Photo: Aaron Rodgers, 2019 — All-Pro Reels / Joe Glorioso, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).
This is Week 1 of the Altitude People Series, where we're spending the next four Wednesdays on named public figures who've gone on record about psychedelic use — this week, sports; then politicians, business, and celebrities. We're deliberately not covering recreational use for its own sake: everyone below is here because they connected the experience to something specific — a career, an injury, a diagnosis — and said so publicly, with a named source we can link to. (We also don't profile recreational users who haven't made that connection; Elon Musk's well-documented ketamine use, for instance, belongs in our ketamine coverage on the compound's clinical record, not here.)
Who's Gone on Record
| Name | Substance(s) | Status | Context | Practitioner / Retreat | Bio | Source (Journalist) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aaron Rodgers | Ayahuasca, psilocybin | On Record | Credited ayahuasca retreat with helping produce his 2020/2021 MVP seasons; discussed on the Aubrey Marcus podcast and in a Netflix documentary | Behold Retreats, Costa Rica (Playa Esterillos Este); ayahuasquero named "Costa" | Wikipedia | CBS 58 — Gabriella Bachara |
| Robert Gallery | Ibogaine, 5-MeO-DMT | On Record | Former NFL lineman; attributes relief from suspected CTE-related rage and suicidal thoughts to treatment; co-founded Athletes for Care | Clinic near Tijuana, Mexico (specific clinic not disclosed) | Wikipedia | IOWA Magazine — Wayne Drehs |
| Brett Favre | Ibogaine | On Record | NFL Hall of Famer; tried ibogaine to address Parkinson's disease symptoms tied to brain injury | Ambio Life Sciences, Tijuana, Mexico | Wikipedia | LA Times via Yahoo Sports — Clara Harter |
| Lamar Odom | Ketamine (clinical) | On Record | Documented clinical ketamine therapy in his own docuseries | Clinical setting; provider not named | Wikipedia | Self-produced: "Lamar Odom: Reborn" (no third-party journalist byline) |
Status key: On Record means the person's own words, in an interview, memoir, podcast, or documentary. We found no "Reported-only" entries strong enough to include this week without a direct first-person source — a standard we're holding across all four weeks of this series.
Aaron Rodgers: "I Want to Feel What Pure Love Feels Like"
Rodgers' account, given on Aubrey Marcus's podcast and reported by CBS 58's Gabriella Bachara, is the most detailed of the group. He described traveling to Peru for an ayahuasca retreat with a specific intention: "I want to feel what pure love feels like." During the ceremony, he said he encountered a "grandmother spirit" associated with the medicine and moved through what felt like past, present, and future lives. He called it among the most beautiful experiences he could have imagined, and said it "paved the way" for his 2020 and 2021 MVP seasons. He was explicit that he wasn't recommending the practice to anyone else — a distinction we think matters more than the headlines it generated at the time.
Robert Gallery and Brett Favre: Football's Quiet Ibogaine Circuit
Gallery and Favre are part of a small, loosely connected group of retired NFL players — Clara Harter's LA Times reporting also names former MMA fighter Tait Fletcher, former UFC fighter Keith Jardine, and retired NHL player Ales Hemsky — who've traveled to the same Tijuana clinic, Ambio Life Sciences, for ibogaine treatment after conventional care didn't resolve what they describe as CTE-linked depression, rage, and suicidal thinking. Gallery, whose brain scans suggested CTE to the doctors who reviewed them (the condition can currently only be confirmed after death), told IOWA Magazine's Wayne Drehs the treatment "literally saved my life" and said he hasn't had a drink since his first session in 2021. Favre, pursuing it for Parkinson's rather than CTE, said his symptoms disappeared for three days before gradually returning, and that he'd do it again.
Both stories are part of why ibogaine has become one of the more active corners of U.S. psychedelic policy this year: Colorado launched a state-sanctioned ibogaine research pilot in August, the FDA cleared its first-ever U.S. trial of an ibogaine derivative in October, and a federal program is now funding ibogaine trials directly — with the FDA requiring 36 hours of cardiac monitoring given the compound's known heart-rhythm risks, the same risk Wayne Drehs flagged in Gallery's case. See where ibogaine trials stand in our tracker, including DemeRx's U.S. program and the DemeRx IB asset AtaiBeckley acquired in 2023.
Lamar Odom: A Different Kind of On-Record
Odom's case is worth including with a caveat: his ketamine therapy is on-record in the sense that he discusses it himself, but the source is his own reality series, "Lamar Odom: Reborn," not independent reporting. We're flagging that distinction explicitly rather than presenting it with the same sourcing weight as the others. Ketamine's clinical use is well-documented elsewhere on Altitude — it holds more approved patents than any other compound we track, concentrated mostly in Spravato — which is the legitimate, regulated version of what Odom describes using.
What Connects Them
None of these are stories about recreational use. Rodgers was chasing something specific and said so. Gallery and Favre went looking for options after years of conventional treatment didn't work, in the specific context of brain trauma most of football has only recently started taking seriously. That's the thread we'll be pulling on each Wednesday this series runs: not "which famous person did this," but what it tells us about why.
This is journalism about public figures' own statements, not medical advice. Ibogaine in particular carries documented cardiac risks and is administered outside FDA-approved clinical settings at the facilities named above; nothing here is an endorsement of unsupervised use.
Sources
- CBS 58: "Most Beautiful Experience": Aaron Rodgers Opens Up About Ayahuasca Retreat in Peru — Gabriella Bachara
- IOWA Magazine: How Ibogaine Helped Robert Gallery Reclaim His Life — Wayne Drehs
- Los Angeles Times / Yahoo Sports: NFL, UFC Athletes Try Psychedelic Ibogaine for Brain Injuries — Clara Harter
- Photo: Aaron Rodgers 2019 closeup, All-Pro Reels / Joe Glorioso, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0