And so.
Do you ming turning around for me?
Yeah.
We're just going to make sure
there's no weapons. No weapons.
A mouse and a wallet in the pocket.
A mouse?
A light? A light.
Oh, I get it. Oh, yeah.
On November 11, 2024,
Bridger Lee Jensen was leaving his
job in Provo, Utah, when
four Provo City police officers
swarmed him on all sides.
So you do have the right to remain
silent.
Anything you say can and will be
used against in a court of law.
The reason for this arrest?
The magic mushrooms that Bridger
kept locked in a safe in
the building he just walked out of.
Yes. Okay.
So is this in regard to psilocybin
or is there other allegations of it?
So this is in regard psilocybin.
All right.
Okay.
But this was not your typical drug
bust.
According to Bridger, the psilocybin
in question was sacramental and
belonged to a new religion he had
founded called Singularism.
What the police didn't know was that
this raid would kick off one of the
most closely watched legal battles
related to psychedelics and
religious practice.
If there's anything the United
States is willing to defend,
it's religious freedom.
It's our first amendment.
It's their number one.
And for religious leaders like
Bridger Jensen, psilocybin
isn't a recreational drug or
a pharmaceutical medicine,
but a sacred spiritual tool.
He's not the first to make that
claim, but he is among the
newest to argue it in a court of
law.
And unlike in decades past,
the court appears to be listening.
In part because of Utah's brand
new religious freedom law.
This week on Altered States,
reporter Cassady Rosenblum takes us
there to see how the state is
applying its new law to psychedelic
churches and how what
happens in Utah might reverberate
through the rest of the country.
I'm Ariel Duhaime-Ross, and this is
Altered States.
Cassady takes it from here.
Bridger Jensen had been worried
about a police raid since opening
his psychedelic church, and
now it was here.
Surrounded by officers, his heart
was pounding.
I don't think you need to make sure
of that.
In fact, I claim religious
exemption.
The officers let Bridger make his
case on the spot.
They questioned him for hours,
but ultimately they decided not to
take him to jail.
I'd rather have my day
in court, to be honest.
And that's what it seems like to me,
this is an opportunity for you to
have your case presented in court.
To hear that from you, do you know
how much that means to me?
Yeah. It makes me feel like this is
what the system is for.
Bridger got to go home to his kids
that night.
Then, just a week later, he
went on the offensive.
He sued Utah for violating his
religious freedom.
His lawsuit referenced all of the
usual suspects, the
First Amendment, which protects
religion, the Fourth Amendment,
which protects unreasonable searches
and seizures, and Utah's
state constitution.
But Bridger also targeted something
called the Religious Freedom
Restoration Act, or RFRA.
RFRA is a federal law that protects
Americans' right to practice their
religion.
It's actually more robust on
religious protections than the First
Amendment.
But it only prevents federal
overreach.
It can't do anything about state
authorities.
To cover this gap, some states
have started passing their own
RFRAs.
Today, over half of states have
one.
And last year, Utah joined
the club.
Unanimously passing what some
experts have called the most
expansive RFRA in the country.
Here is Republican State Senator
Todd Wyler talking about the bill.
This RFRA is not just for Catholics
or evangelicals or for
Mormons, if you will, it's
for all religious beliefs.
Singularism would argue that
includes religious beliefs involving
psychedelics.
To learn more about Singularisms
case, I took a trip to Provo,
45 minutes south of Salt Lake City.
It's a part of the country I spent a
lot of time in because Utah is
home to a lot of psychedelic
activity.
Utah? Some of you are thinking,
really?
That conservative Mormon state?
Yes, that one.
Somewhere around half of the state's
population is Mormon or Latter-day
Saint.
And the church that Joseph Smith
founded nearly 200 years ago
still looms large.
In 1890, Mormons gave up
the practice of polygamy in exchange
for Utah's admittance to the union.
And this cultural memory of
being an outcast religion plays
a poetic role in Utah's psychedelic
story today.
On a rainy morning in May, my
producer and I pulled up to a
tasteful brick building.
All right, here we go.
The door says, know
your inner universe by
appointment only.
Well, I think we have an
appointment.
Hello?
Hello.
Come on in.
How are you?
I'm Bridger.
Cassidy
Is it okay if we record?
Yeah, it's okay if you record.
I think that's what we're here for,
right?
For decades, permitted religious
use of psychedelics was extremely
limited.
The government allowed Native
Americans to use peyote in religious
practices.
Then, two churches got the right
to use ayahuasca, the UDV,
which you heard about in episode 5,
and a church in Ashland, Oregon,
in the Santo Daime tradition.
But recently the pace seems to be
picking up.
Last year, the Church of the Eagle
and Condor in Phoenix, Arizona
became the fourth group permitted to
use psychedelic substances in their
religious ceremonies.
This year, in Spokane, Washington,
the Church of Gaia became the fifth,
and the California-based Church of
the Celestial Heart became the
sixth.
Now, in Provo, Utah,
Bridger is hoping Singularism will
become the seventh.
I'm going to change the music.
Alexa, turn on
sound bath.
And just in case you're imagining a
classic church with pews and
some sort of lectern,
wipe that idea from your mind.
Singularism looks like a cross
between a nail salon and
a therapy office.
Picture plastic orchids and
gold imitation marble floors.
Here, for $1,600 a
session, clients trip with
Bridger or another facilitator.
Singularisim calls these clients
voyagers.
Since officially opening in
September 2023,
Bridger estimates Singularism has
served about 100 of them.
He says the goal, with the help of
psilocybin tea, is to
touch the divine.
Psilocybin
for a few hours helps
people see consciousness without
the constructs, helps people
to see their life without the
incessant suffering and
pain and anxiety that our bodies
have become so accustomed
to, we no longer even see it.
The truth is, I have never wanted
to teach Bridger's
religion. I want people to find
their own within our walls.
The whole concept is.
That every individual is
their own prophet and can have their
own revelations and visions, and
that that is true
for them so long as
they use that to make the
world a better place, beginning with
themselves.
If this sort of therapy-religion
hybrid sounds confusing to you,
it did to me too.
I don't know why everybody wants
me to choose between them,
but if it reminds you of a therapist
or a coach-like model, that's
simply to make it sustainable.
But Singularism's model also
reflects the fact that Bridger
himself is a trained and
certified therapist,
or at least he used to be one.
In 2019, he let his license
lapse.
He says it was intentional.
I really think that a huge
portion of mental
health therapy is not
being done the way
it was most effective,
which is with a strong relationship
between a
client and a
therapist. And I feel like there
are a number of practices
and maybe mostly related
to insurance companies.
That have polluted the whole
field of psychotherapy and
made it almost impossible to
practice in the old traditional ways
because of how we have to document
things and afraid of clients for
litigation purposes.
And this is something I'd come to
understand about Bridger.
He sees himself as operating
above the rules.
Growing up in Provo, there were
a lot of them.
I am certainly a product
of Utah's,
you know, predominant religion.
Everybody's involved with
the, what you'd say, the
church here, the Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Bridger says that God was
emphasized in his family as much
as school, and in school
he chafed against authority.
I was the – I mean, imagine
Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes, very
much like them. I read Calvin and
Hobbes like I read
scripture. They're trying to make
them conform and do
all these things, but he's
a free spirit.
Bridger is now 44, but
he still acts boyish.
On the day we met him, he was
wearing a navy vest and button down,
but no shoes.
His own introduction to psychedelics
happened quite by accident on
a trip to Peru when he was 24.
I was hiking into Machu Picchu
and I made friends with
like these Sherpa porters.
One night, they beckoned Bridger
over, but he didn't speak Quechua,
and they didn't English.
We were both trying to communicate
with a little Spanish and they said
we have a drink for you.
And I was like, oh
They placed the drink in front of
Bridger and tried to warn him
about what was inside.
They're like, "muy fuerte".
And I was like, oh, I know I'm a
big, strong guy, thanks.
And then they laughed, and I was
about to drink it.
But my religion of the time said
no drinking.
And I said, oh is there no alcohol
in here, right?
And they were like, yeah, no
alcohol. And I'm like, okay,
I guess I can do this.
And I drank a cup
of what I now know to be ayahuasca.
What happened next, says Bridger,
was one of the most incredible
nights of his life.
He saw spirits.
He had visions.
And this really surprised him,
because at the time, he was still
Mormon, but also
deeply skeptical.
I was actually kind of coming out
of the religion of my upbringing and
into more of an atheist or agnostic
time of my life.
It was psychedelics that led me back
to believing in God and recognizing
a different kind of God than
the one I had ever been taught
about.
This is a theme I hear a lot in
my reporting.
Psychedelics can make a non-believer
believe again or believe
for the first time.
Bridger is a part of a small yet
growing group who believes these
substances could even reanimate
religion.
I think we're in a golden age
right now for this.
It might be easy to look at it and
be like, no, we're, we are in the
age of overthrowing religion.
And I'm like, oh, humans will never
overthrow religion.
We are not made to live without
it. I think religion is
what we make it and
we broke it.
So we have the opportunity to
remake it. But to think that we're
just going to abandon religion
is an absurd idea.
Still, there's a pretty big
difference between having a
profoundly spiritual trip
and founding a new religion.
I literally felt called
upon in a
humble way like many others
to facilitate.
And I felt that
I could contribute
to a lot
of good thoughts and ideas on
how to do this right.
Singularism, I found it in
part because I wanted to
be able to bring this helpful
and sacred medicine
to more people.
Singularism is only two years old,
but Bridger says the idea for it
started percolating in 2016.
He was hosting psychedelic sessions
out of his home then, but over
the years, he became something
of a man obsessed.
There's this amazing subplot
in Close Encounters of the Third
Kind where this guy sees
a ship, an alien ship,
and then he can't stop
sculpting a mountain.
And he doesn't even know what it is,
but he's sculpting it in his mashed
potatoes. And then he starts
sculpting with clay, and then start
sculpting in his front room, and he
becomes obsessed.
And he tries to focus on
work and his family and everything
going on in his life.
But he's becoming dysfunctionally
crazy sculpting this and
it was a bit like that for me
when I realized
I just need to do this and
so I haven't ever
questioned it even among great
amounts of pressure.
That pressure arrived in the form
of criminal charges.
About a month after Bridger filed
his RFRA suit against Utah County
in November, the county
opened a second case against
Bridger, accusing him of
having intent to distribute illegal
drugs.
But this summer, the judge
overseeing the case found the
county's prosecution to be
retaliatory and described
it as brought, quote, in bad
faith.
It's been hard, and
I'm a family man
to the core.
I am a person that
loves my government and my
community.
I've never wanted to be in
the limelight or in controversy,
and I just like
what we do.
In the weeks after the raid,
Singularism lost a lot of business,
or attendance, as Bridger would say.
Singularisms office manager,
Brandi Lee, testified in court
that they were unable to pay their
staff for a month.
But this spring when I visited him,
Bridger had more pressing matters on
his mind.
I just want to move on, the
thought of jail time
and arrests, losing my
children, losing my wonderful
life over all of
this.
Losing my center and
doing so because I'm
just practicing what I
feel compelled to do
spiritually and religiously.
Uh, I
just don't want that to be something
I have to endure for this.
I would.
And I will.
I don't want that.
To fight for him in court, Bridger
hired a young, ambitious
Mormon lawyer.
Honestly, I was skeptical and
one day I asked,
would you defend my
religion as
ferociously as you would your own?
And I remember he put his pen down
and he looked at me
and he said, Bridger,
defending your religion
is defending my religion.
The lawyer's name is Tanner Bean.
I met Tanner at his law office,
Fabian Vancott, located in
a sleek skyscraper in downtown
Salt Lake.
The elevator ride alone was a
cultural experience.
So this building is kind of a marker
for the interaction of religion
and society itself.
It was constructed by the Church of
Jesus Christ at Latter-day Saints.
But the unique thing about it
is that there is
a church in the bottom.
So in a sense, it's an interesting
locale to be our
religious freedom attorney
and see the navigation of
religion in society, every day.
You mentioned that you're a
Latter-day Saint.
As I understand, the use
of substances is
forbidden.
Did it give you pause that
Singularism uses psilocybin
as its sacrament?
Perhaps it gave me pause, you know,
my own religious convictions are
strong.
But as a Mormon, he says he
gets what it's like to be, quote,
a minority religion.
We often are the recipient of that
sort of skepticism.
And so there's often a lot of in the
understanding of how
we protect those that
some perceive to be on the margins
of what is mainstream.
Representing Bridgerton in
Singularism, Tanner decided to make
Utah's shiny new RFRA the
heart of his case.
You're going to keep hearing me say
RFRA a lot in this episode,
so it's worth pausing to unpack its
history.
We mentioned that some states have
RFRAs, modeled off of
the federal RFRA.
The federal RFRA is the one people
have usually heard of.
You might remember it as a law that
allowed Hobby Lobby, the arts and
crafts retailer owned by an
evangelical family, to deny
its employees birth control coverage
back in 2014.
But RFRA is not just for
conservative Christians.
In fact, the law was actually
born of psychedelic origins.
It was a case called Employment
Division versus Smith.
In the mid-1980s,
Alfred Smith and Galen Black were
fired from their jobs and denied
unemployment benefits in Oregon
for using peyote.
The men had consumed it ceremonially
with the Native American church.
Smith and Black sued the government
claiming that their denial of
benefits violated their First
Amendment right to the free exercise
of religion.
The case dragged on for years, but
eventually the Supreme Court
rejected their claim.
Now that's sent a lot of people into
an uproar.
And so in 1993, Congress
passed RFRA to bring back
what is known as strict scrutiny,
the highest standard of
constitutional review for religious
freedom claims.
In other words, Congress told the
government, hey, you need to
tread lightly on people's religion.
If you're going to limit someone's
worship, you better have a, quote,
compelling reason to do so.
And if you do have one, you need
be as non-intrusive as possible
and use a standard called, quote,
the least
restrictive means.
And this least restrictive-means
part became a really
key element of Singularism's
argument.
Because when they opened their doors
in 2023, they actually
sent a letter to the Provo city
police chief, mayor,
district attorney, and city council,
telling them exactly what they were
doing.
Bridger invited them to come stop
by.
No one ever responded.
Until that is the day of
the police raid.
Which, Tanner argued, was
not exactly the least restrictive
means.
We'll be right back.
When it comes to psychedelic
churches populated by former
Mormons, Singularism
is not the only game in town.
It shares a space with the much
bigger and slightly older Divine
Assembly.
The Divine Assembly is
a mystic religion.
It has one tenet, which is
each individual can commune with the
Divine and receive guidance.
That's Steve Urquhart, The Divine
Assembly's co-founder.
I used to say that we
had members on every continent
except for Antarctica,
and a researcher down there sent me
a picture with a card saying, you
need to stop saying that.
Steve is the OG when it comes
to psychedelics and religion in
Utah.
He was once a maverick Republican in
Utah's legislature.
And this very unique career
arc helped him understand
how exactly religion rules
in the U.S., especially
in Utah
I was in the Utah Senate
and there fought
for LGBTQ rights and
fought against the Mormon Church,
which largely runs the state of
Utah and runs the Utah legislature.
And I saw in
that battle, trying to get
employment housing protections and
ultimately succeeding at that,
just the enormous power
and protection that religion has.
After I left the Senate,
I discovered psychedelics
and started to really heal and just
came alive spiritually and
found just tremendous value
in that and then I was thinking
well, wait a second I happen to
know a thing or two about religious
freedom being a lawyer and
having fought for three years
against the Mormon Church's
so-called religious liberties.
And so I thought man if anything
is religious This is it
and I want a lot of people to
have this. And so
I worked with some really
genius lawyers to
come up with something where people
could have added protection
to worship.
That added protection is basically
a membership card that members
receive in the mail in exchange for
$100, declaring that
psilocybin is their religious
sacrament.
And so just like early Christians
were hiding from Romans,
not all religions are equal in
the United States despite what the
Constitution says.
And so we have to take
precautions.
So far, these precautions have
seemed to work.
Over the last three years, the
Divine Assembly has had surprisingly
little legal trouble.
The Divine Assembly is set up,
so really there's nothing to shut
down.
They've never been raided by the
police, for example.
It helps that they don't have a
brick and mortar to raid.
Instead, members guide sessions for
each other in their homes.
The Divine Assembly, the
organization of it, it's patterned
after mushroom mycelium,
and I probably should add that that
came to me in a mushroom vision.
That decentralized philosophy
is more than just a way to evade
police.
It also reflects a fear about
hierarchy that I've heard a
lot in Utah.
After people leave the Mormon
church, they're often scared to
replicate its power dynamics, even
accidentally.
Sometimes they get replicated
anyway.
Some of my friends, we
left Mormonism around the same
time, we helped each
other discover psychedelics at the
same, and
a few of them, it
seemed to me, and they now
tend to agree with that,
that they were wanting to replace
their Mormon bishop with some
guru, some shaman who could
swing a pendulum a certain
direction, and that would tell them
how much ayahuasca to drink, what
they should do with their kids.
Steve says that out of his many
psychedelic experiences,
he's had two guides that reminded
him of what he didn't like about
Mormon church hierarchy.
Any kind of Abrahamic church where
you're told exactly what to do
and you're probably doing it
wrong, where they're big and you
are small.
And so, you know, now I realize that
was shamanic abuse.
Still, Steve says
he's grateful he experienced
it.
I'm really glad it happened because
that teaches me that
there's abuse in
psychedelic worship just like there
is in Abrahamic
religions. It turned me off,
but fortunately some people grabbed
me and said, all right, how about
let's get together and just
experience these things as friends
and we won't have any top-down
guide and that's
where we came up with the tenet.
That no one is in charge,
no one leads any other individual.
Each individual is a mystic
seeking, and that way we
avoid those power dynamics
where we have sheep and
shepherd, because often the
sheep get preyed on in that
modality.
It's important to understand that
there is a lot of trial and error
happening in the US when it comes to
psychedelics and religion.
Most Americans have not inherited
these practices over millennia.
It's not like Judaism or Catholicism
for better or worse.
And so people are really building
this plane as they're flying it.
Singularism represents a distinct
model of psychedelic worship.
Unlike the divine assembly, They do
have formal guides, primarily
Bridger.
He also now works with roughly 10
other facilitators he trained
himself, including his
girlfriend Brandi Lee.
Brandi wears a lot of different hats
at Singularism.
You heard her name before as her
office manager.
Today, she's playing tour guide
at the Singularisim offices.
Dressed in a tweed miniskirt and
pink kitten heels, she leads
us from room to room.
You know, we wanted it to feel
kind of like a cross between
a spa and homey.
Do people ever ask you why is
it called Singularism?
Uh-huh.
What do you say?
I say because while you're
on the medicine, you come to the
realization that we are all one.
Everything is connected.
Plants, the trees, earth,
stars, we're all one.
This idea that everything is
connected is a big change
from what Brandi believed before.
So before Singularism,
I'm a mom of four.
I was married for
24 years.
I was a member of the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
and was born into it
and was part of
it until I was 44 years
old. I devoted pretty much
my life to it.
God before was a man
that was just sitting up in
heaven and
ruling the earth.
And to me, he was always loving,
but also there
had to be a checklist to get to
him.
Now I don't believe that there's
a single God.
It's so much bigger.
I believe that it's mainly
our highest selves that we are
getting answers from and connecting to.
Like a lot of people, Brandi's
journey to psychedelics and
singularism began with
a period of profound pain.
In 2020, her world shattered
when her dad died unexpectedly.
And then about six months after
that.
Um, my little brother takes
his own life.
And literally six months after
that.
My husband, who was my best friend.
He tells me he doesn't want to be
married anymore.
I would explain it to people because
they would say, how are you?
And I would say I am literally
below hell.
Like I can't even crawl up.
During this time,
Brandi says she would sit in her
closet and cry all day.
She was also still turning to the
Mormon church for answers.
I was like going to the temple every
week. I would fast every
Sunday, no matter what.
Like even at lacrosse tournaments
that it was like blazing hot,
I still wouldn't drink water because
I was trying to save my marriage.
I was try to hear God,
trying to get answers from him,
begging him, you
know, to like help me.
And I couldn't find him, no matter what.
After about a year of this grieving,
Brandi's friends suggested she try
psilocybin with Bridger.
And I was like, I have never, I
never had a drink of alcohol.
I had never done anything.
And I was like, no. No way.
But after talking to a family member
who had been helped by mushrooms,
she changed her mind.
I met Bridger and I
decided I wanted to do four sessions
with him.
And yeah, that's how it all started.
Now, this was before Singularism
had a building.
At the time, Bridger was offering
sessions out of his home office.
So that's where Brandi drank her
first cup of psilocybin tea and
waited for the effects to kick in.
My dad came to me,
and my brother came,
and they told me they were happy,
they were good, and
it just healed
that grief part of
me, knowing that they're in a
good place, especially
with suicide, right?
You're always worried and wonder
and taught in religion
that they go to hell, and he's
like, no, I'm not in hell, Brandi, I
am happy.
That was session number one.
Another time, Brandi says she saw
Jesus.
He was crying in her vision and
told her that organized religion has
him wrong.
I got the sense that
it was not about him,
that he taught
that God was within
us, that
he didn't want to be worshiped,
and that we don't need a middleman
from us to source.
And I was like, wait, what?
That was earth-shattering
for me because I was still going
to the temple, still going to church
still like.
Still trying to
be this religious, spiritual
person to like,
heal me.
And after that session,
I went to the spot that my
brother
died and I sat there and I cried for
about five hours and
then I just let it go.
I was like, okay, I'm done.
And I don't hold
any ill will towards the church.
It was beautiful and it served
its purpose.
But I always tell people, because
they're like, well, you're in a faith
crisis. I'm like, no, I'm in
a faith expansion.
Brandi was all in.
She started doing more and more at
Singularism.
Then, at a pace that raised some
eyebrows in the community,
Bridger asked Brandi out.
They shifted from guide and voyager
to boyfriend and girlfriend.
Before long, she was shadowing
Bridger during sessions.
So I would go sit ith him. And
then I just would watch the
beautiful sessions.
And then, I was like, I love this.
And so, he's like, do you wanna be a
facilitator?
And I was, like, I don't know if I
can do that. I'd only been a
stay-at-home mom.
And he's, like Brandi, you can do
this. You have been through so
much and you have so much compassion
and empathy.
And Brandi did understand a lot of
Singularism's clientele.
Many were former Mormon women like
her.
It's because there's so much
pressure from the
LDS Church to
be perfect.
Some psychiatrists in Utah even have
a name for this phenomenon.
They call it Mother of Zion
Syndrome.
You want to be this perfect mother
and you want your kids to be
perfect and to do all
the right things and get baptized,
go on a mission, go to college,
get married in the temple, have kids
and then their kids have to be
perfect too, right?
And then when they're not, then
you're like, well then I failed.
Bridger trained Brandi with
curriculum he wrote himself,
and Brandi started watching
psilocybin work, what to her
looked like miracles.
Like in the case of a woman with a
nervous system disorder.
She couldn't get out of bed, she
couldn't drive.
She was very physically limited
because of her POTS.
Well, during her first session,
she danced around the
whole time and she
would like have her hands.
It's almost like she was playing
with like taffy or spider webs or
something. And she's just happy and
she's twirling and she dancing
around.
And then when her session was over
and she came down from it, she was
like, I have not moved like
that since I was little.
And it was these kinds of stories of
real people experiencing real
healing that Singularism emphasized
in court.
On December 13th, Bridger
and Brandi both testified for
Singularism via Zoom.
They were there to ask for a
temporary restraining order and a
preliminary injunction, which would
let Singularism stay open while
the case is ongoing.
Presiding that day was Jill Parish,
a federal judge for the United
States District Court for the
District of Utah.
And right off the bat, it was clear
that this was not going to be a
snoozer of a hearing.
They cross-examined me against the
Meyers criteria.
The Meyers criteria is a standard
developed in 1995 to
determine whether a marijuana church
in Wyoming was a religion.
Spoiler alert, the courts ruled no.
And they said, do you have the
answers to life's universal
questions?
Yes or no.
And I was like,
no. And anybody that says they
do, that's the scam
artist you're looking for.
They asked me, do believe
in God?
And I like, it's complicated.
They asked then, are you a prophet?
And I'm like, no more or
less than every other voyager
that comes through our
doors.
These answers did not fit
the Meyers criteria.
They were too wishy-washy and
non-dogmatic.
But Judge Parish ruled.
She was not going to hold it against
Singularism that they had,
quote, existential humility.
And that is maybe the most
poignant and important part of this
case because it does
expand the definition of religion.
In February, Judge Parish
delivered a scathing opinion
in favor of Singularism.
She wrote, and I quote,
"'The court has no difficulty
concluding that plaintiffs are
sincere in their beliefs and that
those beliefs are religious in
nature.'" She went on to scold
the county for characterizing
Bridger as a criminal.
She said, quote, "'The Court
is hard pressed to find as
defendants urge that Singularism
is essentially a drug-dealing
business cloaked in a minister's
robe.
She granted them the preliminary
injunction.
She ordered the police to return the
mushrooms.
And a few months later, she also
ordered that the criminal charges
against Bridger be dismissed.
Singularism's case is far from over,
but as it winds through the courts,
all eyes are on Utah.
A lot of us are just excited to
see this lack of discrimination..
That's Allison Hoots, an attorney
who has been practicing at the
intersection of psychedelics and
religion since 2017.
She's also the executive director
of Sacred Plant Alliance,
a non-profit association of churches
that use a controlled substance
for sacramental purposes.
Allison says there are many things
that stand out to her about
Singularism's case.
One of them is the psilocybin.
All past RFRA cases
where there were decisions
that were quite positive,
meaning protective of the religious
practice where it did involve a
controlled substance, it was
always ayahuasca.
Ayahuasca is an unusual substance
because it often involves intense
vomiting.
It's not exactly what you might call
fun.
Therefore, some have reasoned,
it's less likely to be abused and
less likely be used recreationally.
Psilocybin, by contrast, is often
used recreationly.
But, Allison says, just because
some use it that way doesn't mean
others can't use it spiritually.
For psilocybin-containing mushrooms
to now be
moving its way into the,
okay, the U.S.
Courts are seeing it as something
religious. That was really exciting.
Another striking part was that the
court didn't seem to mind that
singularism charges for their
services.
In the past, the government has
tended to look skeptically at
psychedelic churches that have a
commercial component.
Which I always thought was very
strange because so
many people go to
religious spaces to deal with
their mental health.
But the thing I love to point to is
the fact that the Internal Revenue
Code actually has
a certain way to characterize
donations made to a church
specifically in exchange for,
quote, admission to ceremonies,
end quote.
And those are called intangible
religious benefits that you receive.
Sort of as a quid pro quo,
but is not detracting
from the religiosity of a church in
any way.
Despte Singularism's early successes,
Allison doesn't think we will see a
wave of psychedelic churches
suddenly suing under state RFRAs.
So it actually isn't a great
legal strategy.
That's because while a state RFR
will protect you from the state,
it won't protect you from the feds.
Even if Singularism wins its case,
it most likely won't get a federal
exemption from Controlled Substances
Act.
While it might be persuasive that
one state decided one
thing to another state,
it is not required.
So somebody now in California
might say,
oh, but look at singularism,
look at this great case law.
And unless that court regularly
uses Utah law as
persuasive, it's not
helpful at all.
And only Utah is
required to use this kind of
case law to decide its future
cases.
Allison also says there are some things that trouble
her about singularism.
I was shocked to see
how little there really was that
existed with the religious
practices and beliefs of this
community, and
was grateful but also concerned,
you know, they are such a young
church.
So there is, as
things expand, this need for
a lot of organization.
How do you deal with
internal disputes?
What is part of a church
activity and what is not?
Rules, rules, rules.
They're a buzzkill to someone like
Bridger, who fancies himself a
sort of Calvin from Calvin and
Hobbes.
But Alison has seen firsthand what
can happen when rules are missing.
It's something I've seen too,
especially in places like Utah.
People can be so excited to leave
the Mormon church.
They sometimes start doing all the
things that were once forbidden all
at once.
Psychedelics, sex, alcohol.
After a lifetime of
so much restriction the freedom can
be overwhelming.
Yet if the psychedelic church
movement is going to continue to
grow, developing some safeguards
and rules is essential for
the safety and sanctity
of these spaces.
Next time on Altered States,
what does consent culture look like
within Utah's psychedelic churches
and what can the rest of the country
learn from their growing pains?
Altered States is a production of
the UC Berkeley Center for the
Science of Psychedelics and PRX.
This episode was reported and
produced by Cassady Rosenblum.
Field production by Jonathan
Nellarmore.
Adizah Eghan is our senior editor.
Our executive editor is Malia
Wollan.
Jennie Cataldo is our Senior
Producer and our researcher is
Cassasy Rosenblum Our associate
producer is Jade Abdul Malik and
our audio engineers are Terence
Bernardo and Jennie Cataldo.
Fact Checking by Graham Hacia.
Special thanks to Bob Jesse.
Our executive producers are Malia
Wollan and Jocelyn Gonzales,
and our project manager is Edwin
Ochoa.
Our theme music is by Thao Nguyen
and Nate Brenner.
And I'm your host, Ariel
Duhaime-Ross.
Be sure to subscribe, rate, and
review Altered States wherever you
get your podcasts.
Most well-known psychedelics remain
illegal around the world, including
in the United States, where it is
a criminal offense to manufacture,
possess, dispense, or supply most
psychedelics with few exceptions.
Altered states does not recommend or
encourage the use of psychedelics or
offer instructions in their use.