From famous athletes to movie stars, we can now add a royal prince to the list of celebrities coming out about their psychedelic experiences. Prince Harry has admitted that psychedelics have helped him get through some personal trauma and mental health issues.
Speaking with Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes, Prince Harry admitted dealing with deep personal issues since the death of his mother, Princess Diana.
Here are some highlights from his appearance on 60 Minutes this week.
“I had a huge amount of frustration and blame towards the British press for their part in it,” Harry said. “It was obvious to us as kids the British press’ part in our mother’s misery and I had a lot of anger inside of me that luckily I never expressed to anybody. But I resorted to drinking heavily. Because I wanted to numb the feeling, or I wanted to distract myself from how… whatever I was thinking. And I would, you know, resort to drugs as well.”
“There was this weight on my chest that I felt for so many years that I was never able to cry,” Harry said. “So I was constantly trying to find a way to cry, but— in even sitting on my sofa and going over as many memories as I could muster up about my mum. And sometimes I watched videos online.”
The conversation then moved to his use of psychedelics, which he wrote about in his recent book.
“You write in the book about psychedelics,” Cooper said. “Ayahuasca, psilocybin, mushrooms. They were actually important to you.”
Prince Harry: “I would never recommend people to do this recreationally. But doing it with the right people, if you are suffering from a huge amount of loss, grief or trauma, then these things have a way of working as a medicine.”
“For me, they cleared the windscreen, the windshield, the misery of loss,” Harry said. “They cleared away this idea that I had in my head that— that my mother— that I needed to cry to prove to my mother that I missed her. When in fact, all she wanted was for me to be happy.”
See below for a video of Prince Harry talking about psychedelics and his mental health.
