Roll Reveals Gabor Maté Urged Him to Try Psychedelics a Decade Ago
"In fall of 2015, I flew to Vancouver to spend an afternoon with Gabor Maté. He did what he always does where he flipped the tables on me and it turned into basically a personal session where he was just dissecting my soul and immediately identified then, here's your malfunction, here's your dilemma, here's what you need to solve it. When we were saying our goodbyes, he said to me, 'I take people through these psychedelic experiences and I think you would really benefit from this.'"
About this episode
In an unusually personal episode, podcast host Rich Roll and his wife Julie discussed Roll's recent three-day iboga journey undertaken at a facility outside the United States. Roll, who has been in addiction recovery for decades, traveled alone to undergo the traditional Bwiti ceremony after a year of synchronistic encounters pointing him toward the plant medicine. Unlike his previous psilocybin experience which featured ego dissolution and universal love, the iboga journey was relentlessly confrontational, featuring 72 hours of intense hallucinations, motor impairment, and what Roll compared to torture in Guantanamo Bay. The experience included aggressive ceremonial music, repeated dosing with powdered iboga root, and a rebirthing process where Roll re-parented his inner child under the guidance of female facilitators. Roll revealed immediate tangible results including the spontaneous elimination of his lifelong coffee addiction and reduced hypervigilance. More significantly, Julie described profound behavioral changes in her husband's presence and intimacy, citing mundane activities like a car wash visit as transformative moments where Rich showed up without the resentment and urgency that had characterized their 25-year marriage. Roll disclosed that Gabor Maté had urged him to try psychedelics a decade earlier after identifying his core wounds in 2015, a suggestion Roll rejected due to fear and his recovery identity. Roll emphasized he is not advocating the experience for others, calling it the Mount Everest of psychedelics and noting serious cardiac risks requiring EKG screening. Five weeks post-journey, he described feeling less burdened, more patient, and able to observe his negative self-talk with distance rather than identification. The couple framed the experience as a privilege of radical self-intimacy and credited the feminine energy of the facilitators with creating transformative healing space. Roll acknowledged ongoing integration work and resistance to achievement-oriented thinking about his recovery process.
Key takeaways
- Rich Roll spontaneously lost his lifelong coffee addiction the morning after completing a 72-hour iboga journey, dumping out his first cup without craving or effort.
- Julie Roll described unprecedented intimacy and presence in her husband following the experience, citing mundane moments as revelatory after 25 years of marriage.
- Roll compared the iboga experience to torture, with relentless hallucinations and Bwiti music causing him to question whether his entire life was a mental fabrication.
- Gabor Maté identified Roll's psychological wounds in 2015 and urged psychedelic therapy, which Roll rejected for a decade due to recovery identity and fear.
- The iboga journey involved traditional Bwiti ceremony with female facilitators and included a rebirthing process where Roll re-parented his inner child.
- Roll emphasized iboga was purely confrontational without the ego dissolution or universal love of his psilocybin experience, instead forcing awareness of negative self-talk patterns.
- Roll stated he would not have done the experience had he known what to expect and cautioned listeners about cardiac risks requiring medical screening.