Manufacturing the Entheogenic Underground

Across the United States, people are increasingly using illegal psychedelics and cannabis—substances they call entheogens—in religious or spiritual ceremonies to commune with creators, ancestors, or the spirit world. While the U.S. government has granted some groups exemptions from drug prohibition, most practitioners operate without such exemptions, confining them to what scholars call the underground. This essay argues that the state is not absent from these underground communities; rather, it is the primary curator of them. The state's influence pervades these spaces, as demonstrated by examining the legal structures and case law affecting entheogenic churches, especially the role of attorneys who advise them.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Ethnographic research suggests that people across the United States are increasingly gathering to commune with their creators, to interact with their ancestors, to enter the spirit world, to gain supernatural insights, and to engage in what they otherwise describe as religious or spiritual experiences. In this regard, their actions are not particularly revolutionary or novel. What distinguishes these people is not their desire to have religious or spiritual experiences. Instead, it is the means they employ to occasion these experiences that set them apart, as their rituals and ceremonies involve the consumption of illegal drugs, specifically psychedelics and cannabis, substances they frequently term entheogens. The United States government has granted select groups an exemption from drug prohibition, thereby allowing them to legally consume what are otherwise illegal substances. The vast majority of these practitioners, however, operate without this exemption, thereby confining them to what scholars often term the underground, or the sociocultural, political, or economic spaces thought to operate outside the influence or purview of the state.4 This alleged “absence” of the government is the topic of this paper, which argues that the state is both the primary curator of the so-called underground and that the state’s influence pervades these “underground” communities. To demonstrate this, this essay will discuss the legal structures and case law impacting entheogenic churches in the United States, paying particular attention to the attorneys who advise these churches.