The Netflix series shows the NFL star doing a psychedelic drug that has helped Rodgers, and other celebrities, including Tori Amos and Will Smith.
NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers has long advocated for the use of psychedelic drugs, and now a new docuseries has captured the athlete on an ayahuasca trip.
Rodgers, most recently of the New York Jets, is the subject of a new Netflix docuseries premiering Tuesday, Aaron Rodgers: Enigma. He does the usual football player stuff: Some running around, some jersey-wearing, some physical therapy (be prepared for way more looks at this man's toenails than you ever thought your life would hold). There's also some not-so-typical football player stuff: While filming the project during the NFL's 2024 offseason, the 41-year-old travels to Costa Rica, where he attends an ayahuasca retreat with Miami Dolphins' Jordan Poyer, the Chicago Bears' Adrian Colbert, and the Buffalo Bills' Von Miller.
"You have to go to some deep places in the shadow of your own self," Rodgers said of his ayahuasca use, sharing that he had done ayahuasca nine times on four different trips. He credits the drug with both helping him process his feelings about a childhood spent in the rigidity of "a very white, dogmatic church," as well as with helping him throw a football very well.
In 2022, Rodgers spoke on a podcast of an ayahuasca experience that helped him find "unconditional self-love," and connected his use of the drug with his back-to-back league MVP titles. "I don't think it's a coincidence," he said. "I really don't. I don't really believe in coincidences at this point. It's the universe bringing things to happen when they're supposed to happen."
In the docuseries, Rodgers says he hopes his latest round of ayahuasca rituals will help him heal from the torn Achilles tendon that took him down during his first possession as a New York Jet on September 11, 2023, an injury that he said in interviews he worried would be the death of his career. (He returned to the field in September 2024.)
"I would say that with other psychedelics you go in thinking this is going to be a good time. I hunker down, like, 'OK this is going to be tough,'" he said. "It's the hardest medicine possible that I've tried."