Some might shudder in horror at the memory of stripping naked in the Amazon jungle and being ridiculed by a bunch of shamans.
Not comedian Simon Amstell.
The former Never Mind the Buzzcocks presenter, 39, danced “like a lunatic” while high on the psychedelic drug ayahuasca last month, prompting guffawing from his “healers”, who were overseeing the spiritual experience.
But thankfully his dabblings with the hallucinogen - illegal in the UK - allowed him to overcome the shame of nudity.
“I ended up taking all my clothes off, and dancing like an absolute lunatic,” he recalls.
“The shamans found it very amusing. They waited, they didn’t laugh at the time, but the next morning when I saw them, they laughed and pointed.
“But luckily the ceremony had freed me of shame, so I was fine.”
Simon, the man behind the BBC’s vegan mockumentary Carnage, previously sampled seven years ago, before returning to Peru to have another taste in a sacred ceremony.
“I was really set free in the jungle like a month ago,” he says. “And now I’m ever freer.
“I let go of a lot of absurd insecurities and it was great.”
The comic’s latest stand up special Set Free airs on Netflix next week.
