Praying to a HIGH-er power! Inside the boom in psychedelic churches where former Republican senators, bankers and Mormons organize shroom and Ayahuasca ceremonies for thousands of Americans to connect with God

SWAT teams and helicopters descended on a ranch in Joshua Tree, California, following reports of a bloodcurdling scream.

When they arrived, the lights were out, smoke was coming out of the door, and a row of bodies lay strewn across the cabin floor, seemingly lifeless.

Agents thought it was the scene of a mass homicide.

To their great relief, it was merely one of America’s rapidly proliferating psychedelic churches, caught in the midst of a particularly intense Ayahuasca ceremony.

‘The officers just looked at us like we were a bunch of hippies stuffing crystals up our asses,’ says Colette Close, co-founder of the church, Hummingbird, who regales the story. 

‘They came in, did a wellness check and took off…Most cops have better things to do.’

Hummingbird is part of a global boom in people turning to hallucinogenic drugs in search of spiritual enlightenment, including NFL star Aaron Rodgers, actor Will Smith and Prince Harry.

Taking these substances – even for therapeutic purposes – remains illegal in most of the US, despite clamor for decriminalization.

But tens of thousands of Americans now say it is a sacrament that brings them closer to God – and that this religious freedom is protected in law.

It is thought anywhere between 200 to 2,000 psychedelic churches now exist across the US, from states with liberal drug laws such as California and Oregon, to resolutely conservative ones including Utah and Alabama.

Most are informal, underground networks, but some have public profiles and charge membership fees in exchange for drugs.

The majority are nomadic, hiring out retreats or Airbnbs in remote areas to avoid scrutiny, but some occupy permanent buildings in the mode of traditional churches.

Psychedelic preachers include a queer ‘Mushroom Pope’ in San Francisco and a former Mormon and Republican senator in Utah, while worshippers range from QAnon conspiracists to west coast hippies.

Some believe in a God, some do not.

But they all have one thing in common: they pray to a higher power.

Ayahuasca is the ‘conduit to the Holy Spirit’

Close herself is the vice president for the insurance division of America’s eighth largest bank.

But her high-powered corporate job is seemingly no barrier to her psychoactive proselytizing.

Her bosses are ‘really cool about it’, Close says, and she has even converted some of her co-workers.

The 43-year-old from Beaumont, California, first took Ayahuasca after struggling with postpartum depression following the birth of her daughter.

Raised a Catholic, she now believes it is ‘the conduit to the Holy Spirit’.

Indigenous Amazonians have used Ayahuasca for spiritual and religious purposes for hundreds of years, but its benefits have not been well studied. 

Close, however, is convinced of its power. 

‘It was only when I did Ayahuasca that I finally felt like I connected with God,’ she says.

‘And when you connect with God, it’s so f****** real. Like, it’s just so big. And you’re like, ‘Oh my God’, and you know, it’s God. You’re not like, ‘what is that?’ It’s like, this is God.

‘It’s really f****** scary when it first happens and it can make you feel like you’re going crazy or it can make you feel like you’re Jesus.

‘I feel like I’ve died multiple times.’

Close began organizing Ayahuasca ceremonies after meeting Colombian shaman Taita Pedro Davila six years ago.

They started out by word-of-mouth, with events held in Airbnbs often swiftly curtailed when hosts would check security cameras only to see their guests ‘barfing in buckets’ in smoke-filled rooms.

But this did nothing to dent their popularity; Close soon had waiting lists of around 100 people.

She founded the Hummingbird Church as a nonprofit in 2021, a year after the SWAT team descended on Joshua Tree.

It now has 2,800 registered members and puts on around 30 retreats a year, each of which caters to 30 to 35 people at $1,000 a pop.

But it is dwarfed by The Divine Assembly (TDA), a psychedelic church founded by former Republican state senator Steve Urquhart that boasts 10,000 members.

It has doubled in size in less than a year and has branches in Memphis, Dallas, Phoenix, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, as well as its home state of Utah.

Like most psychedelic churches, it diverges from traditional religions by lacking any codified scripture or dogma, nor does it require members to believe in the same God or gods – or in fact any at all.

Its one central tenet is that everyone has the right to spiritual autonomy.

Instead of wine and a wafer, TDA offers its followers grow-your-own magic mushroom kits so they can cultivate their own holy sacraments.

They even have a ‘spore of the month’, with kits costing $75, plus shipping. 

Mormons, QAnon and a queer ‘Mushroom Pope’ 

Urquhart, 58, like Close, had struggled with drug addiction throughout his adult life, hiding it from public view during his 16 years in the Utah state legislature.

He attempted suicide in 2015 and says he ‘dragged his carcass across the finish line’ of his political career, which ended the following year.

Ayahuasca was not the obvious answer to a man who joined the Mormon church aged 10, a notoriously authoritarian institution which shuns alcohol and caffeine.

But after abandoning his faith, Urquhart was drawn into the world of psychedelic therapy by family friends and first took the drug shortly after retiring from the Senate.

He never looked back. 

In fact, Urquhart represents a surprisingly large number of disaffected Mormons who have gone from one ‘goofy ass religion’ to another, as he puts it.

Hummingbird hosts many of its events in Hildale, Utah, a town infamous as the former stronghold for the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, a polygamist offshoot of the Mormon church.

As such, it attracts many escaped women looking for help, some of whom attend psychedelic ceremonies in traditional prairie dress.

Erin Weist, 44, left the Mormon church – although not the unofficial polygamist sect – in 2021. 

But, like many apostates, struggled with her uncertain place in the world after leaving a tight-knit community.

Her interest in plant-based medicines was sparked after meeting Urquhart’s wife, Sarah, at a women in business conference.

She has since been on around a dozen magic mushroom trips, a remarkably rapid turnaround for someone whose closest thing to booze or drugs had previously been a glass or two of Coca Cola.

But she credits psilocybin – commonly known as magic mushrooms – with putting her at ease with the ambiguities of life.

The mother-of-five also says one the ‘big attractions’ of TDA is its lack of dogma, in stark comparison to the ‘controlling’ Mormon church.

‘I think a lot of Mormons find that hugely appealing,’ she says.

To cap off the medley of misfits mixing mushrooms with God, the Covid pandemic drew QAnon conspiracists to psychedelic gatherings in defiance of government lockdowns, Close says.

But the cast would not be complete without Jade Edaj, aka ‘The Mushroom Pope’, a former skydiver and self-described queer who uses pronouns interchangeably and leads The Church of Cosmic Consciousness in the Castro District of San Francisco.

The church has 2,000 members, who sign an agreement that allows them to donate to the church in return for sacraments, which include its branded ‘Mighty Penis’ psilocybin chocolate bar, that bares the tagline ‘To The Moon And Back’.

‘If anything should qualify as sacred, it’s this’

But is all this actually legal?

Naturally occurring psychedelics like psilocybin and Ayahuasca remain a Schedule I substance at federal level, meaning there’s no medically accepted usage.

Colorado and Oregon have passed legislation allowing regulated use of magic mushrooms, while some cities in states including California and Michigan have adopted resolutions making personal use and possession of certain psychedelics the lowest law enforcement priority.

(This could explain the SWAT team’s ambivalence towards the Hummingbird ceremony in Joshua Tree.)

But even in these limited locations, decriminalization is not legalization and refers only to possession, not distribution.

Under most circumstances, the convening of large groups of people to take psychedelic drugs would spark the interest of law enforcement.

But proponents like Close and Urquhart believe that because these otherwise illegal activities form a central part of their religious practices, they are protected by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

There is, however, only established precedent for three religious groups in the US to use drugs for religious purposes.

The Native American Church, which uses peyote, is protected under the American Indian Freedom of Religion Act, and two Christian churches with Brazilian roots, which were subject to the 2006 ruling.

None of this covers the use of psilocybin.

While these precedents will have a bearing on any potential future prosecutions brought against other psychedelic churches, these will be fought on a case-by-case basis, with specific beliefs and practices taken into account, according to New York-based lawyer Allison Hoots.

Hoots, who is president of Sacred Plant Alliance, a group of 14 psychedelic churches that is trying to establish best practices, said the law will look favorably on those who can show they are ‘sincere’ in their assertion that drug-taking is central to their religious experience.

Indeed, it was Urquhart’s background as a lawmaker that led him to set up TDA in June 2020, following the realization that he could protect the ‘legally precarious’ psychedelic experiences he and others had been participating in.

He accepts – ‘in part’ – that this could lead skeptics to accuse him of working backwards, finding a legal caveat that allows him to continue taking illegal drugs.

But the former senator insists TDA ceremonies provide an ‘authentic’ religious experience, despite admitting he longer believes in God.

‘I spent my entire life in church pews,’ he says. ‘Never once have I had an experience like I have every single time I take psychedelics, where I really feel connected to myself and others in the universe.

‘If anything should qualify for religion, as sacred, it’s this.’

Urquhart encourages TDA members to write down personal doctrines during ‘creed writing’ sessions to demonstrate sincerity.

It also offers membership cards to help worshippers show that psychedelic sacrament is ‘central’ to their religion.

Crackdown imminent?

Hoots says churches can also protect themselves by demonstrating they are minimizing the risks of harm to their worshippers.

Hummingbird, for example, has brought in doctors, nurses and CPR-trained staff to ceremonies and encourages attendees to stop taking certain medications before they arrive.

But it has not been immune from scrapes with the law.

The FBI have been involved twice, once when a domestic package of Ayahuasca exploded in transit, and again when the church was importing the drug from South America during Covid.

Nudity is common at its ceremonies, while veterans or immigrants with PTSD have been known to feel like they are in hostage situations and start begging to be released.

The church has never been charged with an offense.

Others have been treated more harshly.

Soul Tribes International, a psychedelic church in Detroit, Michigan, was shut down by city officials in October last year, prompting its shaman Boby Shu to blast the move as a ‘violation’ of its religious freedoms.

Officials in Oregon have issued a cease-and-desist order to a psychedelic training program run by Saba Cooperative.

Program director, Shasta Winn, says Saba is a religious organization and therefore immune from state interference. 

And in August 2020, Oakland police seized $200,000 worth of cannabis and mushrooms from the Zide Door Church, which has a physical location where followers can pick up drugs in exchange for donations.

Its founder, Dave Hodges, told DailyMail.com that the police had no right to raid the premises as the church was not breaking the law.

Zide Door gained over 70,000 new members since the raid, according to Hodges. 

But Close fears a government crackdown is imminent, given the dangers the largely underground industry poses to public health.

She believes that while churches like Hummingbird and TDA are properly run with sincere intentions and safeguards, the ‘vast majority’ are not.

‘It attracts a lot of predators, just like organized religion,’ she says.

‘You also have a lot of people that are coming from a background of substance abuse, mental illness, and they get into this and think this is a great way to make money.

‘It becomes a hustle and they have no f****** idea what they’re doing.’

For now, though, the trip continues.