Prince Harry Says Taking Ayahuasca Helped Him Heal Diana Death Trauma

Prince Harry said he realized Princess Diana wanted him to be happy after taking ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is a drink of Amazonian plants that have a psychoactive effect when combined. Harry said taking ayahuasca took a weight off his chest and healed the trauma of his mother’s death. Loading Something is loading.

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Prince Harry said he realized Princess Diana wanted him to be happy after he stopped taking ayahuasca, he told The Telegraph.

The Duke of Sussex, 38, told the newspaper’s Bryony Gordon that he struggled with guilt over not being able to cry after his mother’s death. Harry was just 12 years old when Diana was killed in a car accident on August 31, 1997, in Paris, France. She was 36.

In the years since, Harry said he only cried twice for Diana – once at her funeral and later on a skiing trip with his ex-girlfriend Cressida Bonas. “I started dealing with the idea that mom wanted me to cry,” he said. “I convinced myself that she must have wanted me to cry, that it was the only way I could prove to her that I still missed her.”

However, after taking ayahuasca with the help of a professional, he said everything changed. “After I took ayahuasca with the right people,” Harry said, “I suddenly realized—wow!—it’s not about crying. It [Diana] wants me to be happy.”

“So this weight off my chest was not the need to cry, it was the acceptance and realization that she is gone, but that she wants me to be happy and that she is very present in my life,” he added.

Princess Diana, Prince Harry and Prince William at Highgrove House in 1986. Tim Graham/Getty Images

As The Insider previously reported, ayahuasca is a drink of Amazonian plants that have a psychoactive effect when combined. Indigenous tribes in South America have used the hallucinogenic drink, which has entered Western culture in recent years, in spiritual medicine practices for thousands of years.

Harry added that his experience with ayahuasca caused a level of separation with his older brother William.

Prince Harry and Prince William at the unveiling of a statue of Princess Diana in London last July. Getty Images

“As two brothers, if one of you goes through that experience and the other doesn’t, of course it creates a further divide between you, which is really sad,” he told The Telegraph.

In his 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper about his memoir Spare, Harry said trauma from his childhood meant he “refused” to accept Diana’s death until he was 23.

For “many years”, he had convinced himself that Diana had decided to disappear: “And then she would call and we would go and join her.

“I just refused to accept that she was gone,” he told Cooper. “Part, she would never do this to us, but also, part of, maybe this is all part of a plan.”