‘He has rewired his brain’: Ex-NHL enforcer Daniel Carcillo says psychedelic drug treatments in the Peruvian jungle cured his concussion symptoms

Retired Chicago Blackhawks enforcer Daniel Carcillo says it took a mind-blowing drug to save his brain — and his life.

“It was the most amazing experience,” Carcillo says on the latest edition of “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel,” set to debut Tuesday night on HBO and HBO Max

Carcillo, who sued the NHL over his concussion-related injuries, is among the former athletes on the program extolling the benefits of psychedelic drugs in helping him cope with the after-effects of brain trauma.

The research in this area, correspondent David Scott notes, is “embryonic but intriguing.”

“Real Sports” opens its segment with Carcillo in the Peruvian jungle, where under supervision he would receive a potent hallucinogenic cocktail brewed from ayahuasca, a drug that’s illegal in much of the world.

Carcillo’s nickname as a player was Car Bomb, which he attributes to “being a psycho on and off the ice and being totally unpredictable.”

The winger played three of his nine NHL seasons with the Blackhawks and was part of their 2013 and 2015 Stanley Cup championships.

Twice he led the league in penalty minutes and paid a price well beyond what the refs meted out.

Carcillo had seven diagnosed concussions. Unofficially, he says, the number was in the hundreds before he retired in 2015. The damage followed him off the ice.

“I was spiritually, mentally and physically dead inside,” Carcillo says on HBO, rattling off a series of debilitating afflictions such as “light sensitivity, slurred speech, headaches, head pressure, insomnia, impulse-control issues, short-term memory loss, long-term memory loss, concentration issues.”

Things were so bad, he says he began eyeing the beams in his home ominously and contemplating suicide.

But Carcillo contends the ayahuasca, which had him communing with his long-dead grandparents, was transformative in ways traditional medicine, therapy and psychotherapy have not been.

“I do not suffer from any of those symptoms any longer,” he says.

His wife, Ela, backs up Carcillo, saying he’s a changed man.

“It’s amazing,” says Rick Doblin, a researcher and advocate of the therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs. “But, yes, he has rewired his brain, and because there (are) new pathways he’s built in his brain, it lasts.”

Doblin concedes the hallucinogens are neither a cure-all nor risk-free, but he says “benefits are often substantial.”

There are other voices in Scott’s report, other anecdotes shared. No experts with conflicting views are heard, however.