Israel Adesanya had it all figured out inside the cage. It’s outside that he needed to find new ways to deal with the day-to-day struggle.
During his rise up the UFC ranks that culminated in a pair of middleweight title wins, Adesanya made sure he was equipped to deal with the mounting pressures and the inevitable hangovers that comes with competing at the highest level of MMA. During a recent appearance on the Pound 4 Pound podcast, Adesanya named two key tools that helped with mental stress: Psychedelics and therapy.
“The [Alex] Pereira fight in Miami, I did three macro ‘shroom trips in the shower where I was like able to just f*cking hone in,” Adesanya said. “It’s different. I don’t go too deep, it’s more I can feel myself. I can feel myself deeper. I don’t know if it’s your ancestors or whatever, but I could feel myself on a level I’ve never felt before and I wrote this thing on my mirror-I can’t remember what it is now-but I have a video on it and I wrote it on my mirror, ‘The greatest comeback in UFC history and it’s done by me’ some shit like that.
“I do f*ck with psychedelics. I like to alter the state of my being once in a while just because I feel like I learn from different perspectives and take the blinders off. … So vulnerable. Even just edibles itself, you can sit there and f*cking go deep. You can go deep within yourself if you let yourself with meditation and just, like, damn, all this shit I’ve unpacked, they’re sitting there. They pile up.”
Adesanya didn’t specify when he ingested mushrooms during UFC 287 fight week, when he sought to regain the middleweight title from Alex Pereira that “Poatan” took from him at UFC 281. It was the fourth meeting between the two with Pereira having won a pair of kickboxing matches and their first MMA meeting, but Adesanya finally scored a victory over his longtime rival with a second-round knockout.
Long before that momentous fight, Adesanya invested in therapy to help guide him along his UFC journey. Adesanya made a successful promotional debut in February 2018 with a second-round knockout of Rob Wilkinson and despite all the rewards that accompanied the win, he quickly realized something was missing and sought out therapy.
“I went back home and, look, my UFC debut I didn’t make 10 and 10 like everyone else,” Adesanya said. “I made six figures and then I made a $50K bonus on top of that, stole the show from [the Yoel Romero vs. Luke Rockhold main event], I felt like I stole the show, people were talking about me and I was f*cking on top of the world. … And then, f*ck, I’d go home and I would just f*cking crash. I didn’t understand.
“So for me, that’s when I started going to therapy because I realized—I don’t want to say this is bad, but it was bad. I was like, ‘Damn, I shouldn’t be sad.’ You feel guilty for being sad. Why am I depressed? After the win, after my UFC debut. So what I figured out, it’s the stimulus. ‘You’re the man,’ this, that, cameras, lights action, everyone, then I go home and I like sitting in the dark, in my dark living room or my dark room and I’m just chilling and there’s no stimulus. It’s like coffee, the coffee high and then when the coffee stimulus wears off you have the crash. So it’s like that but for your spirit.”
Adesanya won his first five UFC fights, including a decision over the legendary Anderson Silva, then won an all-time classic against Kelvin Gastelum (their UFC 236 encounter will soon be inducted into the UFC Hall of Fame) to claim an interim middleweight title. He knocked out champion Robert Whittaker to unify their belts, then recorded five straight successful title defenses.
Even at his peak, he credits therapy with keeping him grounded and preventing him from getting too high or too low after his fights.
“The tools I had from the lady at the time helped me navigate when I come back what to do, how to ground myself, how to make sure I get back into my routine and not just stay at home and just wallow in despair for no reason,” Adesanya said.
“There’s more to life than fighting and that’s one thing I’ve always known and I’ve always had in the back of my mind and I’ve held on to, because I don’t want to be one of these guys that when it’s all said and done, I’m past my prime and I should be out of here and then, like, ‘Just one more. I need that hit.’ Because some people can’t get away from the spotlight, they get addicted to it, the shine.”
