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.