(Image source: Marcus Chin for UCSF Magazine)

Hannah remembers exactly where she was when she got the news her father was killed by a hit-and-run driver. Out for dinner and drinks with friends in Seattle, she noticed the missed call first. Then, the text messages from her older sister. When she stepped outside to talk to her mom on the phone, her father was already gone.

“I just stood there, frozen,” the 38-year-old said, “looking out and taking in the details. The way the sidewalk smelled after recent rain. The squeaking sound of the restaurant door as it swung open. The way a red light reflected off a puddle across the street. Every detail just singed into my memory.”

But Hannah could not remember the weeks and months that followed. “There was just a blur, a blank spot,” she said. There were family gatherings, a funeral, boxes of photos, and other details that Hannah struggled to recall.

Though the particulars were missing, the despair she felt only deepened. After a couple of years, her prolonged feelings of sadness and hopelessness drove her to seek therapy. She was prescribed antidepressants, but nothing seemed to help. Hannah withdrew from her church community and friends, developed anger management issues, and struggled with suicidal thoughts.

But then, Hannah came across a 2013 study from the University of South Florida about how psilocybin, the psychedelic compound found in “magic mushrooms,” can stimulate nerve cell growth in parts of the brain responsible for emotion and memory.

She sought out a counselor in Oregon who could guide her as she used psilocybin to access aspects of her memory she wanted to get in touch with again to help process the pain she continued to feel at the loss of her dad. More than psychological treatment, however, Hannah was also seeking spiritual solace. She did not want simply to recall the facts or feelings of her intense grief; Hannah was in search of something deeper: “I wanted to remember, to see how God was at work even then, in one of the darkest moments of my life.”

Now a spiritual director who offers similar services in the Seattle area, Hannah is part of a growing number of Christians, Jews, Buddhists, and others seeking out psychedelic-assisted chaplaincy and spiritual care to address psychological trauma and unanswered spiritual questions. Some, in search of mystical experiences, are also looking for unexplored avenues of spiritual connection to process suffering or to encounter the divine.

As part of a more general renaissance of interest in the potential medicinal and spiritual benefits psychedelics may provide, a slew of researchers, chaplains, theologians, and spiritual care professionals are asking questions about how substances like psilocybin connect the potency of mystical experience with the promise, and possibility, of mental healing.

They hope that in the next decade or so, new studies, therapies, and theological revolutions will lead to a breakthrough in the use of psychedelics for religious insight and remedial spiritual care.

A brief history of mind-blowing mysticism

Interest in the spiritual uses of mind-altering substances might be as old as religion itself. There is evidence that nomadic Scythians in western Eurasia used cannabis for ceremonial purposes in the 8^th century B.C.E. and that Sumerians revered Ninkasi, a tutelary goddess of beer, in the Bronze Age.

Perhaps more well-known is the use of peyote, a small, spineless cactus with psychoactive properties pre-Columbian indigenous communities in the Americas ingested as a conduit for contact with the spirit world and as a medicinal drug. From Mexico, the use of peyote spread to the Apache, Comanche, and other Plains Nations, coming to be used by more than 60 different tribes and nations. The spiritual use of Peyote is federally protected (under an extension of the American Indian Religious Freedom Act), and its sacramental ingestion remains part of the ritual rubric of the Native American Church, a spiritual movement that integrates Christianity with the traditions of various Indigenous cultures.

As part of the general social, cultural, and religious soul-searching of the 1960s and the expansion of U.S. counterculture, an interest arose in the spiritual uses of psychedelics and other entheogens (“generating the divine within”) — psychoactive substances used to enhance or instigate mystical experiences.

Famed from this period was Timothy Leary, the self-proclaimed “high priest” of the 1960s psychedelic counterculture. Leary inspired many “Boomers” to expand their minds through the use of LSD, mushrooms, or other mind-altering plants and chemicals. One of Leary’s disciples was Walter Pahnke, a graduate student in theology at Harvard Divinity School. Under the supervision of Leary, Richard Alpert, and the Harvard Psilocybin Project, Pahnke designed an experiment for Good Friday, April 20, 1962, where he administered the psychedelic compound to a group of divinity student volunteers in what came to be known as the Marsh Chapel Experiment.

Most participants were from religious backgrounds where they were taught that drugs and religion did not mix, a suspicion that tracked with broader sociocultural and political assumptions about psychedelics and consigned their use to the margins. Nonetheless, each reported having a profound religious experience. One of those was Huston Smith, the famous religious studies scholar who wrote the experiment was “the most powerful cosmic homecoming” he ever experienced.

Despite the small sample size — there were just ten participants given psilocybin — there was a great deal of enthusiasm around the experiment. Many believed it provided empirical support that psychedelics could facilitate mind-expanding mystical encounters. But as Harvard got wind of it, they shut the project down, and in the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, the U.S. government classified LSD, DMT, psilocybin, and other psychedelics as Schedule 1 substances, with “no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.”

In light of the classification, the use of psychedelics in religious institutions became anathema. Instead, psychedelics took root in anti-cultural movements.

Clinical transcendence

Although psychedelics still remain classified as having no medical use at the federal level, a burgeoning body of research over the last decade suggests they might have psychotherapeutic benefits in the treatment of a host of ailments, including but not limited to anxiety, depression, PTSD, and substance abuse disorders — as well as in palliative care.

Demonized for a generation, the excitement around compounds like LSD, MDMA, and psilocybin has re-emerged with a flourish. Fueled by an increasing number of studies showing the remarkable therapeutic potential of previously stigmatized substances, a number of prominent institutions currently host centers devoted to studying the mechanisms, effects, and efficacy of psychedelics. These include New York University’s (NYU) Center for Psychedelic Medicine, Johns Hopkins’s Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research, and UC Berkeley’s Center for the Science of Psychedelics.

Then there are institutions anticipating the legal and cultural acceptance of psychedelics’ therapeutic value already offering certificate programs for clinicians and chaplains in psychedelic-assisted therapies, including the California Institute of Integral Studies and Naropa University. 

Meanwhile, the Transforming Chaplaincy Psychedelic Care Network was established in January 2022. Co-convened by Steve Lewis, a chaplain in San Diego, and Bonnie Glass-Coffin, an anthropology professor at Utah State University, the network brings together professional healthcare chaplains and researchers pursuing psychedelic-assisted therapies and those interested in them. Together, they explore spiritual caregivers’ potential role in providing support for people preparing for, undergoing, or integrating psychedelic experiences. And they address the associated challenges in creating psychedelic education and training opportunities for chaplains and clergy.

Amidst growing interest, the Emory Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality (ECPS) stands out for its focus on the use of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy to push the frontiers of spiritual health. Founded in 2022, the ECPS is a partnership between Emory Spiritual Health and the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. The ECPS dubs itself the “world’s first center to fully integrate clinical and research-based expertise in psychiatry and spiritual health to better understand the therapeutic promise of psychedelic medicines.” They are already training chaplains to implement evidence-based and compassion-based practices for patients undergoing psychedelic-assisted care.

(Image source: Emory Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality)

That development tracks with Hannah. When she first took psilocybin, she planned for skilled spiritual healers to be in the room with her. Their past experience with psychedelics was invaluable to her sense of safety during the journey. “Once psychedelics kick in, you can’t turn them off. You’re along for the ride,” she said. “That can feel scary, but skillful people can help you navigate it,” Hannah said. “You can feel scared, but you will be safe.”

Hannah said she is excited to hear about ECPS’ research on how chaplains and spiritual caregivers can better provide guidance and develop interventions at each stage of an individual’s journey with psychedelics – making referrals, preparing for a “trip,” at the bedside, in an outpatient setting or in follow-up afterward as patients seek to make meaning from and integrate their experience into everyday life. “This is where chaplains and spiritual directors can really come in,” she said. “It took me a long time to make sense of what happened to me, but that’s where the healing happens.”

Psychologist and theologian George Grant is one of ECPS’ co-founders. He said the nature of psychedelic medicine — its transformative, meaning-making, and mystical-experience-inducing properties — make it a natural fit for developing one’s spiritual well-being. But Grant also said it demands that he and his team are as systematic as they can be with such mystical moments.

For Grant, research on the intersection of chaplaincy and psychiatric care seemed necessary, even imperative. His team began a series of clinical trials blending together a focus on participants’ mental and spiritual health. Their innovation was the introduction of a triad model, where a spiritual health clinician, care seeker, and medical health practitioner are part of a three-pointed team working through a process of psychedelic-assisted care.

Two years into the research, Grant said their findings point to the importance of integrating spirituality and theology into psychedelic-assisted therapy. “It is necessary,” Grant said, “to ensure culturally competent, evidence-based treatment aligned with the highest standards of clinical care.”

“Neglecting these topics can detract from the care, put patients at risk, and potentially undermine the substance’s ability to help those undergoing treatment,” he said.

While Grant cautioned that there is much more research to be done, he underscored how important it is for spiritual caregivers and medical professionals to work together, learn from one another, and work alongside patients on their psychedelic journeys.

Binding the science with spirituality

Apprehension abounds in both medical and religious communities. On the one hand, Grant has found the healthcare industry can be suspicious of spiritual interventions and religious actors’ involvement in the re-emerging field. Hence the ECPS’s rigor in clinical trials, he said. On the other hand, religious communities often express fear about the use of mind-altering substances for spiritual purposes.

An Episcopal priest, Hunt Priest, works at the intersection of both medicine and religion, urging mental health professionals to be more open to psychedelics’ mystical properties and normalizing the conversation among Christians about their potential for healing and spiritual growth. Regarding the latter, he is helping clergy, lay people, and chaplains connect the psychological healing properties of psychedelics with their ability to prompt more mystical occasions.

Connection is at the heart of his organization’s name: Ligare, Latin for “binding” or “uniting.” The word also links to the origins of the word religion itself. “That’s what psychedelics can provide,” Priest said, “a rebinding with our source, a reconnection with the Divine.”

Priest’s journey into the psychedelic space began with his participation in a 2016 study involving two dozen clergy — pastors, priests, and rabbis — given controlled doses of psilocybin under the observation of researchers at Johns Hopkins University and NYU. In research that preceded the study, the project’s leader, Roland Redmond Griffiths, claimed: “When administered to volunteers under supportive conditions, psilocybin occasioned experiences similar to spontaneously occurring mystical experiences which were evaluated by volunteers as having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance.” Their results suggested that mystical encounters helped relief from anxiety and depression better stick and helped those trying to kick bad habits find more success. Griffiths later said the 2016 clergy study was meant to further probe the question, “can psilocybin even help deepen spiritual lives?” If clergy took a psilocybin journey, the study asked, how would they answer that question?

The results of that study are set to be published this year, but for Priest, the conclusions were immediately clear. He not only said he had a direct experience with the Holy Spirit, but he also received a kind of “ordination.” Having already served as an Episcopal priest for nearly two decades, this was no ordinary call. Instead, Priest felt summoned to start Ligare to encourage, equip, and train ambassadors for the integration of psychedelics into spiritual care.

“Mushrooms are not magic,” said Priest, “and the meaning-making process after a psychedelic experience can take years. This is where spiritual direction can come in, to ask the ‘what does this mean?’ question and provide a wealth of practices and disciplines to help people navigate around, within, and after the experience.”

For Rabbi Aura Ahuvia, a musician ordained as both a rabbi and spiritual director with ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal, that process of integration begins with preparation, especially for those who have never used psychedelics. “We have no frame of reference for being under the influence of these substances,” she said, “so we need the right people and practices around us to be able to process what we are getting in touch with through psychedelics.”

Beyond having properly trained people in the room, Ahuvia said it can be relatively simple things that prove the most invaluable in an individual’s spiritual journey with psychedelics. “Most important is developing a practice of allowing and being with,” Ahuvia said, “cultivating these postures ahead of time with things like meditation, mindfulness, and breathing techniques.” These, she said, help seekers become what she called, “capable journeyers.”

It is impossible to summarize the spiritual elements of psychedelic trips. Researchers say the particulars vary according to context, upbringing, and a practitioners’ religious background. When Hannah used psilocybin, she found herself in a stained-glass sanctuary. Raised in a Lutheran household, the apertures seemed appropriate and inviting. More than that though, Hannah noticed, “the windows were moments from my life, shining, vibrant and detailed pictures of the things I’d forgotten,” she said. “Through them I could see the Spirit swirling in the background, weaving itself in and through each moment.” She continued, “I could literally see God with me in my grief – working with me the whole time.”

While Hannah said she does not plan to take another trip, her conceptions of spirituality changed forever after that moment. “It’s not something I feel I ever have to do again – though some people do,” she said. Since then, she’s returned to church. She still enjoys being part of what she called “a traditional, hymn-singing” religious community. But after Hannah added psychedelics to her list of sacraments, she said, “I came to regard psychedelics as sacred medicines that help us touch the holy.” Though she only shares her experience with trusted friends and confidants in her community, she hopes psychedelics will become banal parts of religious practice – Lutheran, Jewish, or otherwise – in the years to come.

Daan Keiman, a Buddhist and psychedelic chaplain with over 15 years of experience offering psychedelic harm reduction at festivals, seconded Hannah’s thoughts, saying that being grounded in a tradition is important. But being open to spiritual mystery might prove even more crucial for someone’s psychedelic journey, he said.

“It’s not about the shared religion, it’s not about the shared experience, it’s about the fact that, as humans, we come together and ask ourselves: What does it mean to be alive right now? And in asking it in a community, we’re also partly living that answer,” Keiman told Psychedelics Today.

Ahuvia also urged caution when it comes to centering the psychedelic experience as the be-all and end-all of one’s spiritual journey. She said no matter what kind of spectacular insights one feels they have. It’s her rule of thumb that no one makes major life decisions for a few weeks. “Afterwards, something shifts, there are these natural motivations that bubble up — suddenly people want to do these things,” she said. “But it’s important to take your time and give yourself the gift of space.”

Following her own encounters, Ahuvia cleared her calendar and spent time talking to her therapist and trusted friends. She also recommended going out in nature. “This can be a wondrous experience,” she said, “realizing the miraculousness of the natural world, unburying a sense of oneness with all beings, and unearthing a sense of belonging to the world around us.”

At a very elemental level, Ahuvia said such simple practices help reinforce the psychological, emotional, and spiritual reset that psychedelics can provide.

Did St. Paul take a trip?

But as simple as things may sound, the complications around psychedelic-assisted chaplaincy and spiritual care are myriad.

The first hurdle can be a theological one, said Priest. As more people have these experiences, and the more they become normalized, he believes serious conversations about the theological training of chaplains and pastors will need to take place. There remains a dearth of established theology on psychedelics and their place within Christian doctrine. But Priest points to some theologians who are systematic about the theological grounding of psychedelic usage among Christians like himself.

For example, Jaime Clark-Soles — a Baptist theologian at Southern Methodist University’s Perkins School of Theology — not only shares her own experiences in the Johns Hopkins/NYU trials but researches the role out-of-body inspiration plays in the Bible. She told Baptist News Global she is particularly fascinated by the apostle Paul’s description of pain, ecstasy, and visions in his second letter to the Corinthian church. “He’s telling us that he regularly experienced visions and revelations where he encountered the divine that involved ecstatic states,” she said. The results of her research and reflections on Paul, John, and other scriptures are forthcoming in her book The Agony, the Ecstasy, and the Ordinary: Experiencing God in the New Testament.

Ron Cole-Turner, a retired theologian formerly of Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, wrote in Christian Century that research like Clark-Soles’ could prompt Christians of all kinds to approach the Bible in a new way, with “experience informing interpretation.” He commented that for some Christians, “the Holy Spirit, the great theologians remind us, is present and active everywhere, renewing the whole creation while healing and transforming individuals. Encounters with the Spirit may range from the highly unusual to the just plain ordinary, but it is always the light of the Spirit that makes us spiritual.

“One thing psychedelic substances might teach us is that too often our brains screen us off from the sunbeam of the Spirit,” wrote Cole-Turner.

Christians are not alone in their theological wrangling. In his 2016 book Altered States, Douglas Osto, a Buddhist practitioner and religious studies professor in New Zealand, wrote about a range of differing perspectives among American Buddhists on the use of psychedelics. What he found were lively debates about the limits of the rational mind, the nature of subjectivity, and the tensions between the Buddhist emphasis on wakeful mindfulness and altered states of consciousness during mind-altering meditation.

Is psychedelic spiritual care worth the risk?

There are also an array of concerns and criticisms about the ethics of psychedelics and spiritual care. Some question whether popular media representations might promise too much at such an early stage of research and not give enough attention to power dynamics in trials and treatment. Others have criticized psychedelic research for cultural appropriation and ignoring the Indigenous history behind spirituality and drugs in medicine.

Then there’s Joe Welker, a pastor in northern Vermont who studied the intersection of religion and psychedelic research at Harvard Divinity School from 2022-2023. A self-described critic of contemporary psychedelic movements, he’s written multiple pieces about the Johns Hopkins/NYU study and Priest’s work with Ligare, opining that the high suggestibility of patients undergoing psychedelic drug treatment can leave them susceptible to the power of chaplains, researchers, and spiritual care providers who might “unethically induce belief changes.” To that end, he’s called for an investigation into Johns Hopkins’ conduct around what he calls the “heightened ethical concerns for high-suggestibility psychedelic drugs and belief transmission.”

But for Jack Krueger, a Lutheran pastor in central Arizona, the problem with psychedelic spiritual care is that it sidesteps what he sees as the tangible spiritual gifts already on offer to provide pastoral comfort to those in need. “Call me old-fashioned,” he said, “but I believe the only substances God gave us to be ‘in touch’ with him are his Word and Sacraments — Baptism and Holy Communion.”

Before Hannah took the plunge, she was aware of the criticisms and unanswered questions. Nonetheless, she started her journey into psychedelic spiritual care anyway. “I’d been in therapy for a decade and just kept hitting a wall,” Hannah said. “Initially I was worried what people might think and was skeptical myself.”

The experience transformed her life. “People use a lot of flowery language about psychedelics’ spiritual power,” Hannah said. “And it’s warranted.”

On whether or not greater research on the frontiers of psychedelic-assisted chaplaincy and spiritual care is worth it, she said, “absolutely, it cannot be that these substances exist, have so much potential, and yet remain inaccessible to hurting people searching for spiritual solace.” She continued, “For me, the shift was truly miraculous. Sacred medicines transformed my life. That’s all I needed to know.”

Ken Chitwood is a religion scholar and journalist based in Germany. His book AmeRícan Muslims: The Everyday Cosmopolitanism of Puerto Rican Converts to Islam, is under contract with University of Texas Press.