You can imagine how the prospect of turning 40 was particularly problematic for Simon Amstell. The film-maker and comedian, who started as a stand-up at 13 and was presenter of the cultish Popworld at 21, has always projected brilliant boyishness. When the dread birthday approached in 2019, he responded, he says, in entirely cliched fashion: he dyed his trademark mop of black curly hair blond and ran away to New York for a last-ditch adventure. When that didn’t work he resorted to the only thing that had properly helped him with depression in his 20s: he returned to Peru, where he had once taken the plant-based hallucinogen ayahuasca. There, over the course of a 10-day series of shamanic ceremonies in the rainforest, he found the answer to his anxieties.
What happened?
