In 2016, Chelsea Handler filmed her ayahuasca ceremony for the Netflix docuseries Chelsea Does. In the decade that’s followed, psychedelic healing has continued to bleed into the mainstream, from pop culture to TV, film, and music. This year, AppleTV’s hit show Widow’s Bay has shown a “shamanic journey,” with Mayor Tom Loftis, played by Matthew Rhys, going on a psilocybin trip for clarity amidst supernatural events. AMC’s tech satire The Audacity opens its very first episode with its CEO character, Duncan Park, played by Billy Magnussen, having a private ayahuasca ceremony.
And in the world of nonfiction, we’ve heard notable A-list testimonials in the press. Miley Cyrus has talked about her experience on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Aaron Rodgers detailed nine separate journeys with it on his own Netflix series. Prince Harry told The Telegraph how this natural, indigenous form of healing helped him process losing his mother, Princess Diana. The brew that used to live in the jungle is now in the urban world, a secret no more. It’s whispered about on the red carpet, and making headlines as a growing list of celebrities are now willing to talk about it on the record.
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Over 134 highly recognized and notable names have journeyed down to Guanacaste, Costa Rica, and walked through Rythmia’s doors, the world’s only medically licensed ayahuasca center, with a reputation for safety, premium amenities, exceptional food, workshops, and round-the-clock medical care. Some came unannounced, some have written books about it, and all of them left different than they arrived.
Here are ten celebrities who’ve experienced ayahuasca at Rythmia, and how it changed their lives.
Shep Rose
Bravo has built an empire on bingeable reality television, and its hit show Southern Charm offered access into a world of excess and wealth, none more notorious for living loud than main character Shep Rose. No moderation, no brakes, no apologies, that’s the man fans know from a decade of the series. So it’s a genuine surprise to hear that he turned to ayahuasca, and even more surprising that he wrote a book about how meaningful the journey was for him. His new memoir, Nothing in Moderation: A Psychedelic Reckoning with Excess, is about how his week at Rythmia was, indeed, the reckoning he needed.
“I was in a bad spot personally,” Rose shares in conversation with SPIN. “Acting foolishly. Putting myself in harm’s way. It scared me. I needed some introspection.”
A friend back in Charleston, a former Navy SEAL turned screenwriter, had been through the Rythmia Way program with his wife, and shared how meaningful it was for them. “He walked me through their experience with ayahuasca,” Rose says. “He said he and his wife got a lot out of it. His contention was it’s a good starting point. A jumping off point, if you will.”
His story gave Rose the push to go down to Costa Rica, and, despite writing a book about the trip, he still struggles to describe how incredible and nuanced it was when we ask him. “Totally surreal. Very much a stranger in a strange land. We aren’t in Kansas anymore,” he says. “Nervous excitement. Trepidation. Anticipation. It’s what inspired me to write.”
But, writing it down wasn’t initially part of the plan. “I like writing. My friends back home, I was texting them through it, and they were fascinated and amused. They encouraged me to keep going,” he says. “I also think people are interested in alternative medicine. Maybe I can tap into that curiosity.”
Rose isn’t claiming a fix, and while his healing has been a catalyst for deeper inquiry, he still believes there’s work to do. “It takes work. I feel like I didn’t participate in the integration process as vigorously as is suggested, but I plan to come back to Rythmia again soon.”
See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7OlBBp49FqA
César Millán
César Millán, famously known as The Dog Whisperer, built his influential career on reading energy other people couldn’t see. His show ran on National Geographic for nearly a decade, became the network’s number one program, aired in more than eighty countries, and made him a New York Times bestselling author. Rythmia, he says, let him turn that same gift for reading energy on himself.
“My first experience at Rythmia came out of a huge necessity to take a break,” Millán says. “I took the break, and I felt cleaner. I felt very clear in my mind and I was in touch with my spirit, my instinct, my heart, and my mind for the first time.”
The experience pulled him in deep enough that he also joined the board. “I believe that Rythmia, its philosophy, the land and the community, can change the world, and it changed mine for sure.”
LINK: https://www.instagram.com/reels/DMN1Yd5O450/
André 3000
The OutKast legend has been candid about taking ayahuasca, describing a three night ceremony in which he says he briefly “turned into a panther,” his mouth contorting as he made low, purring tones he couldn’t control.
His 2023 debut solo album, New Blue Sun, an 87-minute, entirely wordless record built almost entirely around flute, marked his first new material in seventeen years and earned a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year.
He called the ayahuasca experience legitimate, not a cure all, but exactly what he needed during what he’s described as a very low period in his life. While this experience was at another center in Hawaii, André has also made the trip to Rythmia, where he’s been photographed with founder Gerard Powell.
LINK: https://www.instagram.com/p/CfwXZwouvdb/
Ron White
Ron White, also known as Tater Salad, built his signature persona on a cigar, a scotch, and a smokey Texas drawl as a founding member of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour alongside Jeff Foxworthy, Bill Engvall, and Larry the Cable Guy. He made a name for himself with real-life storytelling, a laid-back delivery, and a comedic persona built as much around drinking as it was around punchlines, hardly the artist you’d expect to find at a plant medicine retreat. But by 2021, doctors had given him a serious warning about his drinking, and he turned to Rythmia for his own healing journey.
“I think there’s only so much liquor you can drink in your lifetime,” White has said, “and I just drank mine too fast.” He went to a hypnotist first, and it was somewhere in the middle of his ceremony at Rythmia that he realized he simply didn’t need to drink anymore. He’s now been alcohol free for nearly five years.
White has talked about the experience at length on The Joe Rogan Experience, calling Rythmia “so safe” and crediting the program with helping him let go of long held resentment. He joined Rythmia’s board of directors in December 2023.
Link: https://www.instagram.com/p/DLlGGLBujyl/
Audrina Patridge
MTV’s iconic reality show The Hills made Audrina Patridge famous for a stare that could end a friendship without a word, and for a will-they-won’t-they with Justin “Bobby” Brescia that kept fans yelling at their TVs for four seasons straight. Since then she’s built a life beyond the show, including a memoir, Choices: To the Hills and Back Again, and a more private, grounded chapter with her daughter Kirra.
Her trip to Rythmia, taken with boyfriend, country singer Michael Ray, showed a different side. The two have spoken publicly together about the ceremony, including what it was like to purge through it, and find their unique miracles.
IG: https://www.instagram.com/reels/DH6hliqyjNY/
Bobby Brown
Bobby Brown rose to fame in New Edition before going solo with hits like “My Prerogative” and “Don’t Be Cruel.” Then came his very public, fourteen-year marriage to Whitney Houston. Endless tabloid noise, a brutal divorce, and a period of tragic loss. Houston died in 2012, and their daughter Bobbi Kristina followed her mother in 2015. Then, his son Bobby Jr. died in 2020. Three losses that would break most people, stacked on top of a life already lived under a microscope. Rythmia, he says, is where he finally found his way to grace.
He also brought cameras to Rythmia for an episode of his A&E docuseries Bobby Brown: Every Little Step, where he and Alicia traveled to the center to work through old relationship strain and grief from recent family losses, while also using the trip to launch a new coffee brand together. He’s since become one of Rythmia’s most vocal champions, the kind of guest other celebrities cite as the reason they first looked into the place themselves.
LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NERWn_kplvM
Kelly Slater
Kelly Slater isn’t just a legend of surfing, he’s the standard the sport measures itself against, and he’s carried that same discipline into how he lives off the water. He’s won eleven world titles, had fifty-five career event wins, and is the youngest and the oldest man to ever win a world championship in the sport.
When he went to Rythmia in 2017, he decided to go twelve hours before he showed up.
“I just had the most profound experience of my life,” Slater said in a testimonial filmed shortly after. “I got a miracle of information. It opened up some sort of doorway in my future. It was otherworldly.”
Since his initial journey, he’s been back to Rythmia multiple times, and has served on their board of directors since 2021.
LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqJzyL0wWPg
Iyanla Vanzant
Iyanla Vanzant spent two decades as a lawyer and spiritual teacher before becoming one of television’s most recognizable voices on healing, first through nearly twenty appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show in the late nineties, then through nine seasons hosting OWN’s Iyanla, Fix My Life.
She’s a multiple time New York Times bestselling author with more than ten million books sold, and a Rythmia board member who returns twice a year as a featured speaker, bringing her decades of work on faith and emotional repair directly into the classroom for guests who get the rare chance to work with her in person.
LINK: https://www.instagram.com/reels/DTTIjizj7ll/
Terrence Howard
The Oscar nominated actor, known for his lead role in Hustle & Flow, his part in the Best Picture winning Crash, and his stint as James “Rhodey” Rhodes in the original Iron Man, has talked about his time at Rythmia in characteristically vivid terms.
In the 2018 documentary Mrs. Moon’s Medicine, Howard introduces Gerard “Gerry” Powell by name and calls Rythmia a special place before explaining he went in expecting little more than a nice vacation, doubting he’d experience anything like the “miracle” other guests describe.
What he got instead, in his words, was bigger than a miracle. He says he got his life back.
LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PaGsvuJQUc
Jack Canfield
Jack Canfield, the co-creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series with more than 500 million books sold worldwide, holds two Guinness World Records and is a member of the National Speakers Association’s Speaker Hall of Fame. He’s a featured teacher in The Secret, has trained more than a million people across 50 countries, and has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Today Show, Fox & Friends, and Larry King Live.
He’s a past Rythmia guest speaker and has been a board member since 2023, and discussed his own experience with plant medicine in a late 2025 appearance on Tim Ferriss’s podcast.
Canfield is also spearheading a groundbreaking anthology of ayahuasca stories, featuring celebrities, athletes, thought leaders, veterans, and past Rythmia guests, anticipated for release before the end of 2026. The book is geared to be accessible, informative, and entertaining, it’s for anyone considering ayahuasca for the first time, and for anyone who’s already been through it and wants to remember the feeling of coming home to their soul.
Canfield shared the heart behind the project with SPIN. “I wanted to create a collection of stories that showed the amazing breakthroughs, transformations, and healings that happen for people during an ayahuasca ceremony, to inspire them to have the courage to move past their fears and take advantage of this amazing plant medicine,” he says. “There is so much needless suffering in the world. Anxiety, guilt, shame, loneliness, depression, addiction, low self-esteem. All of which can be released and transcended with ayahuasca. I’m hoping people will read these profoundly moving stories and say to themselves, ‘Wow, I want that for me, too,’ and then decide to do it.”
In Conclusion
These stars are just a few of the more than 134 celebrities and notable figures who’ve walked through Rythmia’s doors over the past ten years. Rythmia reports a 97.86% miracle rate among the 23,476 guests who’ve completed the program since 2016, and six months later, 93.42% say that miracle is still actively working in their lives.
The stories and firsthand testimonials above are proof of something bigger, something still being written. More and more people are willing to say, on the record, that psychedelic medicine, ayahuasca in particular, changed their life. Ten years in, Rythmia is just getting started. The next ten will tell hundreds more stories like these, and we look forward to all that’s to come.
To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.
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