Aaron Rodgers will mull NFL future during four-day ‘darkness retreat’
Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said he will be entering a fourday “darkness retreat” before making a decision on his NFL future.
“I’ve got a pretty cool opportunity to do a little self-reflection in some isolation, and then after that I feel like I’ll be a lot closer to a final, final decision,” Rodgers said on Tuesday during an appearance on the Pat McAfee Show. “I’ve had a number of friends who’ve done it and they had profound experiences.”
The four-time NFL Most Valuable Player said he will be immersed in total darkness for four days and nights for an experience that can produce hallucinations similar to the psychedelic drug dimethyltryptamine (DMT).
“It’s just sitting in isolation, meditation, dealing with your thoughts,” Rodgers said. “It simulates DMT, so there can be some hallucinations in there but it’s just kind of sitting in silence, which most of us never do. We rarely even turn our phone off or put the blinds down to sleep in darkness. I’m really looking forward to it.”
Rodgers, who turned 39 in December, signed an extension with the Packers last year through 2026, but the team’s lackluster 8-9 season has prompted widespread speculation over whether he will be traded or even retire.
“For sure; it’s a real thing, 100%,” Rodgers said of retirement. “That’s why it’s going to be important to get through this week and to take my isolation retreat and just to be able to contemplate all things my future and then be able to make a decision that I think is best for me moving forward and in the highest interest of my happiness and then move forward.”
Rogers’ new-age bent made headlines in August when he went public about a series of ayahuasca trips he took in the 2020 and 2022 offseasons, claiming the drug had changed his life. Although it is illegal in the US, the NFL confirmed that it wouldn’t trigger a positive test result by way of the league’s substance abuse policy.
“I think I just fell in love with [football] a little bit deeper,” Rodgers said of ayahuasca’s impact last year. “Again, I think a lot of that is due to the work that I’ve done on myself. It hasn’t all been just the ayahuasca journey. It’s been therapy. It’s been meditation. It’s been changing habits that weren’t giving me any type of joy. Eating better. Taking care of myself a little bit better. Being more gentle with myself. All those things have allowed me to look at each day with a little more joy.”