In a revealing conversation on the Area52 podcast, UFC legend Georges St-Pierre shared how an ayahuasca experience fundamentally changed him, including curing his lifelong fear of heights.
The former UFC welterweight and middleweight champion opened up about his post-retirement journey into psychedelics, describing a profound out-of-body experience that altered his perception of consciousness and reality.
“During Covid, after I retired, I decided to go on a journey. I decided to do ayahuasca,” St-Pierre explained. “I never take dr*gs. I never snort c*caine or did anything else. I’ve tried ma*ijuana before but it’s not really my thing, it makes me paranoid.”
Despite his initial reservations, the martial arts legend described how the ayahuasca experience began with him feeling himself leave his physical body: “I start leaving my body. I start levitating and going up like this looking down. I’m seeing myself.”
The experience included communication with an entity that St-Pierre described as having “no eyes, no mouth” yet was communicating directly with him. “It was communicating with me… and it says ‘I’m you and everybody at the same time. I’m the air you breathe and the water you drink.'”
This entity apparently showed St-Pierre the nature of consciousness itself: “I know why you’re here. You’re curious to know about what is consciousness, and I’m going to show it to you.” The fighter then described being shown the planet, solar system, galaxies, and different dimensions until it became overwhelming.
Perhaps most remarkably, St-Pierre claims the experience cured his severe fear of heights. “I used to be scared of height like crazy,” he explained. “I’ve done stuff in my life that require me to step over my fear to challenge my fear, like skydiving… but I was always terrified of height.”
According to St-Pierre, that fear vanished following his ayahuasca journey. “Now I know since my experience, I don’t have that feeling anymore. I swear it’s true.” He described this as a “personal confirmation” that what he experienced was real.
The former champion emphasized that the experience changed him in profound ways, making him more empathetic and allowing him to process negative emotions he had carried throughout his fighting career. “It made me more empathetic, more in touch with other people,” St-Pierre said. “I’m by no means perfect, I have a lot of issues and I need to work on myself a lot, but I’m a little bit better than I used to be.”
St-Pierre also noted that he doesn’t encourage others to use psychedelics as he did, describing it as a one-time experience that he felt was necessary for his personal journey: “I don’t encourage people to do it because it’s a dr*g, and I did it once and I don’t have the desire to do it again because I love my brain and I don’t want to damage it. But I’m happy I done it, I’m very happy I’ve done it because it’s an experience that changed my life.”
