This Is Your Priest on Drugs | The New Yorker
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 Nh¥t H¡nh 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.
Michael Pollan.
On my to-do list is to eat a bunch of mushrooms. But I’m thinking I have to set aside two days at least and I don’t have the time at the moment. Very un-mushroomy thing to say, I know.