Wandering the aisles and exhibit halls of the Colorado Convention Center during Psychedelic Science, the world's largest psychedelic conference, you'll see exhibitors touting everything from mushroom-shaped jewelry to chewable gummies with extracts of the psychoactive succulent plant kanna to wide, flat baseball caps with the letters «MDMA» and «IBOGA» on them. The stands organizations such as the Ketamine Taskforce and the Psychedelic Parenthood Community, and even the Psychedelic Parenthood Community. The Faerie Rings, a live-action film that seeks to attract investors.
It is a very diverse symposium where healers of indigenous medicinal plants mingle with pharmacists, legendary chemists LSD underground and common smokers staggering around in huge red and white hats of poisonous mushrooms that make them look like the adorable mushroom from Mario Bros. And yet, perhaps the strangest of these oddities is seeing enormously hulking NFL tough guys talking candidly about their feelings.
Among the keynote talks at Psychedelic Science 2025 were. Healing Behind the Highlights. Presented by the podcaster and nutritional supplement marketer Aubrey Marcus, the panel brought together three NFL all-stars, Buffalo Bills safety Jordan Poyer, retired Raiders guard Robert Gallery, and San Francisco 49ers guard Jon Feliciano, to discuss how psychedelic drugs have benefited their lives off the turf. They talked about your travels to retreat centers where they drank the intoxicating hallucinogenic ayahuasca concoction, and how these drug experiences allowed them to reconcile their gladiatorial ideals of toughness in the field with the fact that they are, after all, mere mortals.
The effects of psychedelics such as ayahuasca, and its main psychoactive substance, N-Dimethyltryptamine or DMT, are fairly well documented. It is believed that these potent hallucinogens can cause significant changes in self-understanding, through a psychological mechanism sometimes referred to by researchers as «mystical experience.» But Poyer and other athletes are taking this idea even further. It's not just that psychedelics can stimulate a psychological, or mystical, spiritual or metaphysical change in a person's mind, but that these drugs can offer physical and neurological benefits to a damaged brain. It is a particularly attractive idea for athletes competing in high-contact arenas, such as professional soccer, field hockey and combat sports, where players are routinely exposed to concussions.
Poyer absolutely believes in the idea that psychedelics can help heal the effects of repeated head trauma: «I've had a lot of concussions. But I'd like to think I've overcome some of those injuries,» he admits, shrugging his shoulders.
Read the full article at: Why former NFL players are turning to psychedelics for brain healing | WIRED
