A humorous Texan known by many as “Tater Salad” now sits on an ayahuasca retreat centre company’s Board of Directors.
On Friday, Costa Rica’s Rythmia Life Advancement Center announced that it had appointed Ron White to its leadership roster. White, a comedian known for performing stand up with scotch and a cigar in hand, attended a retreat at the centre in 2021 to help mitigate his excessive drinking habit.
“I think there’s only so much liquor you can drink in your lifetime and I just drank mine too fast,” White said earlier this year. He particularly enjoyed drinking his own brand of tequila, Number JUAN.
White said his experience with ayahuasca at the centre was great. He has now been alcohol-free for over two years.
“I went to a hypnotist first, which I think helped, and then at some point in the ayahuasca thing I was like ‘I really don’t have to do it anymore,'” White said. “It just didn’t make sense for me to keep drinking.”
“I opened my mouth and the entire forest poured into it,” the comedian described. “It’s very ceremonial, there’s a shaman guy, feathers and shit.”
He is most well-known for the Blue Collar Comedy Tour in the mid-2000s with comedians’ Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable Guy and Bill Engvall.
Ceremonial healer and guests at the Rythmia ayahuasca centre. Photo via the Rythmia Life Advancement Center
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White joins a diverse Board of Directors
Other members of the centre’s board include Kelly Slater, the renowned American surfer; Martin Luther King III, a well-known human rights activist; and Jack Canfield, an American author and motivational speaker.
“His celebrated personality combined with his personal healing story through Ayahuasca will significantly contribute to supporting and encouraging our guests on their own transformational journeys at Rythmia,” said the centre’s Founder, Gerard Powell.
In a related development in the psychedelics space, a subsidiary of the insurance firm BRP Group Inc. (NASDAQ: BRP) announced this week that it was now offering insurance coverage specifically tailored for psychedelic therapy providers.
The subsidiary — Armfield, Harrison & Thomas, LLC — says the new TheraCover program was launched with support from the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.
“TheraCover fills a need in the market by providing insurance coverage for a cohort of licensed mental health and medical professionals,” Leslie Nylund, a managing director of the BRP Group, said.
“These include medical doctors, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, medical facilitators, clinicians and therapists.”
rowan@mugglehead.com
