Interviews

Shawn Ryan said ibogaine trip felt like hell

The Shawn Ryan Show host told Steven Bartlett on Diary of a CEO he has had several exorcisms since and lost a long-time life insurer over faith-based content.

Shawn Ryan said he visited hell during a second ibogaine session about three months ago, with fear and emptiness that felt more real than anything in his military or contracting career.

Ryan spoke on Diary of a CEO while describing a spiritual crisis that followed a treatment he had once credited with ending his drinking and prescription drug use. The first ibogaine journey had gone well; the recent one, combined with daily 5-MeO-DMT at the same facility, left him unable to see or speak normally for weeks and convinced him he had crossed into a realm humans were not meant to enter.

Ryan said a Marine special operations veteran who ignored his request to stay away peered in and had never seen a human body move the way Ryan’s did during the episode. Priests Ryan consulted afterward treated the case as spiritual oppression rather than full possession and led him through what he described as multiple exorcisms, still ongoing.

Ryan said the experience shifted his podcast plans away from election politics and toward a multi-year Bible series, starting with Cardinal Burke. He also said a life insurance brand that had worked with him for years ended the relationship after he leaned into faith on air, telling Bartlett he read the cancellation as pressure not to discuss Christianity.

Ryan said military peers and special operators have messaged him privately that they had similar psychedelic experiences but stayed quiet. He maintained he is not blaming ibogaine alone for what followed, but warned his audience that psychedelics can open what he called a forbidden spiritual realm.

Source video: Shawn Ryan: There's A Battle For Your Soul, It's Happening Right Now