Aaron Rodgers took a psychedelic trip after a good buddy told him he wasn’t reaching his full potential, according to a new book.
In “OUT OF THE DARKNESS: The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers,” (Mariner Books, out Tuesday) former Post columnist Ian O’Connor writes how Rodgers’ high-school teammate turned the 40-year-old NFL quarterback onto ayahuasca, a traditional Amazonian beverage brewed with psychoactive ingredients.
In 2019, Rodgers’ good friend Jordan Russell went to the Temple of the Way of Light, a plant-medicine shamanic healing center in Iquitos, Peru. Rodgers wasn’t there in the Amazonian rain forest with him — but over five nights of doing ayahuasca, Russell says in the book, his football friend was “the star of the entire show.”
“I saw into who Aaron is, and I saw the reason that his potential was not being met, because his potential is not who he is on the football field. That is what has given him the platform and profile to give his gift, is the way I see it,” Russell told O’Connor. “I saw him for exactly who he is and it brought me to tears. I stand in awe of him as a man, and in so many ways he’s trapped inside of his own archetype, trapped inside this shell, this ego of a famous football player, when really what he is, is a warrior of a man who has an absolutely gigantic heart and who just wants to love and be loved.”
A few months after returning from Peru, Russell relayed his experience to Rodgers while the two golfed.
That inspired Rodgers to go to Peru with his then-girlfriend, racecar driver Danica Patrick, in early 2020, according to the book. The couple had to cut the ayahuasca trip short due to the Covid-19 pandemic closing borders, but Rodgers said that even the limited encounters with the drug was life-changing.
“I really feel like that experience paved the way for me to have the best season of my career,” he said on the “Aubrey Marcus Podcast” of his 2020 season with the Green Bay Packers, for which he won the league MVP award.
“I had a magical experience with the sensation of feeling 100 different hands on my body imparting a blessing of love and forgiveness for myself and gratitude for this life from what seemed to be my ancestors,” Rodgers also said on the podcast.
Over the years, Rodgers has struggled with forgiving others.
According to the book, he has a notorious habit of excommunicating friends and family — including his own parents and older brother — and putting them on “the Island.”
AP
His parents have been on the outs with him since 2014 when a visit with Rodgers and his then girlfriend, actress Olivia Munn, took a sour turn.
“Nobody ever wanted to end up on Aaron’s island,” writes O’Connor. “Nobody was exempt from Rodgers’s draconian dogma.”
He and Russell had issues years ago.
“I was the first guy in his whole friend group to get exiled,” Russell told O’Connor. “The first guy to be put on ‘the Island.’”
The two were best friends growing up and played together on the freshman football team at Pleasant Valley High School in Chico, Calif. When Rodgers went to Berkeley to play for Cal, Russell went to culinary school nearby and they lived together in a shoddy one-bedroom apartment.
After Rodgers was drafted by the Green Bay Packers in 2005, he lent Russell roughly $15,000 to buy a used BMW 328i Coupe, as he thought his friend should have a sweeter ride than an old Honda Prelude, according to the book.
It “was the true spirit of him wanting to prop me up,” Russell said years later, according to the book. But, when he struggled to repay the loan, the two men had a falling out. Rodgers didn’t speak to him for some time, then called him out of the blue one day.
“Hey man, look, the past is the past. I love you. You mean a lot to me. You’ve been there from the beginning. You’re my brother. Let’s move on,” Russell recalls Rodgers saying.
Eventually, ayahuasca helped the two men heal.
After Rodgers’ initial trip with Patrick, whom he split with in the summer of 2020, he and Russell traveled to Costa Rica a couple of times for psychedelic retreats together
“Rodgers sat with Russell for six ceremonies [with the drug], including one dedicated to healing the trauma caused in their relationship when the quarterback sent him to the Island for years,” O’Connor writes.
“I’m here in service of his mission,” Russell says in the book. “This isn’t about me. This is about me serving as a friend and brother. He was destined for the stars from the very beginning.”
But Russell notes that, after the ayahuasca retreats, he saw a “softening of [the] heart” in his famous friend. He hopes the Jets’ QB will someday reconcile with his family.
Rodgers doesn’t rule out the possibility.
“It’s just timing, just timing,” he tells O’Connor. “Every time I think it’s getting closer, some weird things happen. But I would like a relationship with my dad for sure.”