About The Church of Psychedelics
We Are a Spiritual Being Having a Human Experience. Through The Golden Path – the safe, intentional use of the sacrament of psilocybin – we expand our self-awareness, deepen our relationship with consciousness, and become more fully expressed in how we live, love, forgive, deepen and expand.
What Is The Church of Psychedelics?
Spiritual truth is meant to be lived. The Church of Psychedelics brings teachings about self-awareness, consciousness, and our relationship with Source back to their essence — so these spiritual practices become clear, personal, and useful in everyday life.
The sacrament of psilocybin helps deepen this work. Approached safely, intentionally, and with reverence, plant medicine reveals the patterns and conditioning that are difficult to see from inside our everyday awareness. They can open us to healing, clarity, and a deeper relationship with Source Consciousness. The Golden Path helps us understand what we have seen and live it in a way that supports lasting personal and spiritual growth.
Freedom to Practice
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) protects the sincere use of the sacrament of psilocybin — even where it is otherwise prohibited or listed as illegal. This inherent religious liberty is the foundation that allows our members to work with the psilocybin sacrament as part of their sincere spiritual practice.
Become a member of The Church of Psychedelics: Join Here
But the sacrament is only part of the journey. What turns an experience into lasting change is what surrounds it: community, guidance, and integration. Our spiritual support services — the teachings of the Golden Path, the Golden Practices, and a community of fellow seekers — provide the container that helps members implement their insights into everyday life.
How Spirit Takes Form
On April 19, 2025, The Church of Psychedelics was formally founded. Today, that structure is expressed clearly.
The Golden Practices
The Golden Practices are the integration practices.
The practices →The Golden Path joins the Five Pillars of Consciousness — Presence, Harmony, Knowing, Faith, and Hope — with the Seven Principles of Humanity — Truth, Honesty, Courage, Gratitude, Respect, Humility, and Wisdom. It recognizes truth carried through Christ, Buddha, Indigenous spirituality, nature, and direct experience of the Creator.
Psychedelic mushrooms are honored as sacrament, but sacrament is not a substitute for character, discipline, prayer, meditation, or right relationship.
The sacrament opens the door and The Golden Path teaches us how to integrate our spiritual experiences into our everyday life.
The Center Point
“We are a spiritual being having a human experience.”
Doug Red Hail PinedaFounder
We may experience unity consciousness, ego dissolution, revelation, or profound states of love — but we still return to our bodies, relationships, responsibilities, and decisions.
That return and integration is where the spiritual experience proves itself.
The measure of the spiritual experience with the teachings of The Golden Path is the quality of the person who returns from it.
This is the standard.
If an experience produces greater humility, presence, honesty, courage, compassion, and responsibility, it has been integrated. If it produces need, grandiosity, superiority, dependency, or escape, it has not.
The point is not to collect visions, but to become capable of living their meaning. No founder, guide, teacher, or psychedelic experience should replace a person’s conscience or discernment. A genuine spiritual path helps people become more honest, responsible, aware, and free.
Humility is the line that keeps confidence from turning into arrogance.
Why Build a Church?
Modern culture usually does one of two things with psychedelics: it medicalizes them or romanticizes them. Both can offer something valuable. Neither, by itself, provides a complete spiritual architecture for preparing a person, holding the experience, integrating what was revealed, and translating it into everyday character.
That is why TCOP is a church and not simply an advocacy organization, product company, or collection of psychedelic experiences. An honest spiritual container gives people room to ask: What is the nature of things? Who am I beneath my conditioning? How should what I have seen change the way I live?
TCOP supports those questions through education, inspiration, integration, and spiritual development. Our primary objective is to help people develop the relationship between themselves — Know Thyself — plant medicine, and the nature of themselves and their relationship with the universe.
New to the idea of an entheogenic church? Start with What Is a Psychedelic Church?
There are many spiritual paths. This is ours.
Join Our Free Spiritual CommunityDoug Red Hail Pineda
A syncretic spiritual teacher
The Church of Psychedelics was founded by Doug Red Hail Pineda, a syncretic spiritual teacher whose background includes Indigenous spiritual practice, plant medicine ceremony, personal development, and advocacy in the Colorado hemp and psychedelic movements.
The spiritual calling began in 2018, the central vision was received during a 2020 hanbléčheyapi, or vision quest, and The Church of Psychedelics was formally founded on April 19, 2025.
More about Doug →The Prayer Beneath the Roots
The Church of Psychedelics did not begin with a substance. It began with a responsibility: if plant medicine can open the human mind to the deepest truths of consciousness, there must be a spiritual path that teaches us how to return as better human beings.
How a message from Chief Leonard Crow Dog, a Lakota vision quest, and a revelation about mycelium became The Golden Path.
Read the Origin StoryFrequently Asked Questions
Q.What is The Church of Psychedelics?
The Church of Psychedelics, or TCOP, is an entheogenic spiritual community that helps people develop greater self-awareness, expand consciousness, and deepen their relationship with the Creator through The Golden Path and the safe, intentional spiritual use of psychedelic mushrooms as sacrament.
Q.Who founded The Church of Psychedelics?
The Church of Psychedelics was founded by Doug Red Hail Pineda, a syncretic spiritual teacher whose background includes Indigenous spiritual practice, plant medicine ceremony, personal development, and advocacy in the Colorado hemp and psychedelic movements.
Q.When was The Church of Psychedelics founded?
The spiritual calling began in 2018, the central vision was received during a 2020 hanbléčheyapi, or vision quest, and The Church of Psychedelics was formally founded on April 19, 2025.
Q.What is The Golden Path?
The Golden Path is the belief system of The Church of Psychedelics. It is a journey of spiritual awakening that teaches people how to develop their consciousness and apply spiritual insight to everyday life through the Five Pillars of Consciousness, the Seven Principles of Humanity, ceremony, community, and The Golden Practices.
Q.Why does TCOP regard psychedelic mushrooms as sacrament?
TCOP regards psychedelic mushrooms as entheogenic allies that can help people enter non-ordinary states of awareness, encounter deeper questions, and develop a more direct relationship with themselves, the Creator, and consciousness. The experience is approached through preparation, intention, respect, and integration—not merely consumption.
Q.Does TCOP believe a psychedelic experience automatically transforms a person?
No. The experience may reveal where transformation needs to happen, but the transformation is up to the person. TCOP measures a spiritual experience by the quality of the person who returns from it and how the insight is integrated into character, relationships, choices, and service.
May love guide the hearts of all beings.
Join Our Free Spiritual Community
A church for people who believe that nature is alive, consciousness is worthy of exploration, plant medicine can be sacrament, and spiritual awakening should make a visible difference in the way we live.
Join Our CommunityLooking at the sacrament too? See membership