Will Smith Reveals He’s Gone to Dozens of Ayahuasca Retreats

He was also living the dream (or so it seemed) with his gorgeous wife Jada Pinkett, and their kids, Jaden and Willow. So, it wasn’t a stretch to say that Smith was the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Not just the TV sitcom character but in real life, too! Here’s the thing, though. What most fans don’t realise is that Will Smith’s larger-than-life comedic persona is just that: a persona. 

In an upcoming first memoir simply titled Will, Smith gives us a peek behind the velvet curtain. What is it like to have a lost childhood riddled with pain and silence, with a secret trauma that still lingers 50 years on? And how did going to dozens of ayahuasca retreats in Peru help Will Smith conquer the pain?

The Fresh Prince in Crisis

As Will Smith approached his late 40s, all the glitz and the glamour lost their appeal to him. Make no mistake, the Prince was still filthy rich. But success in L.A. comes at a price — and he paid it by losing the affection of his family, one forgotten dinner at a time. He had lost sight of his life’s purpose. At times such as these, there was really only one person Smith could call. Not his father nor his mee-maw, but fellow A-list movie star Denzel Washington. 

Says Smith in his interview with GQ:  

“Throughout the years, I would always call Denzel. He’s a real sage. I was probably 48 or something like that and I called Denzel. He said, ‘Listen. You’ve got to think of it as the funky 40. Everybody’s 40s are funky.’ He said, ‘But just wait till you hit the f***-it 50s.

“[Denzel] said, ‘Just bear with your 40s.’…And that’s exactly what happened. It just became the f***-it 50s, and I gave myself the freedom to do whatever I wanted to do.”

Smith’s Secret Trauma

When he was two years old, Will’s parents moved the family to Wynnefield, a middle class suburb in West Philadelphia. There was a strong sense of community — if only for the tightly-packed brick row houses. It wasn’t too fancy to be honest, but as Smith shares in an excerpt from his memoir:

“For a young Black family in the 1970s, this was as ‘American Dream’ as you could get.”

At the age of nine, Will saw his father punch his mother in the side of the head. His brother Harry tried to defend their mom; while his sister ran and hid under the bed. As for Smith, he tells GQ that he was “frozen” — too scared to even move. The incident, he writes, “has defined who I am today.” His father never talked about his violent tendencies, not even until he died in 2016. He did teach his son a sense of professionalism, Smith says. A must-have skill to survive (much less succeed) in Hollywood. 

Writes Smith:

“My father tormented me. And he was also one of the greatest men I’ve ever known. He was one of the greatest blessings of my life, and also one of my greatest sources of pain.”

Will Smith’s First Ayahuasca Trip

Smith is now 53, and he’s happier than ever. Is it safe to say that the midlife crisis is, erm, now “crisis averted”? The actor tells GQ that he had taken Denzel Washington’s advice to heart, and said “f*** it”. After much thought, Will Smith rented a house in Utah and lived alone for two weeks. He read, meditated, and sneaked around town without a bodyguard for the first time in decades. Even the crowds didn’t recognise the Prince of Bel-Air in their midst. Can you imagine?

“Slumming” with non-celebrities didn’t help in his quest for inner peace, however. So, Smith flew to Peru in search of answers in the form of a dozen ayahuasca rituals. Fun fact: Psychedelics were a totally new experience to the actor, who says he had never even smoked weed. Ever. 

Here’s how Smith describes his first ayahuasca trip:

“This was my first tiny taste of freedom. In my fifty plus years on this planet, this is the unparalleled greatest feeling I’ve ever had.

“I totally opened myself up to what, I think, was a fresh sampling of the fruits of the human experience.”

Psychedelics: So Hot Right Now

Apart from the hallucinogenic effects, what else can ayahuasca do to your brain? After all, even Megan Fox revealed on Jimmy Kimmel that she went on a 3-day Costa Rican ayahuasca retreat, with rapper boyfriend Machine Gun Kelly in tow. Says Fox:

“So I was thinking it was like glamping, like it was gonna be some kind of five-star experience. But you get there and you really are in the middle of the jungle, and you don’t get to eat after like 1 p.m. You have to walk a very far distance to get your water, and you can’t shower because they’re in a drought.

“There was nothing glamorous about it, and it’s all a part of making you vulnerable, so you sort of surrender to the experience.“

Is there any merit to the Hollywood hype? Let’s take a closer look, shall we!

The South American brew is made from the ayahuasca vine, which is rich in a psychoactive compound known as DMT. The tea has been used by Amazonian tribes for centuries. Shamans take it during rituals to induce a higher state of consciousness lasting for several hours, or even a day, depending on the dose. Participants are asked to abstain from smoking, hard drugs, coffee, sex, or alcohol up to 2-4 weeks prior to an ayahuasca ceremony. This purifying “prep work” is known as limpia. 

If you’re a spiritual explorer who wants to go to Peru, Costa Rica, and Brazil for the “soul searching” benefits of ayahuasca trips, no need to fret. You’re not going in blind. Ayahuasca retreats are led by experienced shamans who brew the tea and guide you throughout every psychedelic step.

One tourist in particular — the comedian Neal Brennan — had self-medicated for years to fight depression. It was only after he tried ayahuasca that he found relief, calling it “the most profound experience I’ve ever had.” On the same trip was Chris Rock, who reportedly “sobbed for seven hours” in thanks. 

Breaking Down the Ego

Psychedelics such as ayahuasca, magic mushrooms, and magic truffles have the ability to “break down” your ego to get to the core of your being in a process called ego death. Doing so allows you to examine the truth of the matter, of who you really are. This way, it’s easier for you to spot the root cause of the problem and how to solve it. Then you can move on with your life… for real this time.

For Smith, ayahuasca helped him to acknowledge the trauma of violence during his childhood. He explains to GQ that for decades, he believed that if he kept everyone — his father, his fans — laughing, they wouldn’t “lash out with violence at him” or those he loved. If Smith could keep on being a superstar to make his mother proud, he reasoned, then maybe she would forgive him for “freezing” on the days his father hit her:

“What you have come to understand as ‘Will Smith’, the alien annihilating M.C., the bigger-than-life movie star, is largely a construction — a carefully crafted and honed character — designed to protect myself.

“Comedy defuses all negativity. It is impossible to be angry, hateful, or violent when you’re doubled over laughing.”

Or so Smith used to believe before he explored his psyche. Not even the funniest joke can heal the most painful trauma of the past. Thankfully, he knows that now.

“I felt like a combination of having completed some phase of my life, and also with my father dying. I’d just never have been able to say this stuff about my father beating up my mother. I never would’ve been able to talk about that while he was alive.”

The Only Way to Be Happy

“The public has a narrative that is impenetrable,” says Smith. “Once the public decides something, it’s difficult to [change] the pictures and ideas and perceptions.”

So what’s the difference between Will Smith the persona, and Will the person? Turns out, it’s a pretty simple thing. The desire to get to the truth of the matter, even when it hurts…

“The major difference is I tell the truth, even when people don’t like it. And Will Smith doesn’t.

“The pursuit of truth is the only way to be happy in this lifetime.”

So it is, Fresh Prince. So it is.