Former Navy SEAL and popular podcaster Shawn Ryan has been open with his audience of millions about the benefits of psychedelics. Like so many veterans, he was a mess of inner turmoil after returning from combat. He described his DMT and Ibogaine therapy in 2022 as “profound,” “life-changing,” and “healing,” claiming it set him on a spiritual quest. Then in 2023 he announced he had come to Christ, and when he was subsequently asked if he would ever do psychedelics again, he demurred: “I don’t know.”
This example captures nicely many themes of our current cultural moment: the rise of mental health problems, the parallel rise of psychedelics, the coming collision of those two trends, and the Christian response to all this.
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