Most politicians prefer not to disclose their drug use or psychedelic histories. Colombian President Gustavo Petro is not one of them. He  recently revealed that he has taken ayahuasca twice, an Amazonian brew also known as yagé.

"The president told me that on his second, and last, journey with yagé, he saw a vision of his death," said Daniel Coronell, author of a new book "The Children of the Amazon" in an interview last year. "I felt he was telling me that he was sure he was going to die at that moment in an attack."

Coronell, a prominent investigative journalist in Colombia, said that Petro's real-life fears may have been amplified during his psychedelic experience. Petro, then an urban guerrilla fighter in a group that would later become a political party, became paranoid under the influence of ayahuasca. His clandestine lifestyle, involving weapons and constantly anticipating ambushes from state or rival forces, contributed to his sense of paranoia.

The leftist president made these revelations to Coronell while the journalist was interviewing him for another book about the discovery of four Indigenous Colombian children who went missing in the Amazon for 40 days last year.

The children were found after a member of the search party drank ayahuasca.

Petro, who was involved in the search, celebrated the "total survival" of the children and praised the unlikely collaboration between the military and indigenous communities. "Here, a different path is shown for Colombia," he wrote on Twitter.

Coronell echoed the president's hope that the incident could help unite Colombia. He also admitted he was considering trying ayahuasca himself to help answer some lingering questions he had. The journalist noted that the president had not previously admitted his use of ayahuasca, not even in his autobiography, "One Life, Many Lives"

published in 2021.

Petro's First Ayahuasca Experience

In a compelling piece by Mattha Busby for DoubleBlind, Petro's first ayahuasca experience involved seeing himself planting the roots of plants and hugging a mountain, which left him realizing that his job was to take care of and preserve nature. Petro, who sent a team of academics to Mexico to get a Colombian shaman out of prison for possessing ayahuasca in 2022, apparently did not want to drink the brew again because of the intensity of the experience during his second journey.

It remains to be seen whether other heads of state will follow Petro in his advocacy and experimentation with ayahuasca. After all, he may well be the only head of state in the world to admit to having taken a psychedelic drug. Though, perhaps the question we should be asking what drugs are the others taking?