Shawn Ryan Show: Kegan Gill’s 695 MPH Ejection, TBI, and Recovery

**Shawn Ryan** (0:01)
Power, trauma, and recovery collide in this episode of Shawn Ryan Show. Shawn sits down with Kegan Gill, a Navy F-18E Super Hornet pilot, whose life changed during a 2014 training exercise.
We're talking about a nearly 700 mile per hour ejection, catastrophic injuries, traumatic brain injury, PTSD, addiction, and a long psychiatric collapse.

**Kegan Gill** (0:30)
This is an extraordinary survival story. What strikes me is that Gill says the deeper struggle started long before the crash. He traces it back to a childhood shaped by self-reliance, emotional distance, and a constant drive to prove himself.
Growing up outdoors, getting into fights, feeling like school never fit who he was.

**Shawn Ryan** (0:55)
And that early pain later surfaced through psychedelics and ibogaine therapy. Gill explains those experiences helped him connect childhood anger to buried memories and grief in his family. They also gave him a spiritual reset, helping him stop drinking completely.
He says he hasn't had a drop since, and no longer feels the need to numb himself.

**Kegan Gill** (1:18)
That's powerful. But let's talk about the medical system, because Gill is blunt about its blind spots. When asked about TBI treatment, he says it was almost unacknowledged that I could even possibly have a TBI. He argues the system defaults to PTSD, then layers on medication without addressing the actual brain injury.
In his view, it's profit driven, symptom focused, and built to keep people stuck.

**Shawn Ryan** (1:48)
Right. So let's get to his aviation path. After learning to fly in college, he moved into Navy training, earned his wings, and entered the fighter pipeline. He describes carrier aviation as a team sport, where humility, trust, and performance under pressure matter as much as raw skill.
Flying the F-18 felt like stepping into a machine with 44,000 pounds of thrust.

**Kegan Gill** (2:17)
Then came January 15, 2014
During dogfighting training, his jet overrode his inputs and pointed toward the ocean. He was already at 0.95 Mach, nearly 695 miles per hour when he pulled the ejection handle. The jet hit the water and vanished. He suffered a traumatic brain injury, broken bones, nerve damage, and severe internal trauma.

**Shawn Ryan** (2:44)
The rescue was desperate. Gill recalls being dragged by his parachute in freezing water, rescued by a swimmer who cut him loose and flown to the hospital while drifting in and out of consciousness. His body temperature had dropped to 87 degrees.
Doctors believe the cold may have saved his life by slowing blood loss and protecting his brain.

**Kegan Gill** (3:08)
Recovery was only the beginning, though. Doctors first told him he would never walk or use his arms again, but he treated that as a challenge. He focused on tiny wins, then rehab, then getting off a medication stack that included 2,400 milligrams of gabapentin daily.
Later, pain, sleep deprivation, and anti-psychotics pushed him into paranoia, psychosis, hallucinations, and suicidal moments.

**Shawn Ryan** (3:38)
So what finally helped? Mountain biking, better nutrition, sunlight, nature, meditation, and psychedelic-assisted therapy.
Gill says MDMA-assisted therapy with his wife was a resentment inoculator, helping them communicate with honesty instead of defensiveness. He also credits ayahuasca, peyote, and integration work with giving him connection and safety.

**Kegan Gill** (4:05)
Interestingly, the conversation also turns to UAPs.
Gill saw a bright rectangular light while recovering in Virginia Beach and later encountered a spherical object during a training flight. He believes the phenomenon is real and that some of what's being hidden may involve advanced technology.

**Shawn Ryan** (4:24)
But his focus remains practical, healing veterans, changing policy, and getting better treatment funded.
Today, Gill works as an integration coach and speaker, helping service members, first responders, and veterans recover from trauma. He pushes for ibogaine research, MDMA-assisted therapy, and broader reform. His message is simple and hard earned. The only way to heal is to acknowledge that a wound is festering and to clean it out.