Judd Apatow saw some unforgettable hallucinations during his ayahuasca journey with a shaman.
The director, who released a new memoir last month, recalled the experience while on the Monday (Nov. 3) episode of talk show Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen.
An audience member asked Apatow about the "craziest thing" he saw while on the psychedelic brew, which is generally used in ceremonial environments and can cause therapeutic epiphanies. The 40-Year-Old Virgin director explained that he drank the brew with the guidance of a "shaman" but didn't defecate unlike other users.
"There wasn't pooing involved, but I did take the ayahausca and the weirdest part of it–well, there's one moment where the shaman just kept saying, 'Do you want some more?' Apatow recalled. "And I'm like, 'I think I don't need more.' She's like, 'I think you should get some more.'"
When Apatow told the shaman he was seeing "10,000 multicolored snakes," he remembered the shaman replying, "'That's the ayahuasca saying hi.'"
When Cohen shared his hesitancy to try the brew out of fear of knowing himself too "well," Apatow advised him not to try the "crazy" psychedelic.
Elsewhere, the filmmaker denied vomiting, although buckets were provided. Instead, he'd fasted the entire day and just "dry heaved for twenty minutes."
"But it felt good after a while. It was like a nice release," Apatow said, adding that he was "glad" to have tried ayahuasca.
"At the end of it, I saw Jesus, which is weird because I'm Jewish. And I thought, 'Oh, I get it. I get it.' And then I thought, I guess we're all just supposed to be nice to each other,'" he concluded.
On the Really No Really podcast last year, Apatow said for months after the ceremony, he felt as if he'd been developing frequent "power thoughts," while the trip helped him "let go."
