Why Former NFL All-Pros Are Turning to Psychedelics
Wander Cavernous rooms and exhibition halls of Colorado Convention Center during the psychedelic sciences, the largest psychedelic conference in the world, and you will see peders, mushroom jewelry, chewable gums containing basic extracts from the succulent psychoactive plant, with a brime flat width. “Stands publish organizations such as the Ketamine working group and the community of psychedelic parenting, and even The Ferie RingsA live feature film that seeks to attract investors.
It is a homogeneous and multifaceted symposium where healing of native plant medicine mixes with pharma-bros dressed in lanyards, legendary underground chemists and the work stoners that make them look like this cute red and white mushrooms Mario. And yet, the strangest among such odds can be the sight of hardness of hard and guys from the extremely robust NFL speaking frankly of their feelings.
Among the opening talks of psychedelic science 2025, there was “heal behind the highlights”. Hosted by the podcaster and the seller of nutritional supplements Aubrey Marcus, the panel brought together three NFL stars – Buffalo Bills Safety Jordan Poyer, the retirement raids Robert Gallery, and the goalkeeper of San Francisco 49ers Jon Feliciano – to discuss how the psychedelic drugs have benefited from their lives. They talked about their trips to retirement centers where they soaked graying hallucinogenic mixing Ayahuasca, and how this drug experiences allowed them to reconcile their ideals of harshness on the ground with the fact that they are, at the end of the day, simple mortals.
The effects of psychedelics like ayahuasca (and its main psychoactive chemical product, N, N-Dimethyltryltryptamine, or DMT) are fairly well documented. It is believed that such powerful hallucinogens can make significant changes in self -understanding, via a psychological mechanism sometimes labeled by researchers as “mystical experience”. But poyer and other athletes still push this idea. It is not only that psychedelics can stimulate a psychological modification – or mystical, or spiritual or otherwise metaphysical – in the mind of a person, but that these drugs can offer physical and neurological advantages to a damaged brain. It is an idea that is particularly attractive for athletes who participate in high contact arenas, such as professional football, hockey and combat sports, where players are regularly exposed to concussions.
Poyer says that he buys “absolutely” in the idea that psychedelics can help cure the effects of repeated head trauma. “I had a lot of concussion,” he admits, with an uprust, speaking with Wired after the panel. “But I would like to think that I have overcome some of these brain damage.”
January 22, 2023, the Buffalo Bills clashed against the Cincinnati Bengals rival in the NFL AFC divisional match. With around 12:54 am to play in the fourth quarter, and the Bills are lagging behind by two scores, the Bengal Quarter of Bengals Joe Burrow fell and pulled a deep pass to the wide tee Higgins receiver. Try to stop Higgins, Poyer and Buffalo Cornerback Tre’davious White collided on the edge of the goal area. It was a case of “friendly fire” which produced the noisy fissure of tête-à-tête, helmet in Helmet familiar to any football fan. “You can hear it hit here,” said Tony Romo, Play-By-Play advertiser, from the broadcasting stand, while Buffalo’s medical staff were going on a snowy field. “It was a nasty sound as I heard.”
Poyer was overturned to the ground, getting up on his knees before retreating into the lawn, and after an assessment of the injuries in the head, he was forced to leave the game. But his concussion problems predate this particularly brutal blow. Before this match, he remembers extreme anger and irritability or headaches: all the symptoms of repeated trauma in the head. Although improving safety equipment and key rules have reduced the incidence of concussion in the NFL, neurotrauma remains an inevitable fact – or, for fans, players, owners and leaders of the League, plus an annoying truth – of such a rapid, crunchy and extremely physical sport. NFL injury files reported some 692 concussion over a period of five seasons between 2019 and 2023.
Concreases are a form of traumatic cerebral lesion – the great medical term for damage caused to the brain by external force – this can cause the loss of neurons in the brain as well as other neurological disorders and cognitive deficits. Concreases have been linked to both a short and long -term impairment, the most serious of which is chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a neurodegenerative disease which would be caused by repeated cranial trauma. The CTE affects memory, judgment and executive function, and it occurs at an alarming rate among the former NFL players.
