Alexi Horowitz-Ghazi

And it's this tension that I'd really been wondering about from the beginning.

Like, are a ton of people just using Zydor as a way to get drugs, regardless of what they believe?

What would you say to somebody who's like, okay, I may believe in your, you know, sincere religiosity around this, but the church is so large that how can you be sure that any of these 130,000 plus members are doing this as an act of faith as opposed to a kind of recreational exploration?

In other words, Dave believes that no matter your intention, consuming mushrooms opens up a kind of spiritual communion with your own soul.

It is an inherently religious experience.

And so he is fulfilling his church's religious mission by providing them.

But even other psychedelic churches can be a bit apprehensive about the scale of Dave's operation, his relatively permissive approach to membership, and his focus on very high dosages.

One pastor told me he's grateful that Zydor has provided an entry point to psychedelic spirituality for many, but he worries that it also risks confusing the public and law enforcement.

I asked the psychedelic lawyer John Rapp about this.

After all, there's an argument that Zydor is providing a kind of market service by supplying more consistently vetted psychedelics than stuff you could get on the black market.

John says in the long run, what he and other members of the psychedelic movement hope to see is a shift in how these substances are treated by the federal government.

And they hope to see things like psilocybin make it through the FDA's clinical trials.

There have been some recent wins for the psychedelic church movement in court.

And just recently, a church in Washington state became the first psychedelic church to be granted a DEA exemption without having to go to court.

So it's a balancing act.

And until any of this becomes settled law, it's going to be people like John and Pastor Dave Hodges who are taking on the risk and making the case.

After my time visiting Zydor on my way out of the church, Dave did what all good evangelists do.

He handed me a copy of the church's Bible.

On the cover, there's a gorilla sitting in space, stroking his chin and holding a psychedelic mushroom.

Dave says the Bible still isn't quite finished yet.