MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
The city of Colorado Springs is home to a unique congregation that sprung up last year - the Colorado Psychedelic Church. That is its official name. It blends spirituality and the ceremonial use of psychedelics. But as Colorado Public Radio's Hayley Sanchez reports, substances may get people in the door, but community is what they say keeps them coming back. And a warning - this story describes the use of drugs that are illegal in many parts of the United States and can be dangerous.
BENJI DEZAVAL: Hey, y'all. I'm glad we waited.
HAYLEY SANCHEZ, BYLINE: On a rainy Tuesday evening, nearly 20 congregants enter through a walk-out basement door. They quietly settle into a circle of couches. It looks like an ordinary book club or Bible study. Benji Dezaval opens the weekly gathering at the church with a lecture, similar to a sermon. Each week has a theme. This one's maternal energy.
DEZAVAL: Because when we say mother, most people, of course, will hear woman.
SANCHEZ: Forty-three-year-old Lee Mead attends church events regularly. He works in nonprofit and moved to Colorado Springs from Houston last August, not knowing anyone. And within a week, he stumbled on the Psychedelic Church.
LEE MEAD: It's not just a bunch of people doing drugs in some guy's dingy basement. Like, it is nice down here. And it is more about the community than the substances.
SANCHEZ: Mead is just one of many congregants who all say the same thing about this place. That sense of connection was proven to him one night after taking psilocybin at the church. As he was coming back to reality, he says the stress of work and realizing how unhappy he was caused a panic attack.
MEAD: People that had just seen me, like, maybe three times here at the church carried me through that and said a lot of very affirming and calming things, which, of course, made it even worse because I was receiving love that I didn't feel I was worthy of. And so to feel that love and that compassion from people who were strangers - I hadn't felt that level of care and level of love for a long time.
SANCHEZ: Mead says he didn't use psychedelics in the months following, but he never missed a Friday gathering.
MEAD: This is my family here. This is truly my third place.
SANCHEZ: This is the Colorado Psychedelic Church, a self-described spiritual community that uses psychedelics in communal ceremonies.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: We're going to go ahead and get everything ready (ph). So within this is the DMT itself. Make sure...
SANCHEZ: At the end of the weekly guidance, a small offering - one puff of DMT, short for dimethyltryptamine. The compound occurs naturally in some plants and animals and is a powerful psychedelic known for its short but intense effects.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: It's not going to be like cannabis where you inhale, exhale and your lungs suck it right up.
SANCHEZ: The use of substances like this is illegal under federal law. Colorado decriminalized certain psychedelics in 2022, and since then, therapy clinics have popped up. The state's regulated program requires licensed facilitators to oversee preparation, facilitation and integration after. The state does not regulate informal settings, like at the Psychedelic Church. In services, the church uses DMT, psilocybin, iboga and mescaline, all of which were decriminalized in Colorado.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Thank you so much for sharing this time with me.
SANCHEZ: Before anyone takes a dose here, Dezaval, the church's founder, says people go through a safety screening. Participants must be over 21 and are required to complete training that explains the effects of psychedelics and how to navigate the experience.
DEZAVAL: We have this to make sure that we put the responsibility and the accountability on people. It's not, I gave you this - godspeed. No, I gave you this - I gave you the tools to do it right, so I want to make sure that you can heal, not get hurt.
SANCHEZ: Some facilitators at the church have medical training and are on hand in case of emergencies, Dezaval says. They ask participants about medications that may interact dangerously with psychedelics, like some antidepressants. Dezaval says what started as three people in his basement has grown to nearly 700 congregants, and the church is soon expanding into a second home down the block.
DEZAVAL: There's a lot of people who are looking so hard to find a place to belong. And the No. 1 thing that I've heard - I mean, we're talking since that first month - is, I've been looking for this.
SANCHEZ: The New England Journal of Medicine recently released a large study on psilocybin and depression, which showed positive signs but that more data is needed. One thing researchers did agree on, though - human connection matters. And that could help explain why places like the Psychedelic Church resonate for people like Sara Snapp.
SARA SNAPP: What makes this place magical is not the mushrooms. It's that when you walk in that door, your armor falls off. And it's in that softness and vulnerability that we build these relationships.
SANCHEZ: Snapp is a stay-at-home mom with a background in religious studies. Raised Catholic, she says she spent much of her life feeling alone.
SNAPP: I say I was diagnosed with depression following the birth of my daughter, but I had been depressed for almost my whole life.
SANCHEZ: A year ago, she tried psilocybin in a therapeutic setting and says it changed everything.
SNAPP: I found exactly what I needed here. I found the community that I was searching for. I found people who wanted to know the real me.
SANCHEZ: This church doesn't fit neatly into a box. It's part support group, part spiritual sanctuary, part experiment. For people like Mead and Snapp, it's something else entirely - a place where they say they feel connected to something bigger than themselves. For NPR News, I'm Hayley Sanchez in Colorado Springs.
(SOUNDBITE OF GOTYE SONG, "SOMEBODY THAT I USED TO KNOW") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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