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Aaron Rodgers Says Ayahuasca Experience Didn't Help Him Heal His Fractured Family Relationships

Aaron Rodgers
Aaron Rodgers

Patrick McDermott/Getty Aaron Rodgers discusses thoughts on retirement

Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers provided more insight into his relationship with psychedelic drugs, saying they've made him a more "compassionate and forgiving person."

In a recent interview with Peter King for NBC Sports, Rodgers, 38, said using ayahuasca during a recent trip to Peru helped him tune out "negative voices," which in turn allowed him to "fully give my heart to my teammates, my loved ones, relationships because I can fully embrace, unconditionally, myself."

Rodgers said, though, that it didn't help with his fractured relationship with his family, as he had hoped it would.

"I really felt like I wanted to surrender and open up to the medicine for some healing to come through and some direction on how to kind of go about that. And it didn't. It didn't necessarily," the quarterback said.

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Rodgers' personal relationships, romantic and familial, have made headlines in recent years. The NFL MVP and his brother, former Bachelorette star Jordan Rodgers, only began speaking again earlier this year, following a years-long feud that played out publicly.

"They're just very different people with different outlooks," an insider close to Rodgers told PEOPLE in January. "But they're family and they know that." The source added, "It's very hard for Aaron, who feels like his circle is very small, and it's not filled with the people who should be in his corner."

Rodgers told King that he's hopeful that he could eventually find that common ground with his family.

"The big message was unconditionally loving myself is the key to being able to heal all relationships — with them, past relationships with lovers, whatever it might be … So that gives me a lot of hope in healing at some point."

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And while Rodgers' interpersonal relationships are a work in progress, he said his relationship with football has changed for the better recently.

"I think I just fell back in love with football the last few years. It's due to a mindset but also the people," Rodgers, who had debated retiring or moving on to another team in recent years, said.

Regarding a couple of challenging seasons for Green Bay, Rodgers said, "I'm hurt by all the playoff losses … When you think about the worst losses in your career, I mean both of them were in Seattle — the Fail Mary game in 2012, NFC Championship in the '14 season. But they all stick with you, because you think about what you could've done better. Plays you should've made."

RELATED VIDEO: Aaron Rodgers Says Relationship with Danica Patrick Was 'Great for Me': 'We Both Were Finding Our Way'

During an interview on the Aubrey Marcus Podcast the week prior, Rodgers said ayahuasca, a plant-based psychedelic, helped him learn to "unconditionally love" others.

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"To me, one of the core tenets of your mental health is that self-love," Rodgers told host Aubrey Marcus. "That's what ayahuasca did for me, was help me see how to unconditionally love myself."

"It's only in that unconditional self-love, that then I'm able to truly be able to unconditionally love others," he added. "And what better way to work on my mental health than to have an experience like that?"