Excerpt from Forbes.com, November 26th, 2020
A segment on a recent episode of HBO’s Real Sports With Bryant Gumbel begins with former NHL player Daniel Carcillo describing his plan to kill himself. He’s one of four athletes in the episode who after retiring from full-contact sports had been both physically and mentally traumatized by the long-term effects of repeated concussions, and has now found relief with psychedelics.
Carcillo, former NFL player Kerry Rhodes, and former UFC fighters Ian McCall and Dean Lister are part of a growing movement of people using plant medicines like ayahuasca and magic mushrooms to help heal post-traumatic stress disorder and the symptoms of brain trauma.
Underground Group Ceremonies Lead To Profound Change In Former MMA Stars
McCall fought in the UFC and other professional MMA leagues for 15 years before finally tapping out. Injury after injury had left him snorting opiate painkillers including fentanyl on a regular basis, turning him into a self-described “monster.” Experimenting with psychedelics, he says, helped cure him of his addiction and suicidal thoughts.
Today, he is committed to helping improve the mental health of other former fighters by showing them how life-altering regular group experiences with psychedelic medicines can be.
“Fighters are good people,” McCall says, “but they’re tormented.” The Real Sports segment takes viewers inside a private ceremony in which a group of fighters including grappler and former UFC star Lister are guided through a psilocybin trip by a shaman.
Like any longtime mixed martial artist, Lister has experienced his fair share of head trauma, and describes the symptoms associated with repeated concussions like being “stuck in a prison cell in your own mind.” Before taking five grams of mushrooms (with McCall seated to his right), Lister was struggling with alcoholism, drinking up to 20 beers a day and taking Xanax every night.
During the deep journey (the only kind afforded to anyone who consumes five grams, or a ‘hero’s dose,’ at one time) Lester experiences the kind of near-death hallucination only psychedelic travellers will be familiar with, and says to himself, “If I wake up, I’m going to do things different.” Since the experience, he’s steered clear of all drugs and alcohol.
“It’s so common with psychedelics, that sense of something really serious happening, maybe even death,” says Carhart-Harris. “The way it turns around, where people realize, ‘oh, I’m not actually dying’—that’s where the shift happens. It’s like survivor euphoria: ‘oh, I do have that second chance.’”
Desperate to heal his battered brain, former NHL player Daniel Carcillo traveled to the jungles of Peru to try powerful psychedelic drugs and test claims of a cure. Don’t miss an all-new #RealSports tonight on @HBOMax. @CarBombBoom13 pic.twitter.com/VCvK3DbS3A
— Real Sports (@RealSportsHBO) November 24, 2020