This Is Your Priest on Drugs

[Zorro]

Dozens of religious leaders experienced magic mushrooms in a university study. Many are now evangelists for psychedelics.

In October, 2015, Hunt Priest, then a minister at Emmanuel Episcopal Church on Mercer Island, in Washington State, was flipping through The Christian Century, a progressive Protestant magazine, when an advertisement caught his eye: “Seeking Clergy to Take Part in a Research Study of Psilocybin and Sacred Experience.” Psilocybin is a hallucinogenic compound found in certain mushrooms; researchers at Johns Hopkins University and N.Y.U. wanted to administer it to religious leaders who had “an interest in further exploring and developing their spiritual lives.”

Priest, a slight, bearded, and disarmingly open man from small-town Kentucky, grew up in a Protestant churchgoing family and felt a religious calling as a teen-ager. He went to work for Delta Air Lines, but he told me that, in his thirties, “I began to feel something was missing in my spiritual life.” He started reading Buddhist texts, including Thích Nhất Hạnh’s “Living Buddha, Living Christ,” which eventually steered him back toward Christianity. At thirty-seven, he entered seminary.

By the time Priest saw the ad, he was burned out. He ministered to an affluent bedroom community near Seattle and felt that his work had become “more about institutional administration and maintenance. That will wrench the spirituality out of most people.” He had never experienced psychedelics—a requirement for participation in the study—and had heard some horror stories. Still, he had always been curious. The study was at respected universities, and legal. Why the hell would I not do this? he thought. He began the arduous process of qualifying to participate: a series of phone calls, long questionnaires, in-person interviews in Baltimore, and a medical exam.

The team behind the ad included Roland Griffiths and William Richards, Hopkins scholars who had contributed to the so-called renaissance of psychedelic research, which began around the turn of the millennium. Griffiths, a psychopharmacologist, first became interested in psychedelics after he had a mystical experience while meditating. That day, he encountered “something way, way beyond a material world view that I can’t really talk to my colleagues about, because it involves metaphors or assumptions that I’m really uncomfortable with as a scientist,” he told me in 2014. His most influential research focussed on therapeutic applications of psychedelics. In a 2016 paper published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, Griffiths, Richards, and several other scientists reported that psilocybin could help treat fear and anxiety in cancer patients; the study has been cited more than a thousand times. Numerous clinical trials of psilocybin, MDMA, and other psychedelics followed.

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/05/26/this-is-your-priest-on-drugs

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. It's blocked to me. How did things turn out?

[TexLaProgressive]

3. It's a very long article

The experiences of the participants seem like to have been of spiritual renewal, not leaving their various faith traditions. It's as though their ministry and understanding have been enlivened.

Moved from a an academic mind to an experiential one.

I'm not sure I'm relating this correctly. But the idea of using mind altering substances to open spirituality is both ancient and modern.

Oh and Fr Priest, an Episcopal priest was changed in positive ways.

On subject in particular, a Byzantine priest who hated the Divine Liturgy found that disdain melting away. The Liturgy came alive to him, not dead ritual.

I do get a sense that like in the late 60s early 70s when psychedelic drugs widely used, that the participants are driven to proselytize. Quite a few of my friends in that earlier era were on a mission from God extolling the virtues of LSD and psyllium.

Best I can do.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

4. Your "best you can do" is very good. Thank you. I like the bit about moving from academic to experiential. . nt

[whathehell]

2. Nah, cute play on words, but

Mr. Hunt Priest is someone's minister -- He's a "priest" in (literally) name only, and he's certainly not mine.

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. "Priest" is a term used in the Episcopal Church too

Derived from the Greek presbyteros, “elder” or “old man”, the term is used as a synonym for presbyter. Presbyters constituted a collegiate ruling body of institutions in Judaism. The Catechism notes that “the ministry of a priest or presbyter” is “to represent Christ and his Church, particularly as pastor to the people; to proclaim the gospel; to administer the sacraments; and to bless and declare pardon in the name of God” (BCP, p. 856). The term “priest” is more frequently used than “presbyter” in the Episcopal Church. The ordination service for this order of ministry is titled “The Ordination of a Priest” (BCP, p. 525). After the Reformation, the Anglican Church used the term “priest” for the second order of ministry. Some Protestant churches began to use the term “presbyter” for the minister who preaches the Word and administers the sacrements. The 1979 BCP uses both terms. Some members of the Episcopal Church have favored the use of “presbyter” because of historic association of the term “priest” with a narrow eucharistic piety or with OT sacrifice. See Presbyter, Presyterate.

https://www.episcopalchurch.org/glossary/priest/

[whathehell]

6. Yes, I did know that..

In fact, I was looking for something in the piece that connected to the Episcopal Church....Maybe I didn't read carefully enough, but I didn't see it. I'll read the post again, and thank you, in any case, for the link and the additional information.