0:00

Before we get started, please rate and review

0:02

our show. It helps people find us. On

0:09

this episode of Sports Illustrated Weekly, what

0:11

do you know about psychedelics? Most

0:14

likely what you've heard about drugs like LSD, magic,

0:16

mushrooms or ketamine come from movies or

0:18

anti drug campaigns. But what

0:20

if we told you that psychedelics might service

0:22

therapeutics for mental health issues?

0:25

And a report from SI copy chief Julie

0:28

Kleigman, we hear from current and former

0:30

athletes like Aaron Rodgers, Kenny

0:32

Stills, and Daniel Carcilo about

0:35

the potential medical benefits and

0:37

the attendant controversy and using

0:39

drugs like ayahuasca, ketamine, d m

0:42

T, and psilocybin in an attempt

0:44

at improving mental health. I'm

0:46

your host, John Gonzalez from

0:49

Sports Illustrated and I Heart Radio. This

0:52

is Sports Illustrated Weekly. The

1:04

Dark's minds are closed and it's

1:06

like the outline of this temple and

1:11

it looked like an outline of a human with

1:13

like this, Uh it's

1:15

gonna sound crazy, but with like this wolf

1:18

skin like sheep head on it.

1:20

And it was just like ascending to the top of this

1:22

pyramids. I'm

1:26

seeing this and I'm like what, like, I have

1:28

no I don't understand what's going on. And

1:31

then the music changes, so it's

1:33

almost like immediately my

1:35

brain went to the next picture. It

1:40

felt like some type of Buddhist

1:43

temple. And I had this like bird's eye view

1:45

of this Buddhist temple that was like all concrete,

1:48

just like with fire coming out, and there's all this like

1:50

greenery all around. It was like I was in a

1:52

jungle. And

1:55

then the music changed again and

1:58

I was inside of a temple and

2:00

it was just pitch black dark and

2:06

I wasn't afraid, but I was

2:08

by myself. There was no light, and

2:10

at that point in time, I

2:13

I didn't know if I was still like in

2:15

the room, because the academy can be

2:17

so strong that it will make you feel like

2:20

I am I even still here? You

2:22

know? Am I on another planet and I another dimension?

2:24

Like where am I? So

2:30

I asked the therapist like, hey, are you here? And

2:34

you know, she came over to me and she held my hand,

2:37

and when she held my hand,

2:39

I knew that I was like still in the room.

2:42

For her to come and hold my hand and

2:46

give me that piece allowed me to go deeper

2:48

into the experience and things started

2:50

to wear off, so I took the headphones off and

2:53

we started to have a conversation about what I

2:55

was seeing. The Vision's

2:57

former NFL player Kenny Stills, was

2:59

seeing thanks to ketamine, a psychedelic

3:02

drug. Ketamine is completely

3:04

legal in the United States, and they're fortunate

3:06

to be a problem in the league either. But

3:08

when media outlets reports stories like this,

3:10

they can get lost in the strange and fantastic

3:13

things athletes like Kenny we're seeing

3:16

that isn't as important as what he was seeking.

3:19

I was diagnosed with like a small case

3:21

of depression into as in the sixteen

3:24

and I like to referred

3:26

to that time as like being underneath a

3:29

cloud. You know, it's just like a dominant

3:31

cloud because the one depression

3:33

is just I guess it's kind of scary, but

3:36

I think when I think about that time, I felt like

3:38

it was just very, very dark and cloud. Elite

3:42

athlete mental healthcare overall

3:44

is having a moment of greater recognition

3:46

and support, especially in light

3:48

of disclosures from current athletes on the biggest

3:51

stages like Naomi Osaka

3:53

and Simone Biles. It is hard to

3:56

talk about mental health because people

3:58

can't see it they can't crasp it. For

4:00

them, it's not an injury, but it almost

4:03

is, and it has a worse

4:05

effect on you. We're on a daily

4:08

basis. Seeking therapy for

4:10

mental health problems is a widely accepted

4:12

treatment, but there's still stigma

4:14

around taking medication of any kind

4:16

for mental illness. Traditional

4:22

antidepressants often have side effects

4:24

like mental fog and lethargy,

4:26

which don't appeal to athletes. That's

4:28

why Ronan Levy, co founder

4:30

and chairman of Field Trip, a company

4:33

that provides psychedelic assisted psychotherapy,

4:36

I think psychedelics maybe more

4:38

appealing. I had this image

4:40

of the archetype of

4:43

like a twenty year old brow

4:46

from Pittsburgh, as a person

4:48

who would probably rather be dead than

4:50

ever caught in a therapist office. But

4:52

then I asked myself, critic convinced that person

4:54

to try mushrooms once? And the

4:56

answer I came back to is probably yes.

4:58

And if you get some and to have that

5:01

kind of spiritual opening experience

5:03

just once, then you open the door for

5:06

much more meaningful conversations around

5:08

mental and emotional health and world being. But

5:10

psychedelics carry their own baggage

5:13

to thanks to a multitude of

5:15

anti drug campaigns from seventies

5:17

p s as to the DARE program from

5:19

the nineteen nineties. This

5:22

is your brain on drugs, any

5:25

questions. Daniel

5:28

Poneman, an NBA agent

5:30

from Beyond Athlete Management, knows

5:32

what places psychedelics hold in the cultural

5:35

imagination. Some people still look

5:37

at it as like something that crazy hippies do,

5:39

or you know something you pre parents of

5:41

what stock and don't recognize these is

5:43

legitimate life saving medicines and

5:46

tell someone over and over points and statistics

5:49

and the clinical studies show how many

5:51

lives these can save. But people can still

5:53

widely stigmatized. So I think, yeah,

5:56

there are athletes that I know who

5:58

have had life changing experiences with these

6:00

medicines, but only a

6:02

few of them are brave enough to speak out if they're

6:04

being stigmatized. When

6:08

I started researching for this story, that

6:11

stigma made it difficult to find any

6:13

players or former players willing

6:15

to talk about their psychedelic use. Then

6:18

on August three, Aaron Rodgers went

6:20

on a podcast and spoke about using

6:22

ayahuasca, a psychoactive

6:24

tea containing the hallucinogenic drug

6:27

d MT. To me, one

6:29

of the core tenets of your mental health is that self

6:32

love and that's

6:34

what Iwaska did for me. It was

6:38

help me see how I'm gonna say love myself

6:41

and what better way to work on

6:43

my mental health and too, to

6:46

have an experience like that back

6:48

to back NFL m v P. Aaron

6:50

Rodgers was a strong endorsement for

6:52

psychedelics, no doubt, but

6:55

in the wake of his confession, the media reacted

6:57

in a way that showcases exactly

7:00

why players find psychedelic use so

7:02

hard to talk about. D MT is

7:05

classified as a Schedule one drug,

7:07

the same as heroin in ecstasy.

7:09

Trust me on this, Roger Goodell

7:12

is not going to be good with the way

7:14

that you went about finding your true self.

7:17

So Aaron drank a psychedelic tea that

7:19

made him hallucinate and yak, and

7:21

he said it took him to a different realm.

7:24

Often, mental health problems that would

7:26

compel an athlete to seek the kind of

7:28

treatment that psychedelics may provide

7:31

are shrugged off by those looking in

7:33

from the outside, a Simone Bile

7:35

said earlier in the show. When people

7:38

can't see the trauma, it's harder for them

7:40

to grasp. But even if fans watch

7:42

their favorite players get smashed up, nightly.

7:45

They might not understand what kind

7:47

of trauma they're trying to escape with psychedelics.

7:55

We started hitting at four years old,

7:57

so I started essentially changing my brain chemistry

8:00

in for the worst. That's former

8:02

NHL enforcer Daniel Carsilo,

8:05

a man whose job it was to hit

8:07

and be hit. Meanwhile, Carsilo

8:10

is growing some rights on his own. Garrett

8:12

Little Balmar Challenge

8:15

of March.

8:19

I got my seventh concussion and these symptoms

8:22

were just exasperated. I wanted nothing to do with

8:24

my kid. I was isolating. I

8:26

didn't want to go to the ring. We want

8:28

to Stanley Cup. That year, I didn't go to Banner Raising.

8:31

I retired pretty abruptly. I wanted

8:33

nothing to do with any of the people in hockey,

8:35

to be honest. CTE, or

8:37

chronic traumatic encephalopathy,

8:40

is a progressive brain condition linked

8:42

to repeated blows to the head and concussions.

8:45

Ct E may cause mental health and

8:47

behavioral issues, including depression,

8:50

anxiety, impulsivity, and

8:52

aggression. Daniel Carsilo

8:55

had the kind of blows the head that leads

8:57

to CTE and had early

9:00

symptoms of the side effects, so he started

9:02

looking for solutions.

9:09

Just PhD biochemists and

9:11

my former teammate met me at this farm

9:14

and and surprised me with a large

9:16

dose of pilocybin. It was the

9:18

most difficult two and a half hours of my

9:20

life. But what it did was it

9:22

woke up my brain, and

9:25

it woke up my serotonin system and

9:27

my nervous system and my brain

9:29

hemispheres that were definitely shut down through

9:32

emotional and physical trauma. And

9:35

then I went home with a micro dost

9:37

regiment because I knew that it's like, can't

9:39

just be high doats, because I've

9:41

had so much sustained trauma that I need

9:44

to continue to introduce

9:46

this on a perception level.

9:49

Psilocybin or what we'd called magic

9:51

mushrooms, worked so well for

9:54

Carsilo that he started we sawn A Health.

9:57

His focus is now on developing a holistic

9:59

wellness program for people with traumatic

10:01

brain injuries that will include

10:03

psilocybin treatment. But

10:06

the success of his business, which

10:08

is attached to names like Mike Tyson and

10:10

Julianna Painia, might Hinge

10:12

on garnering FDA approval for clinical

10:15

trials of psilocybin in the US

10:17

out of the classic psychedelics like LSD

10:20

or acid psilocybin or

10:23

magic mushrooms, mescaline

10:26

in pyote, d m T in

10:28

ayahuasca, and ketamine. Only

10:31

ketamine is legal. This

10:33

means that studies showing their efficacy and

10:36

dealing with everything from depression

10:38

to CTE are slow coming,

10:41

and the science community is divided.

10:44

It is kind of it's interesting back

10:46

in source that I see in psychedelic research

10:49

of kind of one group

10:52

describing these is kind of going

10:55

to change the world and change psychotry forever

10:57

in one group that's psychic that

11:00

work and it's all a scam.

11:04

That's Courtney Campbell Walton, the Mackenzie

11:06

post Doctoral Research Fellow at

11:08

the University of Melbourne. He

11:11

co wrote the article Advancing Elite

11:13

Athlete Mental Health Treatment with Psychedelic

11:16

Assisted Psychotherapy. As

11:18

far as I away, that's the first taper that's ever

11:20

um discussed psychedelic work in

11:23

athletes populations. My

11:25

interest at the moment are very much like, how

11:28

could this work, how's this going to look

11:30

in the future, and also kind of preparing for the

11:32

facts that it it likely will happen.

11:35

Those are the big questions right now.

11:38

One does it work anecdotally?

11:42

Kenny Stills, Daniel Carcilo

11:44

and others say yes, but

11:46

what does the science say. These

11:49

trials are so controlled,

11:52

there is so much planning,

11:54

there's so much regulation, there's so

11:56

much exclusion of you

11:59

know, anyone, that they might be some issues. But

12:01

it's a very different setting to to

12:04

someone who's read an article online

12:06

about how someone was

12:09

in a trial and took psychedelics and they've their

12:11

depressions cured, and so

12:13

then they want to go and do it themselves.

12:16

You don't want to shut these things down because they're exciting

12:18

and promising and it looks like they could be

12:20

something there. But at the same time, I'm

12:23

very cautious about being like, yeah,

12:25

they're amazing if everyone should

12:27

go and give it a go. So the jury

12:29

is out, but results are promising,

12:32

which brings up the second question, how

12:34

would psychedelics even work in sports?

12:37

In my opinion, we're a long way, if from

12:40

athletes being able to do this outside

12:42

of trials, and then in sport,

12:45

there's a whole bunch of other things we

12:47

need to think about. Do athletes

12:49

using these substances have negative

12:51

side effects on their performance? That's

12:53

obviously going to be a really key

12:56

factor in terms of whether athletes want

12:58

to engage in these things, whether teams,

13:00

clubs, organizations are supportive of

13:03

ethletes using these substances, and

13:05

on the other hand, is you know, if

13:07

there are positive side

13:09

effects outside of mental health. Obviously one

13:11

improve mental health, but if these

13:13

things have, for whatever

13:16

reason, positive effects on

13:18

more kind of physical attributes, then

13:21

that's kind of a whole another kettle of fish that

13:23

that kind of needs to be explored.

13:25

So we need to do a whole bunch of trials to really

13:28

understand one of the kind of other

13:30

effects on top of mental health that are relevant

13:32

to sport. I

13:40

reached out to major men's and women's pro

13:42

sports leagues, as well as the International

13:45

Olympic Committee to determine whether

13:47

psychedelic use is allowed. The

13:49

World Anti Doping Agency, which

13:51

governs Olympics policy, fans

13:53

m d m A from use during competition, but

13:56

doesn't mention other psychedelics. The

13:58

NBA and w n B a to prohibit

14:00

ketamine LSD and m

14:03

d m A in their Drugs of Abuse

14:05

category. MLB prohibits

14:07

those and also ayahuasca, psilocybin,

14:10

and mescaline. None of the other

14:13

leagues contacted responded with policy

14:15

information, so right now

14:17

it's not looking good. For psychedelics and sports.

14:20

Kenny Stills doesn't think the NFL would

14:23

be receptive to the idea either. The

14:26

league has probably done a good job of keeping

14:29

those conversations too far

14:31

up in out of the headlines. But um,

14:33

I mean, obviously don't just takema around psychedelics

14:36

and being more like

14:39

a hippie drug and

14:42

people really just not understanding the

14:44

benefits of

14:46

the different plant medicines that are out there and

14:49

think of how they can out. Generally,

14:52

leagues are conservative and reactionary,

14:55

like cannabis before it. Professional

14:57

sports won't green light psychedelics until

15:00

a sentiment of the people is overwhelmingly

15:02

for it. Psychedelics

15:04

will have to shake off that taboo

15:06

stigma. I've started to see

15:08

more people now talk about to you see the Netflix

15:11

documentaries that have come out for

15:14

the past couple of years. But yeah, there's just the

15:16

stigma around psychedelics and just

15:19

people I think honestly are afraid to

15:21

be transparent about their experiences

15:24

with them.

15:29

The only way that you move the needles through celebrities

15:32

or athletes, the only way you be stigmatize

15:35

is when they start doing it. The rest of everybody

15:37

else starts doing it, right, I think for

15:40

the athlete community who may feel

15:43

that same kind of resistance to conventional

15:45

talk therapy and cognitive the annual therapy,

15:48

then there's certainly a glow, a real psychedelics

15:50

that they can seem cool, and I think that's

15:52

going to help people take a step

15:54

into exploring this, whereas

15:57

other paths they may have been off limits.

16:11

Thanks for listening, and a reminder to please rate

16:13

and review the show. It helps people find us.

16:16

Sports Illustrated Weekly is a production of Sports

16:19

Illustrated and I Heart Radio. For

16:21

more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit

16:23

the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

16:26

or wherever you get your favorite shows. And

16:29

for more Sports Illustrated's best stories and

16:31

podcasts, visit SI dot com.

16:34

This episode of Sports Illustrated Weekly was produced

16:36

by Jordan Rizzieri, Jessica your Moski,

16:38

and Isaac Lee, who is also our sound

16:40

engineer. Our senior producers

16:43

are Dan Bloom and Harry sward Out. Our

16:45

executive producers are Scott Brody and me

16:48

John Gonzalez, and our theme

16:50

song is by Nolan Schneider.