinical study,” researchers noted in one 2018 paper. In other cases, Ayahuasca has been blamed for a death that occurred after the ceremony, sometimes long after — as in the case of one celebrity ahead.
Many celebrities who’ve had Ayahuasca experiences talk about both the good and the bad, but all of them have stressed that their experiences took place either abroad or with a tribe doing a ceremony. Ahead, these stars’ stories show just how wide the range of experiences on Ayahuasca can be, from scary to confusing to life-changing.
Anna Kendrick
Image Credit: Elizabeth Goodenough/Everett CollectionAnna Kendrick said in an interview with SXSW, dodging a question about her co-star Blake Lively’s legal drama by saying, “I did Ayahuasca and the last year of my life is just gone, but I’ve heard the movie is amazing,” per People. It’s unclear if this was purely a joke or her legitimately admitting she did ayuhasca, but either way, it’s got people talking.
Stephen “tWitch” Boss
Image Credit: Dee Cercone/Everett CollectionAccording to his widow Allison Holker, the late Stephen “tWitch” Boss went on an Ayahuasca journey before he died by suicide in 2022. While promoting her 2025 memoir on The Jamie Kern Lima Show, Holker recalled that Boss “wasn’t the same afterwards.”
Holker said, “I think it was a very big turning point for him. I feel like his heart was never really in the same place when he came back. There was something missing in his eyes. It just kind of feels like he opened something up to himself that he never healed and never fully escaped.”
Chelsea Handler
Image Credit: Elizabeth Goodenough/Everett CollectionChelsea Handler revealed on her Chelsea Does docuseries, via celebrity.land, that she tried Ayahuasca twice. While she didn’t feel anything the first time, Handler said that during her second experience, she saw a “light show” of colors. “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.”
But she also said there was lots of vomiting, too!
Megan Fox
Image Credit: Kristin Callahan/Everett CollectionOn a 2021 episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live, Megan Fox revealed that she and her ex MGK went to Costa Rica to try Ayahuasca. She said it was like “going to hell for eternity.”
“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.”
Miley Cyrus
Image Credit: Gilbert FloresSpeaking to Rolling Stone in 2020, Miley Cyrus said she had a very intense experience with Ayahuasca. In fact, she said the shaman she did it with claims it can take people up to 30 tries to get the kind of experience she had. “It was pretty crazy,” Cyrus said, talking about how snakes brought her to “Mother Ayahuasca.” “I loved it, though.”
Ricki Lake
Image Credit: Priscilla Grant/Everett CollectionRicki Lake has done Ayahuasca 11 times. In a 2018 appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen, Lake said that she wouldn’t say she loves Ayahuasca, but that it’s been an amazing healing tool. “It’s a very, very powerful medicine that has been very beneficial in my life,” Lake said.
Susan Sarandon
Image Credit: Kristina BumphreyWhile Susan Sarandon hasn’t gone in-depth on her experience with Ayahuasca, she did reveal that she does partake in more natural typed of drugs. In a 2014 interview with Daily Beast, Sarandon explained that she’s “done Ayahuasca [psychedelic tea] and I’ve done mushrooms and things like that. But I like those drugs in the outdoors — I’m not a city-tripper.”
Will Smith
Image Credit: Gilbert FloresWill Smith wrote in his 2021 memoir Will that he tried Ayahuasca 14 times amid a breakup with Jada Pinkett-Smith, and that he saw a figure named “mother” who helped him discover self-love.
“If I’m this beautiful, I don’t need #1 movies to feel good about myself,” he wrote of his revelations. “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. In my 5-plus years on this planet, this is the unparalleled greatest feeling I’ve ever had.”
Lindsay Lohan
Image Credit: Swan GalletLindsay Lohan described her experience with Ayahuasca as a form of rebirth.
“I worked with a shaman doing a cleanse,” she recalled on Lindsay in 2014. She described it as an “eye-opening” and “intense” experience, where she saw her whole life in front of her and realized she “had to let go of things I was trying to hold on to that were dark in my life.” Lohan said the whole experience was like being 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,” she explained. “It is a unique experience and it’s changed my life.”
Josh Radnor
Image Credit: Christina DeOrtentiis/Everett CollectionHow I Met Your Mother alum Josh Radnor hasn’t just dabbled in Ayahuasca — he’s done it over 100 times in the past decade. Radnor wrote about his experience with the brew in a 2020 issue of the journal Oneing from the Center for Action and Contemplation, noting that he was always “led by a shaman” and approached the journey with “great seriousness of purpose.” Radnor “took so ferociously” to Ayahuasca, he said, partly due to being “rattled” by his career success and the loss of his privacy and anonymity. “Ayahuasca became my refuge, a thing that felt meaningful and true at a time when meaning and truth felt in short supply,” he wrote. “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 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.”
Tori Amos
Image Credit: Photo By: Derek Storm/Everett CollectionTori Amos did Ayahuasca so many times in the 1980s, that even years later, a certain smell could take her back to those trips.
“The drug which had a big effect on me was Ayahuasca… I was very lucid but felt like I was walking around in Fantasia, having a conversation with myself,” she said in an archived 2001 Q magazine interview via Yes Said. “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.”
Aaron Rodgers
Image Credit: Photo By: Kristin Callahan/Everett CollectionAaron Rodgers drank Ayahuasca with a shaman of Quechua lineage with his then-girlfriend NASCAR star Danica Patrick, and it taught him all about self-love.
“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 said on the Audrey Marcus podcast in 2022. “My intention the first night going in was I want to feel what pure love feels like. 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.”
He added, “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.”
Penn Badgley
Image Credit: John NacionPenn Badgley not only tried Ayahuasca, but he spoke at the 2012 Ayahuasca Monologues about it, calling the brew a “glittering spiritual tool,” per the New York Times.
Sting
Image Credit: Kristin Callahan/Everett CollectionSting has been quite open about his ayahuasca experience, and even wrote in his autobiography Broken Music that he considers it to be the only religious experience he’s ever had. In a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone, the rock star said his experiences with the drug have forced him to confront his mortality. “I think it’s a way of rehearsing the feeling of being dead,” he explained. “Every time, I have to work up the courage to do it… [I]t’s as if you’re dead, out of time. Your whole life passes front of you in this other realm.”
It’s a frightening experience, but Sting believes Ayahuasca may help us approach death differently. “Most people die in total panic. Terror,” he said. “I think there’s another way. We’re supposed to die. There must be a way to die peacefully and welcoming.”
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