Spiritual awakening has become a sales pitch for powerful psychedelics. Retreat organizers promise profound encounters and personal transformation, inviting people to pursue the sacred through mind-altering substances.
One California retreat advertised by the Temple of Haumea and Dragonfly Temple described its Bufo ceremonies as a route to “divine remembrance, unity, and spiritual purification.”
Now consider the disturbing video circulating on X, which has garnered over 35 million views at the time of this articles publication. Shared under a caption describing DMT from toad venom, the footage shows a man inhaling a substance before shaking violently and vomiting on himself. His face turns strikingly pale.
It is a frightening scene to place beside a promise of spiritual awakening.
Bufo preparations contain secretions from the Sonoran Desert toad, a source of the psychedelic 5-MeO-DMT. Ayahuasca is a separate, plant-based brew that typically contains N,N-DMT and has a history of use in shamanic and religious ceremonies.
These practices invite people to pursue extraordinary experiences through altered consciousness. The physical consequences deserve serious attention. A review in the Journal of Neurochemistry lists reported effects of 5-MeO-DMT including confusion, trembling and vomiting. UC Berkeley’s Center for the Science of Psychedelics identifies shaking, vomiting and significantly elevated blood pressure among ayahuasca’s risks.
Shawn Ryan’s Terrifying Account
In a separate experience, former Navy SEAL and podcast host Shawn Ryan described an ordeal he believed took him to hell.
Speaking with Steven Bartlett on “The Diary of a CEO,” Ryan said he took ibogaine followed the next day by 5-MeO-DMT. He associated the overwhelming terror specifically with the latter experience.
“It was the most amount of fear that I’d ever felt in my life,” Ryan said.
“There was no God. There was no Christ.”
He described emptiness and abandonment as his body contorted. Afterward, he reported nightmares and spiritual disturbances. The experience that left him terrified ultimately drew him closer to Christ, he said.
Ryan’s account gives the pursuit of a psychedelic breakthrough a sobering human cost. A person can enter an experience hoping for answers and emerge carrying deeper fear.
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Only Christ Makes Us Complete
The hunger behind the search is real. People carry wounds they desperately want healed. They long for peace and a sense that their lives mean something.
Spiritual marketing speaks directly to that ache. But a drug-induced encounter cannot reconcile us to God. Jesus Christ alone makes that relationship possible through His death and resurrection.
The God-shaped emptiness within us finds its answer in Him.
Colossians 2:10 (MEV) declares that “you are complete in Him.” That promise places our spiritual fulfillment firmly in Christ.
Scripture also commands us to test the spirits in 1 John 4:1. Christians must exercise discernment when someone packages intoxication as enlightenment or sells a chemical experience as access to the divine.
Turn away from DMT and ayahuasca ceremonies that promise spiritual awakening. Bring that hunger to Jesus. Come to Him in repentance and faith, seek prayer from a trusted pastor and begin grounding your life in His Word.
“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest,” Jesus says in Matthew 11:28.
Only God can satisfy the soul He created. The peace we need begins with knowing Him.
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].
