Some of the most honest conversations about psychedelic medicine are not happening in clinics or press releases. They are happening between veterans who came home carrying more than anyone could see. One of the loudest of those voices belongs to Shawn Ryan, and his story has helped push a once-fringe treatment, ibogaine, into the center of a serious scientific and political conversation.
Who Is Shawn Ryan?
Shawn Ryan is a former U.S. Navy SEAL and CIA contractor who now hosts the Shawn Ryan Show, a long-form interview podcast. In a 2025 as-told-to essay for Business Insider, he said he served as a SEAL for five and a half years before working as a CIA contractor on rotations he described as “60 days on, 60 days off.”
When that chapter ended, he says, he crashed. He described years of sleeping pills, opiates, cocaine and heavy drinking, telling Business Insider that at his lowest point he was “drinking two fifths of vodka a day.”
His Ibogaine Experience
Ryan has said he reached out to Marcus and Amber Capone, founders of the nonprofit VETS, after hearing guest after guest describe psychedelic treatment. He went through their program and released a full account in April 2022 in episode #24 of his show, “Shawn Ryan’s Psychedelic Experience.” In that episode’s description, he called it “one of the most, if not the most life changing event I have ever experienced.”
The treatment took place in Mexico, where, as he has described it, a session with ibogaine was followed by a separate session with 5-MeO-DMT, another powerful psychedelic. To Business Insider he explained:
The first was Ibogaine. It’s a 12-hour experience. I basically watched my entire life play out from a different perspective. Every memory, every trauma — it’s all there.
Describing the results, he said: “When I came back from that psychedelic experience, I didn’t need the pills anymore. I didn’t need the vodka. I quit everything.” He added that he had been sober for two and a half years at the time of the interview, had quit cannabis and stimulants, and “for the first time in a long time, I was fully present with my family.”
It is one person’s account, and Business Insider itself notes that Ryan is not a medical professional. But it is exactly the kind of story that led researchers to take a closer look.
What the Stanford Study Found
In January 2024, a Stanford Medicine team led by Dr. Nolan Williams published a study in Nature Medicine on 30 male U.S. Special Operations veterans with predominantly mild traumatic brain injury (TBI). The veterans received oral ibogaine together with magnesium, which the researchers gave to help protect the heart, at a clinic in Mexico.
According to the paper and Stanford’s summary:
- Average disability scores (WHODAS 2.0) fell from 30.2 before treatment, which is mild-to-moderate disability, to 5.1 one month later.
- One month after treatment, participants averaged reductions of 88% in PTSD symptoms, 87% in depression symptoms and 81% in anxiety symptoms.
- There were no serious or unexpected adverse events, and no clinically meaningful QT prolongation was detected during monitoring. Headache and nausea were common, and all participants had temporary balance and tremor effects that resolved within 24 hours.
The important caveat is that this was an open-label, observational study with no placebo group. The authors themselves wrote that controlled clinical trials are needed. A 12-month follow-up published in 2026 in Translational Psychiatry reported that improvements largely held for the 25 participants who completed it. However, most of them also used other psychedelics or treatments during that year, so the results cannot show that ibogaine alone caused the lasting change.
VETS: Veterans Helping Veterans
Veterans Exploring Treatment Solutions (VETS) was founded in 2019 by Marcus Capone, a former Navy SEAL with 13 years of service, and his wife Amber, after psychedelic-assisted therapy helped Marcus with TBI and PTSD when conventional treatments had not. The nonprofit provides grants, coaching and support for veterans to receive treatment at vetted facilities in countries where it is legal, while also funding research and advocating for policy change. Its 2020 annual report lists 110 Foundational Healing Grants to Special Operations veterans and their spouses in that year alone.
Texas Bets on Ibogaine Research
On June 11, 2025, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 2308, creating a framework for FDA drug-development trials of ibogaine for opioid use disorder and other mental health conditions. “Texas is home to more veterans than any other state,” Abbott said at the signing. The Dallas Morning News reported the program commits $50 million in state money, which must be matched by non-state funding. Getting that match has proven difficult, and as of October 2026 the trials were still being set up.
MDMA, Psilocybin and the VA
MDMA-assisted therapy was once seen as the psychedelic closest to approval. In August 2024, however, the FDA issued a complete response letter to Lykos Therapeutics, concluding its application did not provide substantial evidence of effectiveness or establish safety for PTSD, and asking for an additional Phase 3 trial. The letter cited problems including unreported adverse events at some sites.
Research inside the Department of Veterans Affairs has kept moving. In December 2024, the VA announced its first funded psychedelic-assisted therapy study since the 1960s: a roughly $1.5 million, five-year trial of MDMA-assisted therapy for veterans with both PTSD and alcohol use disorder, run with Brown and Yale researchers at the Providence and West Haven VA medical centers. The VA has also launched a psilocybin trial for veterans with treatment-resistant depression at five VA sites.
The Risks Are Real
Ibogaine is not a gentle substance, and the enthusiasm around it should never hide that. Its best-documented danger is to the heart: it can prolong the QT interval, which can trigger dangerous arrhythmias, cardiac arrest and death. Medical case reports: one 2016 case report and literature review describes a 40-year-old man who died after cardiac arrest following ibogaine use for heroin withdrawal, and cites an earlier review that identified 19 deaths attributed to ibogaine worldwide between 1990 and 2008. A systematic review of adverse events also describes risks such as seizures and psychiatric effects.
That is why serious programs, including the Stanford protocol, involve careful medical screening such as cardiac testing, continuous monitoring and medical staff on site. Ibogaine is a Schedule I controlled substance in the United States, so veterans currently seeking it travel abroad, most often to clinics in Mexico, where quality and oversight vary widely.
A Wider Perspective
What stands out in Shawn Ryan’s account is not only that something worked, but how he says it worked: by letting him see his own life from a different angle. That idea, that healing can begin with a change in perspective, is as old as philosophy. Science is now cautiously trying to measure it, one study at a time.
An Important Note
This post is for informational purposes only and is not medical advice. Ibogaine, MDMA and psilocybin are Schedule I controlled substances under U.S. federal law and are illegal outside approved research and limited state-regulated programs. Ibogaine in particular carries serious cardiac risks and can be fatal. Please talk with a licensed medical or mental health professional before considering any treatment.
If you are a veteran in crisis, or worried about one, call the Veterans Crisis Line: dial 988 and press 1, or chat online at VeteransCrisisLine.net. Anyone in the U.S. can also call or text 988 for the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline.
Sources
- Business Insider, “After leaving the Navy, I was doing cocaine, popping pills, and drinking over a fifth of vodka a day…” (as told by Shawn Ryan), 2025: www.businessinsider.com
- Shawn Ryan Show, “Shawn Ryan’s Psychedelic Experience | SRS #024,” April 2022 (episode listing and description): wisdomsparks.com
- Cherian, Keynan, et al. (Williams, senior author), “Magnesium–ibogaine therapy in veterans with traumatic brain injuries,” Nature Medicine, January 5, 2024: www.nature.com
- Stanford Report, “Drug safely treats post-traumatic stress disorder in vets”: news.stanford.edu
- “Is ibogaine treatment durable? 12-month follow-up of magnesium–ibogaine therapy (MISTIC)…,” Translational Psychiatry, 2026: www.nature.com
- VETS, About Us: vetsolutions.org; 2020 Annual Report: vetsolutions.org
- Office of the Texas Governor, “Governor Abbott Signs Ibogaine Treatment Research Law At Texas Capitol,” June 11, 2025: gov.texas.gov
- Texas Legislature Online, SB 2308 (89R) history: www.legis.state.tx.us
- The Dallas Morning News, “Ibogaine trials head to Texas as governor signs $50M program…,” June 11, 2025: www.dallasnews.com
- U.S. FDA, Complete Response Letter to Lykos Therapeutics, NDA 215455, August 2024: download.open.fda.gov
- U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, “VA funds first study on psychedelic-assisted therapy for Veterans,” December 3, 2024: news.va.gov
- U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, “VA launches psilocybin trial for Veterans with treatment-resistant depression”: news.va.gov
- “Ibogaine-associated cardiac arrest and death: case report and review of the literature,” PMC: pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- “The adverse events of ibogaine in humans: an updated systematic review of the literature (2015–2020),” Psychopharmacology, 2021: doi.org
- Veterans Crisis Line: www.veteranscrisisline.net
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Featured image: “Hell Week,” U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 1st Class Shane T. McCoy (All Hands magazine, 2004), public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
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