Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi

And are those beliefs codified in some kind of sacred text?

Yeah, all sorts of major religions have elements that might sound outlandish to a non-believer.

You know, burning bushes, talking snakes, raining omnipotently over entire worlds in the afterlife.

So using this so-called Myers test, you can kind of retrofit your church based on these factors.

And John's job is to basically help his clients codify their new religions in ways that should be, in theory, easily legible to a judge or a jury or a curious DEA agent.

He helps them standardize their texts, their ceremonies, their religious garb, even things like holidays.

One other thing John always tells his clients is that there are some rules they should follow.

The DEA has clear protocols for how churches that have gotten exemptions are required to handle and secure their psychedelics, using things like lockboxes and video surveillance to make sure that drugs don't get diverted to people outside the church.

Still, nothing is a guarantee.

At this point, John estimates there are somewhere north of 300 psychedelic religious organizations operating around the U.S., which sounds like a lot, but most of them are pretty small.

And John says when it comes to finances, most of these churches are barely scraping by.

But there is one big exception.

A psychedelic church so big and so successful that it's drawn the attention of people far outside the psychedelic community, making it a potential test case for this whole wave of new churches.

How much of an economic outlier is the Zydor Church?

We wanted to figure out how this all works from the inside.

So after the break, Planet Money starts its own psychedelic megachurch.

Just kidding.

NPR's lawyers were really not into that idea.

Instead, we dive back into Pastor Dave Hodge's magic mushroom megachurch to hear about the promise and peril of bringing psychedelic religion to the masses.

When I went to visit the Zydor Church in Oakland earlier this month, I have to admit I was a bit skeptical of how it could toe the line between a house of worship and a business.