If the Jets are Looking for Their Newest Savior, They'll Find Aaron Rodgers Speaking to the World's Largest Psychedelics Conference Today

Jerry Thornton6/21/2023 7:30 PM

Elsa. Getty Images.

I don't consider myself anybody's idea of a Puritan. The way I look at it, one of the great part of being an American is exercising your sacred right to put things in your body as you see fit. Whether they're good for you or not should be nobody's business. Be they plants, bacon double cheeseburgers, or common household objects up your butthole, I prefer to leave that between you, your doctor and your god.

Granted, we as a society try to put the "control" in some controlled substances. But when we went to the extreme on that by eliminating sweet, sweet alcohol (in the words of Homer Simpson, "The cause of and solution to all of life's problems") with a Constitutional amendment, we had to issue our only ever "Scratch That" amendment. Lesson learned. Hopefully.

So by no means do I have a problem with anyone trying some seemingly crazy herbal remedy to alter their perception of reality. Or even going to a convention of like minded people all gathering together to learn what to take and how to take it in order to kiss the sky. As long as it doesn't effect me, my family, or my friends. Or, my football team. Which is why if I was involved with the Jets (and by the grace of MY God, I am not), I'd be feeling a little dubious about having my latest in a long line of franchise saviors not only going to a psychedelics convention, but giving a talk:

Source - In the past year, Aaron Rodgers has been more open about his personal beliefs and has shared his interested in nonconventional medicine—including psychedelic drugs. The new Jets quarterback is apparently looking to spread the word and show support for the use of such drugs with an assortment of other celebrities.
Rodgers, rapper Jaden Smith and former Texas Governor Rick Perry are all slated to speak at a conference in Denver organized by a psychedelic advocacy group, the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, who are working toward decriminalizing psychedelic mushrooms in Colorado. Oregon was the first state to establish a regulatory framework for receiving psilocybin, the psychedelic compound found in these mushrooms, back in 2020.
The rapper publicly shared the “ego dissolution” he felt when using psychedelics. …
According to the conference’s website, the Psychedelics Science 2023 conference is the largest psychedelics conference in history. The conference started Monday and ends Friday.

I don't have a dog in this fight. And by way of full disclosure, I once covered the Cannabis Convention in Boston for the radio station I worked for, and can honestly say that to a person, everyone I met there could not have been nicer or cooler to talk to. (The organizers made us take the video down because they missed the fact I was doing a "fish out of water" take on the whole thing. Making fun of myself, not the people who spoke to me. If only there was something the people running the Cannabis Convention could take to help them lighten up and take a joke. But I got nothing.) So I'm sure being the keynote speaker at HallucinogenCon will be a super positive experience for Aaron Rodgers.

But if you're a Jets fan, coach, executive or owner, you can't possibly think this is a positive for your football team. If you claim to be OK with this, you're lying through your teeth.

First of all, let's consider the other celebrities showing up to speak at this thing. Jaden Smith, who's spent most of his young life proving the adage about apples falling off of trees:

And Rick Perry came across as dumb even by the low standards of a presidential primary debate stage:

So even if you judge your new quarterback not by what he puts into his bloodstream but by the company he keeps, you can't help but be a little unnerved right now.

Granted, the greatest quarterback the Jets have ever had was no stranger to abusing more traditional substances. Whether it was in the back booth at Toots Shor's with a couple of cigarette girls in the '70s, or on the sidelines with Suzy Kolber in the 2000s, Joe Namath was no stranger to, um … "ego dissolution." And he's in Canton. And as I've mentioned before, Rodgers once won a game while tripping balls on percocets:

But when you're last franchise savior was (allegedly) banging his mom's MILF friend, the one before that was "seeing ghosts" in the pocket, the one before that got his jaw broken by a teammate over a gambling debt, and the one before that was Mark Sanchez, I'd think the thing you'd want most is this latest one keeping his feet planted on terra firma. Not going on mind-bending trips into the void of fractal lights, colors, and computer chip cities:

I'm not judging. Just acknowledging that everyone in the Jets organization would feel a whole lot better if Rodgers wasn't doing this. Woody Johnson was probably spent the '60s railing about how bearded hippies smoking pot are ruining the country. And never dreamed in his 80s he'd be handing his NFL franchise over to a bearded hippy who goes on acid trips straight out of Yellow Submarine.