says that his mother, Jada Pinkett Smith, introduced his family to psychedelic drugs.
The admission came Friday during the actor’s speech at the Psychedelic Science conference in Denver, according to a report from Entertainment Tonight.
“I think it was my mom, actually, that was really the first one to make that step for the family,” Jaden said of his introduction to the still-illegal class of drugs.
“It was just her for a really, really long time and then eventually it just trickled and evolved, and everybody found it in their own ways.”
But did she really introduce her son — and entire family — to psychedelics?
You’ll get your answer when the actress’s upcoming
“It all gets answered in the book,” Pinkett Smith exclusively told PEOPLE when asked about her son’s claims.
In addition, Pinkett Smith promises that “everything” you’ve ever wondered about her family will be covered.
“I think people have made a lot of assumptions. And you know what? Rightfully so. I have to take ownership of that, in regards to the narrative that I’ve participated in, the falsehoods about myself,” she told PEOPLE.
“In the book I really explain all of that extensively.”
As for her own personal use of psychedelics, Pinkett Smith, 51, has said in the past that she turned to plant medicine to help her combat depression.
The admission came during a November 2021 episode of her Red Table Talk show.
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“I struggled with depression for so long. And the thing about the plant medicine is it helps you feel better but also solves the problems of how you got there in the first place,” Pinkett Smith said.
The Queen Cleopatra narrator went on to say that she had first been introduced to plant medicine a decade prior, and the practice “knocked [depression] out” of her.
In the same episode, Pinkett Smith’s mother, Adrienne Banfield-Norris, said she considered taking the plant-based psychedelic Ayahuasca, to combat “this deep low self-esteem issue that I have.”
She continued, “It doesn’t seem to be anything that my parents did or didn’t do for me. I just feel like I was born that way. But it keeps me from moving forward in parts of my life and that was the one time I considered doing the Ayahuasca.”
“There’s just this block that I cannot figure out,” Banfield-Norris said during the conversation, which included grandson Smith. “I just can’t figure that out, why I constantly feel that I’m not good enough and how I got there.”
As for his use, Smith, 24, has said that psychedelic drugs helped him discover “love and empathy” for his family — particularly for siblings, Willow, 22, and half-brother Trey, 30, whom his dad Will Smith shares with ex Sheree Zampino.
Jada Pinkett Smith Reveals Title of Book: ‘People Have Made a Lot of Assumptions’ (Exclusive)
“Siblings can argue so much and fight so much, and Lord knows me and my siblings have done so much of that in the past,” the “Icon” performer said. “But the level of love and empathy that I can feel for them inside of the [psychedelic] experiences and outside of the experiences has been something that’s profound and beautiful.”
His claims are backed up by a 2017 study in the International Journal of Neuopsychopharmacology, which found that psilocybin — the hallucinogenic compound found in some mushrooms — “significantly increased emotional…empathy.”
