Hilarious and like something from what could be a sequel to “SoapDish”: James Scott, who’s the popular, young, British leading man/villain of “Days of Our Lives” has quit the soap after eight years. NBC must be wondering what the heck is going on. Is this a contract negotiation?

What happened? Earlier this spring, Scott went to Peru, hung out with shamans, and smoked hallucinogenics. He revealed this in an interview in which he also called obsessed soap fans “fucking idiots.” Cue “Bungle in the Jungle”:

Scott told a soap opera site:

“I just got back from Peru. I spent six days in the jungles of Peru doing Ayahuasca with the shaman. It was the single most positive experience of my life. Ayahuasca is this hallucinogenic. I sat in a tent, in a hut, in the jungle, on the amazons with three shaman blowing tobacco smoke into my crown, realigning my chakras and my energy, while I hallucinated for four to six hours. I mean, this is all hard to explain. It’s very spiritual and very interesting. This is a medicine that the people of South America have been using for years to have a relationship with a higher consciousness. It sounds wacky when you say it, but it was truly the most important thing I have ever done. I came back a very different person.”

The TODAY show recently did a piece on this LSD-like medicine (it’s legal in Brazil) after Lindsay Lohan talked about drinking Ayahuasca tea after a miscarriage. Rock star Sting wrote about trying Ayahuasca on a trip to Brazil years ago in his excellent memoir, “Broken Music”:

“Ayahuasca has brought me close to something, something fearful and profound and deadly serious.”

The start of a Ayahuasca trip involves immense physical pain, severe vomiting, and other unpleasantness. Then you have a lot of revelations. Apparently Scott’s was to walk away from a full time job as the star of a soap opera. Scott is not exactly Cary Grant, but on daytime he is. Maybe once the Ayahuasca wears off he’ll back at his station bedding blondes and doing dastardly things.

And these are the day of our lives! Indeed!