- Prince Harry said he realized Princess Diana wanted him to be happy after doing ayahuasca.
- Ayahuasca is a brew of Amazonian plants that have a psychoactive effect when combined.
Prince Harry said he came to the realization Princess Diana wanted him to be happy after he tripped on ayahuasca, he told The Telegraph.
The Duke of Sussex, 38, told the newspaper's Bryony Gordon that he struggled with feelings of guilt for being unable to cry following his mother's death. Harry was just 12 when Diana was killed in a car crash on August 31 1997, in Paris, France. She was 36.
In the years after, Harry said he only cried twice about Diana – once at her burial and later on a ski trip with his ex-girlfriend Cressida Bonas. "I started to confront the idea that mummy wanted me to cry," he said. "I convinced myself that she must have wanted me to cry, that that was the only way I could prove to her that I still miss her."
However, after taking ayahuasca with the help of a professional, he said everything shifted. "After taking ayahuasca with the proper people," Harry said, "I suddenly realized – wow! – it's not about the crying. She [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 has gone, but that she wants me to be happy and that she's very much present in my life," he added.
As Insider previously reported, ayahuasca is a brew of Amazonian plants that have a psychoactive effect when combined. Indigenous tribes in South America have used the hallucinogenic brew, which has made its way into Western culture in recent years, in spiritual medicine practices for thousands of years.
Harry added that his experience with ayahuasca caused a level of division with his older brother William.
"As two brothers, if one of you goes through that experience and the other one doesn't, it naturally 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 that trauma from his childhood meant that 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 she was gone," he told Cooper. "Part of, she would never do this to us, but also, part of, maybe this is all part of a plan."