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What do you mean you haven’t heard of ayahuasca?

You can take a virtual reality guided tour through an Amazon trip, or you can head across the lentil curtain into Scarborough and you’ll find somebody who can clue you in.

Simply put, it’s a psychoactive herbal drink with powerful hallucinogenic properties that is slowly working its way into conversations around treating depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), among other things.

Months ago, before the incident that will forever be known as The Slap, Will Smith recorded an interview with David Letterman on Netflix’s My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.

Describing the effect of ingesting the drink, Smith said, “You’re not hallucinating. It’s like both realities are 100% present.”

After a 45-minute wait for the brew to kick in (yes, Smith wondered whether it was going to work at all), he then went on to detail what he called “the individual most hellish psychological experience of my whole life,” reports ET Online:

“I’m drinking, I’m sitting there, and then, all of the sudden, it’s like I start seeing all of my money flying away, and my house is flying away, and my career is gone away. I’m like, ‘Ugh!'” Smith recalled.

Image: Mark Fox / Alamy Stock Photo

“And I’m trying to grab for my money and my career. My whole life is getting destroyed. My fear. I’m in there and I’m wanting to vomit and all of that. I hear a voice saying, ‘This is what the f**k it is. This is what the f**k life is.’ I’m [panting], going, ‘Oh, s**t!'”

That’s not Will Smith in the photo above, obviously, but rather a shaman guiding a trip.

It’s safe to say Will Smith will never be poor, but there’s no doubting that The Slap has put the brakes on one of Hollywood’s most successful careers.

Smith told Letterman the trip took a turn when he heard his daughter Willow’s voice and the shaman leading the ceremony told him to relax:

“Then slowly I stopped caring about my money, I just wanted to get to Willow.”

As Smith was able to calm himself down, he said, “I stopped caring about my house. I stopped caring about my career. I get to the point where I settled down, and the voice is still at 100 percent, I still hear Willow screaming, my money is still flying away, but I’m [taking deep breaths] and I’m totally calm, even though there’s hell going on in my mind.”

The actor said the trip helped him realise that “anything that happens in my life, I can handle it”.

I guess The Slap controversy aftermath was also soothed in some way by the fact that Smith won the Best Actor Oscar for his portrayal of Richard Williams in King Richard.

Last year, Smith said he had taken ayahuasca 14 times at a retreat in Peru after his relationship with Jada Pinkett Smith unravelled.

Let’s assume the shaman managed to keep her name out of his mouth.

[source:etonline]