Prince Harry Says Psychedelics Are ‘Fundamental’ to Dealing With His Past Traumas

We’ve all gotten to know the new, more open Prince Harry a bit better this year, thanks to his memoir, Spare, and the many, many headlines its contents have spawned. In a new Instagram Live conversation this past weekend, the Duke of Sussex opened up even more about what his life looks like now, revealing that psychedelic drugs have played a big role in the freer, more candid person we’re seeing today.

On Saturday, Harry participated in a filmed conversation with trauma expert Gabor Maté to discuss a wide range of topics covered in his memoir, including the drug use he described. In the book, he shares that he has experimented with cocaine, marijuana and psychedelic drugs and that he felt the latter two had genuine positive effects on his well-being.

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In his discussion with Maté, the Duke describes the feeling of psychedelic use as “the cleaning of the windscreen, the removal of life’s filters—these layers of filters,” according to Page Six.

“It removed it all for me and brought me a sense of relaxation, relief, comfort, a lightness that I managed to hold back for a period of time,” he continued. “I started doing it recreationally and then started to realize how good it was for me.”

Psychedelic use is now such a pillar of Harry’s existence that he calls it “one of the fundamental parts of my life that changed me and helped me deal with the traumas and the pains of the past.” He also shared with Maté that he has been diagnosed with PTSD, making him an informal test case in ongoing studies as to whether psychedelic drugs can be helpful in the treatment of mental health disorders.

There are a range of definitions for what psychedelic drugs as a class refer to—most commonly, the term is believed to refer to hallucinogenic drugs such as psilocybin, but other definitions include drugs such as MDMA or even marijuana in this classification. In his memoir, Harry described marijuana as a drug that “actually did really help me,” contrasting it with cocaine, which he did not find beneficial. He further wrote that psychedelics allowed him to “redefine reality.”

“Under the influence of these substances I was able to let go of rigid preconcepts, to see that there was another world beyond my heavily filtered senses,” the Duke of Sussex said in Spare, “a world that was equally real and doubly beautiful.”

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