Podbit · The Shawn Ryan Show
Strickland says that after fighting, he wants to do disaster relief, inner-city youth work, or anything where he can give back anonymously. Not for the fans, not for legacy — but because every anonymous good deed feels like the engine of his eroded soul trying to turn over again. It's the only feeling he has that isn't just another drug.
Where this was said
At 1:24:00 · chapter starts 1:14:00
Following Ryan's disclosure, Strickland matches it. He describes a period of constant suicidal ideation so intense he couldn't stop thinking about it while driving on the highway. He'd burn his hand over a candle to fall asleep. He kept a loaded .38 revolver next to his bed and would spin the cylinder, load a round, put it to his head. One night a woman named Jackie grabbed the cocked gun out of his hand as he was working himself up to pull. He says the adrenaline of that moment — chemicals saturating his brain — was something he'd do anything to feel again. Even now, revolvers feel to him like 'a game I never finished.' He can't own one safely. He also describes a visualization technique for intrusive thoughts: imagining in slow motion the trajectory of a bullet through his own head, which blanks his mind and allows him to function.
Blacked out drunk at a bar in Boca Raton, Ryan went home and attempted suicide three ways in one night: running his car in a closed garage, retrieving a .45 from the safe, and only surviving because the heat melted a hole in his gas tank — which dripped onto the muffler and started a fire. He woke up upstairs with no memory, saw the gun on the couch, smelled the exhaust, and realized what he'd done.
Shawn Ryan attempted suicide by leaving his car running in a closed garage while blacked out drunk; the heat melted a hole in the gas tank, which dripped onto the muffler and started a fire.
Strickland's abusive, alcoholic father was in the household until age 17, when a then-professional-fighter Sean physically removed him from his mother's bedroom and he left for good.
Strickland's father became addicted to opioids during the epidemic, which erased whatever was left of his personality. He died of cancer so advanced the doctors couldn't understand how he hadn't noticed — he was too high to feel it. On his deathbed, in hospice at Strickland's brother's house, he called Sean over and said: 'I was really bad to you, but I didn't molest you.' Strickland photographed the body.
Strickland argued that sobriety is the only thing preventing truly damaged people from going over the edge, since alcohol removes inhibition and enables any act.
Strickland kept a loaded .38 revolver next to his bed as a young fighter, spinning the cylinder and putting it to his head. One night, alone with a girlfriend named Jackie, he loaded a round, spun it, cocked the gun against his temple — and she grabbed it away. He says even now, revolvers feel like a game he never finished. One pull. That's all he wants.
More freedom doesn't produce more happiness — it produces more anxiety. Kierkegaard identified this 180 years ago: the more options you have, the more you feel the 'dizziness of freedom,' a paralytic unease at having to choose any single one. The freest generation in history is, by his prediction, exactly the most anxious.
Every person lives in constant tension between infinite possible selves and the finite, limited self they actually are. Tipping too far toward infinite possibility produces a loss of identity; too much confinement in the finite produces stagnation. Kierkegaard argued that this tension is never solved — only managed.
Standing outside a cold pool imagining reasons not to jump is the exact experience of pre-commitment anxiety. Once you jump, the shock passes and you wonder why you ever hesitated. The same mechanism governs every significant commitment in life — the dread is always on the outside, the relief on the inside.
Traditional societies had rites of passage that closed off childhood and opened adulthood. Modern society kept the in-between liminal phase but eliminated the ritual that resolved it. The result is 'emerging adulthood' — a decade or more stuck in the transition — engineered by rising education requirements, women entering the workforce, and delayed marriage.
When Mark Manson proposed to his wife, software he didn't know was running — the low-level assessment of sexual market value and other options — suddenly shut down. Commitment doesn't take freedom away. It trades optionality (freedom to do many things) for focus (freedom from distraction). John Dewey called these positive and negative freedom, and the latter is more powerful.
Mark Manson spent years as a location-independent digital nomad — always a new country, a new woman, a new venture. Then the diminishing returns kicked in: countries started feeling the same, dates felt identical, businesses all frustrated him. The cure wasn't more novelty. It was narrowing: one place, one person, one career.
Every meaningful commitment has a dip — an initial peak of excitement, a brutal trough of difficulty, and a second higher peak for those who push through. Institutions once kept people in the dip long enough to reach the other side. With infinite optionality and no institutions, everyone bails at the bottom and restarts the cycle of shallow first peaks.
Stage one — the aesthetic — is the default: chasing sensation, novelty, and keeping every door open. Stage two — the ethical — is learning to choose with eyes wide open, accepting the trade-offs. Stage three — the religious — is when a commitment becomes so total that it no longer feels like a choice. It just feels like who you are.
The ethical stage is rational commitment — you can explain your choices. The religious stage is when your commitment exceeds rational justification. You can't explain why. It just feels like it chose you. Kierkegaard called this the 'virtue of the absurd' — and it's represented not just in faith but in the entrepreneurs, artists, and athletes who can't imagine doing anything else.
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