Podcaster and former Navy SEAL Shawn Ryan says a terrifying psychedelic experience left him believing he had felt what hell was like — and it is now pushing him back toward Christ.
Speaking with Tucker Carlson, Ryan described undergoing an ibogaine and 5-MeO-DMT experience that went terribly wrong.
“[I] found hell. Hell,” Ryan said.
Ryan stressed that he did not see stereotypical images of flames, devils or demons. What shook him was something much harder to describe.
“I felt what hell was going to be like,” Ryan said. “Not like seeing devils and fire and whatever, demons and all that. Like, it was a feeling. And I never ever want to feel that again. Ever.”
Ryan called it the “worst feeling” he had ever experienced.
Initially, he feared the experience represented his own eternal destination.
“First, I thought that’s where I’m going,” Ryan said.
But Ryan now wonders whether Christ allowed him to experience something horrifying as a warning. He compared it to a father repeatedly warning his son not to stick his finger into an electrical socket before finally allowing him to experience the consequences.
“I think maybe that’s what Christ did to me,” Ryan said. “He was like, ‘All right, here it is, buddy. You want to feel it? That’s what it is.’”
The experience has already produced a striking spiritual response.
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Ryan said he attended Mass and is “full-blown coming back into the Catholic church.” When asked what he should do to avoid hell, Ryan answered, “Pray, build a relationship,” while acknowledging he is still trying to understand everything that happened.
He is also considering studying every book of the Bible on his podcast with theologians who can help him understand Scripture.
But how should we, as Christians, approach extraordinary stories like Ryan’s?
Author and near-death experience researcher Randy Kay says Scripture must remain the standard.
Kay, who says he encountered Jesus after clinically dying in 2005, has interviewed hundreds of people reporting encounters with the afterlife. He says these experiences should be tested rather than automatically accepted.
“The most dangerous near-death experience isn’t the one that was fake,” Kay recently warned. “It’s the one that was real and met the wrong thing.”
Kay says supernatural experiences must agree with Scripture and point people toward the biblical Jesus rather than another gospel. In researching accounts for his book “Heaven Encounters,” Kay says he pre-screened testimonies, accepted only about 30% for his show and “tested every account against the Word of God.”
That distinction matters with Ryan.
We cannot know from his testimony alone precisely what happened during a drug-induced psychedelic experience. But Ryan himself is not presenting a new doctrine about hell. Instead, the experience appears to be driving him toward prayer, Scripture, repentance, church and a deeper relationship with Christ.
That is where discernment begins: not with the intensity of an experience, but with Scripture — and the spiritual fruit that follows.
James Lasher, a seasoned writer and editor at Charisma Media, combines faith and storytelling with a journalism background from Otterbein University and ministry experience in Guatemala and at the LA Dream Center. A Marine Corps and Air Force veteran, he is the author of The Revelation of Jesus: A Common Man’s Commentary and a contributor to Charisma magazine. For interviews and media inquiries, please contact [email protected].
