DENVER — Aaron Rodgers says he isn’t the only NFL player doing psychedelics — he’s just the only one talking on panels about it.

In a trip Wednesday night to speak at the Psychedelic Science 2023 conference, the Jets quarterback said he has been approached by scores of psychedelic-curious athletes after speaking publicly about his experiences with ayahuasca.

He also talked about having NFL teammates partake with him.

“I’ve been fortunate enough in the last few years to be able to sit in ceremony with teammates,” said Rodgers, who was on the Packers for 18 seasons before joining the Jets this offseason. “I’m telling you, it is radically life-changing, and it’s wild to be in a locker room and look over and just know, like, I’ve been in the maloca [an indigenous South American dwelling] with you, guy. It’s pretty special. It changes the dynamic, for sure. And in this process, like I said, there’s been hundreds of NFL guys who have reached out.”

Rodgers traced his spiritual journey back to winning the Super Bowl in 2011 and asking himself afterward: “Now what?”

He first used psilocybin, or mushrooms, and in recent years started taking ayahuasca — a psychedelic tea derived from plants found in the Amazon — in guided, communal settings.

“When I first did ‘aya’ in 2020, I remember thinking afterwards, like, I’m going to have to talk about this at some point,” Rodgers said. “Are people ready? How will it be received? Then I won MVP. Then I did it again. I said OK, I can probably talk about it now. But the cool thing has been the response. Not from the media that calls me a druggie, a hippie or whatever it was. …

“To see basketball players and baseball players and surfers and entertainers and my own teammates and colleagues across the league reach out, and either share their story about their own medicine journey or ask to be a part of an upcoming one, is pretty special.”

In the nearly hour-long talk with the podcaster and self-proclaimed “psychonaut” Aubrey Marcus, titled “How Psychedelics Can Unlock Elite Performance,” Rodgers pledged his support for the movement to secure acceptance for psychedelics and legal approval for their use in therapies.

“We have the opportunity to change the conversation by dispelling these archaic myths about the dangers of them or the negative side effects or whatever might be and start to share the actual wisdom and truth about it,” Rodgers said. “It’s a permission slip for other people to stand up and talk about their own experiences, to join in and to dive in and to learn about it.

“And I think that’s how we move this conversation forward is more people to be out there comfortable talking about their own journeys. Their spiritual journey, their medicine journey, their ceremonies. So we can bring this to people who need it.”

Earlier in the day, Rick Doblin, the founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which hosted the conference, praised the “massive impact” Rodgers’ appearance could have on the mainstreaming of psychedelics.

“People are not sure what to believe. But when people that they respect for certain other things say psychedelics were useful …” Doblin said. “And I think what [Rodgers is] also saying is that he thinks this has become destigmatized enough that he can be public about it and it’s not going to hurt his career. People aren’t going to not hire him to play football. So I think it’s a part of cultural change, and it’s a key element.”

In a 5,000-seat auditorium that was approximately half-filled with conference-goers who ranged from barefoot to black-booted, Rodgers also took the requisite shots at his critics (“all these bums who want to come after me online about my experience, they’ve never tried it”), joined Marcus in stumping for presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and spoke humorously about running a play for Packers (and now Jets) teammate Allen Lazard last season so Lazard could perform a pre-planned ayahuasca-drinking touchdown celebration.

The through-line, though, was his belief in the power of psychedelic medicines — not “drugs,” he insisted — and how they have influenced his mental health.

“The battle is between your ear lobes — it’s: How can I silence that inner critic?” Rodgers said. “The anti-me is the greatest opponent because it’s me. It knows exactly what to say to me, exactly what to show me. To whisper in my ear: ‘You’re not good enough. You’re not gonna win this game. Nobody likes you. You’re a crazy anti-vaxxer.’ But I think the beauty in these journeys is to find that self-love because the greatest antidote to the anti-you is unconditional self-love. And it’s been a beautiful journey to try and find that.”