Joe Manganiello writes about shamans, pagan rituals during a seven-year autoimmune battle that nearly killed him

Actor Joe Manganiello has described a seven-year health crisis in which he says autoimmune-related illness and complications pushed him close to death multiple times, and he recounts how he turned to shamans and pagan rituals during the ordeal in his upcoming memoir.

According to reporting by Fox News, Manganiello’s book details a period of medical uncertainty and emergency-level events as he dealt with an autoimmune-related condition over years. He characterizes the experience as a fight for survival, describing near-death experiences that he said left him seeking additional help beyond standard medical approaches.

The Fox News report says Manganiello credits the spiritual practices with providing him a way to endure during stretches when he felt physically at risk. In the account, he describes consulting shamans and engaging in pagan rituals as part of his personal coping process while his health battle continued.

Manganiello’s comments, as reported, frame the spiritual turn not as a replacement for medical treatment, but as an additional source of meaning during a prolonged crisis. The article characterizes his recollections as part of a broader effort in the memoir to provide an unfiltered account of what he experienced, including episodes that he says were severe enough to be life-threatening.

The report does not provide additional clinical specifics, such as the particular diagnosis, exact dates of flare-ups, or the precise medical interventions used. It also does not describe what specific rituals he underwent, how often they occurred, or whether any practitioners were involved in his care coordination.

Instead, the focus is on Manganiello’s personal narrative and how he navigated day-to-day fear, uncertainty, and physical decline throughout a multi-year period. Fox News also ties the disclosure to the memoir format, suggesting the book will cover his illness comprehensively rather than as a brief biographical aside.

Manganiello’s account lands in the broader cultural conversation about illness memoirs and the public’s appetite for first-person accounts of medical hardship. For readers, the practical takeaway is that the memoir centers on a sustained health fight and, in Manganiello’s telling, includes descriptions of alternative spiritual practices he used to cope with what he says were repeated near-death moments.

For those considering similar approaches, Manganiello’s story underscores that his experience was personal and individualized, and it highlights the importance of separating spiritual coping from medical decision-making, especially in cases involving autoimmune disease and potential life-threatening complications.