The ceremonial-rights track has won every federal religious exemption to date — and all of them are for ayahuasca/DMT. GAO-24-106630 found DEA received six psilocybin religious-exemption petitions between FY2016 and January 2024: three withdrawn, three pending, none granted. The one psilocybin religious win, the Singularism case in Utah, rests entirely on Utah's state RFRA and creates no federal protection. Meanwhile Compass Pathways has an FDA rolling NDA review for COMP360 in treatment-resistant depression, on a group-mean effect of −3.6 MADRS points — statistically solid, clinically modest, still unpublished. If you want a lawful, screened, lower-risk psilocybin session in the United States in 2026, the answer is not a church and not a prescription. It is Oregon or Colorado today, and possibly New Mexico later.
The short answer
Three tracks exist: ceremonial/religious rights, FDA drug development, and state-regulated services. For psilocybin specifically, only the third one works right now — Oregon and Colorado are open, New Mexico is not yet.
Chacruna Institute's tenth-anniversary post, written by Daniela Monteiro, is pegged to a September 28, 2026 event hosted by Brazil's Psychedelic Association at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. It names APB figures Sandro Rodrigues and Fernando Beserra alongside Chacruna co-founder Bia Labate, and frames a decade of work as anti-prohibitionist, harm-reduction-oriented, Indigenous-centred "psychedelic justice."
https://chacruna.net/10th-anniversary-of-the-chacruna-institute/
It is an event notice. The interesting story sits underneath it.
For ten years, two camps have argued about how psychedelics should become legal. One says ceremonial and Indigenous rights, religious freedom, decriminalisation. The other says clinical trials, FDA approval, prescriptions. Chacruna has worked the first lane hard and been publicly sceptical of the second.
Here is the scoreboard for psilocybin, as opposed to ayahuasca. The religious-freedom lane has produced one state-law preliminary injunction and zero federal exemptions. The FDA lane has produced one rolling New Drug Application review and no approved product. The lane almost nobody in that debate was fighting for — state-licensed supervised services — has produced roughly six thousand legal sessions in Oregon in a single year.
That is the whole article. The rest is why.
What ten years of Chacruna actually bought
A small advocacy and education nonprofit with real harm-reduction output and real influence on ayahuasca policy in Brazil and US courts. Not a research funder, and not a route to a legal mushroom session.
Scale first, because it matters for how you read the influence. Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines is a California 501(c)(3), EIN 84-3076078, tax-exempt status recognised July 2020. Its Form 990 filings show FY2025 revenue of $745,941 against $769,841 in expenses, and FY2024 revenue of $936,000 against $761,429. Most of it is contributions.
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/843076078
That is an organisation running on roughly the cost of one mid-sized clinical trial site, indefinitely. Its "Who We Are" page lists a network of 70-plus staff and advisors, Board Chair Jennifer C. Jones, Research Director Henrique Fernandes Antunes, and Labate as Executive Director. It names no funders, which is worth noting in a field where funding disclosure is a live issue.
https://chacruna.net/who-we-are/
The most practically useful thing the organisation has published, if you are considering a ceremony anywhere, is the 2019 *Ayahuasca Community Guide for the Awareness of Sexual Abuse*. It addresses the power imbalance between healer and participant, consent across language barriers, and the specific claim that nudity is not a customary requirement of ceremony. A reflective account appeared in the *Journal of Psychedelic Studies* 4(1), 2020.
https://chacruna.net/ayahuasca-community-guide-for-the-awareness-of-sexual-abuse/
Read it before a retreat. Pair it with /guides/ceremony-etiquette and /guides/psychedelic-retreats. That is a genuine harm-reduction contribution, and it is the kind of thing a $750,000-a-year nonprofit can do that a pharmaceutical company cannot.
The current live file in the same lane is Brazil. On September 2, 2026 Chacruna reported that the Federal Public Prosecutor's Office in Acre had issued Recommendations Nos. 4 and 5 to CONAD and ANVISA — prosecutors Lucas Costa Almeida Dias and Luidgi Merlo Paiva dos Santos — proposing working groups to rewrite the regulatory parameters for ayahuasca and DMT, and to include Indigenous and traditional communities rather than only registered religious organisations as in the 2006 process. The framework at issue is CONAD Resolution No. 1/2010, which permits ceremonial use while barring commercialisation and export. Agencies had 30 days to indicate compliance.
https://chacruna.net/brazil-mpf-ayahuasca-dmt-regulations/
Chacruna is the reporting outlet there, not the primary document, so treat the detail as attributed rather than verified. And note what the recommendations cover: ayahuasca and DMT. Psilocybin mushrooms in Brazil sit in a separate, unresolved space. A 2026 commentary in the *International Journal of Drug Policy* by Nogueira, García-Hernández, Sotéro Roberto and Cardoso Rodrigues (2026 Apr;150:105198) argues the status is genuinely ambiguous and calls on ANVISA and CONAD to open formal deliberation. It is a commentary, not original data — an argument that the question is open, not an answer to it.
The religious route has given psilocybin nothing
Every federal Controlled Substances Act religious exemption granted so far is for ayahuasca/DMT. GAO found six psilocybin petitions filed FY2016 to January 2024: three withdrawn, three pending, none granted.
Start with the baseline nothing in state law changes. Psilocybin and psilocyn are federal Schedule I hallucinogens under 21 C.F.R. § 1308.11(d)(29)–(30), drug codes 7437 and 7438.
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/21/1308.11
Now the numbers. GAO-24-106630, published May 30, 2024 and titled *Drug Control: DEA Should Improve Its Religious Exemptions Petition Process for Psilocybin (Mushrooms) and Other Controlled Substances*, found DEA received 24 religious-exemption petitions from FY2016 through January 2024. Six were for psilocybin. Three were withdrawn, three were pending, none were granted. Resolution times across the full set ran from eight months to over three years, with some petitions sitting almost five and almost eight years. GAO made four recommendations; DEA concurred and, as of February 2026, was developing a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking.
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-24-106630
Compare that to the ayahuasca column. The União do Vegetal won at the Supreme Court in *Gonzales v. O Centro Espírita Beneficente União do Vegetal*, 546 U.S. 418 (2006). Santo Daime's Church of the Holy Light of the Queen secured protection through federal litigation concluding in 2009. The Church of the Eagle and the Condor reached a February 2024 settlement with DOJ, DHS, CBP and DEA, with Schedule I permits issued April 15, 2024 — reported as the first federal authorisation to import and serve ayahuasca without going to trial. Church of Gaia was announced on May 21, 2025 and reported as the first granted through DEA's administrative petition process without a lawsuit.
https://www.churchofeagleandcondor.org/settlement.html
Four reported bodies, every one of them ayahuasca, and almost every one requiring years of litigation or negotiation. Note "reported" — at least one circulating summary wrongly lists Iowaska Church of Healing as holding an exemption, and that is not what the record shows.
What happened to the churches that pushed and lost is instructive, because they lost without anyone ruling on whether their practice was sincere or protected. In *Soul Quest Church of Mother Earth v. Attorney General*, No. 22-11072 (11th Cir., Dec. 18, 2023), the court held that district courts lack subject-matter jurisdiction to review DEA's denial of a CSA religious exemption at all. In *Iowaska Church of Healing v. Werfel*, 105 F.4th 402 (D.C. Cir., June 21, 2024), the church lacked standing on its RFRA claim; the IRS denial of 501(c)(3) status was affirmed and the RFRA claim dismissed without prejudice. Chacruna filed as co-amicus with Sacred Plant Alliance in that case.
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca11/22-11072/22-11072-2023-12-18.html
Sacred Plant Alliance has announced an intended RFRA and Administrative Procedure Act suit to force DEA to build a workable exemption process. We could not verify that a complaint has been filed, and no ruling exists. Several related questions are also genuinely open: whether DEA's post-GAO rulemaking has published, and whether any of the three pending psilocybin petitions has moved since January 2024.
If you are reading about psychedelic churches, our directory is at /psychedelic-churches — read it as a map of who exists, not a map of who is protected.
The Utah ruling is real, and it is state-only
Singularism won a preliminary injunction under Utah's state RFRA, not federal law. It protects one group from state prosecution in one state. It creates no federal protection for anyone.
This is the most clickable psilocybin-and-religion fact of the last two years and the easiest one to misread, so take it in order.
In *Jensen v. Utah County*, U.S. District Judge Jill Parrish granted a preliminary injunction on February 20, 2025 ordering Utah authorities to return psilocybin and scripture seized from the group Singularism in a November 2024 raid. The court held plaintiffs likely to succeed under Utah's Religious Freedom Restoration Act, SB 150, passed in 2024. It rested on the state statute and did not reach the federal claims. On August 4–5, 2025, Parrish denied the motion to dismiss and enjoined the state criminal prosecution of founder Bridger Lee Jensen, finding bad faith and harassment.
https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-dis-crt-d-uta/116998560.html
We could not confirm whether the case has reached final judgment or appeal.
Here is the part that gets dropped in the retelling. A state RFRA constrains state and local officials. It does nothing to the Controlled Substances Act. Psilocybin is still Schedule I federally inside Utah, and the GAO numbers above show what the federal administrative route has delivered for psilocybin: zero.
So if you read the Singularism headline and conclude that founding a mushroom church is now a viable legal strategy, you have combined a preliminary ruling under one state's statute with an exemption process that has never once granted a psilocybin petition, and exposed yourself to federal prosecution in the gap. Do not do that.
The FDA track is further along than the church track — and still not a product
Compass Pathways has an FDA rolling NDA review for COMP360 in treatment-resistant depression. The Phase 3 effect was −3.6 MADRS points, company-reported and not yet peer-reviewed. Nothing is approved.
On June 23, 2025 Compass Pathways announced topline results from COMP005, a randomised double-blind placebo-controlled Phase 3 trial: 258 participants randomised across 32 US sites, with COMP360 25 mg producing a −3.6-point difference on the MADRS versus placebo at week 6 (95% CI −5.7 to −1.5, p<0.001). The Data Safety Monitoring Board reported no new or unexpected safety findings and no clinically meaningful imbalance in suicidality. Per-arm adverse event counts were not disclosed.
Then on April 24, 2026 the company announced that FDA had granted a rolling NDA submission and review for COMP360 and awarded a Commissioner's National Priority Voucher for treatment-resistant depression — which Compass describes as providing enhanced communications and a shortened one-to-two-month review after filing. The release itself notes that a submission "must still meet FDA's established standards of clinical evidence, scientific rigor, and regulatory compliance." The indication is TRD only. No REMS details were given.
Two things are true at once. This is further than the religious-exemption track has ever got for psilocybin. And −3.6 points is a group mean on a 0-to-60 scale: statistically robust, clinically modest, and company-reported. We located no peer-reviewed publication of either Phase 3 trial. Anyone telling you psilocybin cures depression is ahead of the evidence. See /for/treatment-resistant-depression and /conditions/depression for what the broader literature does and does not support.
Where lawful, screened access actually exists
Oregon and Colorado have operating licensed programs. New Mexico has a law but is still in rulemaking and not accepting patients. All of them screen for lithium, psychosis and bipolar history — which is the point.
Oregon is the one with data. Services are open to adults 21 and over, with no Oregon residency, prescription or referral required. The Oregon Health Authority states clients may be ineligible if they are experiencing ideation of harm to self or others, if they have taken lithium in the last 30 days, or if they have ever been diagnosed with active psychosis — and facilitators may decline any client.
https://www.oregon.gov/oha/ph/preventionwellness/pages/psilocybin-access-psilocybin-services.aspx
Two 2026 papers describe what came out of that. Yu, Tafur, Moreno and Dahmer published a descriptive analysis of Oregon's public dashboard in *Frontiers in Psychiatry*, covering January 1 to December 31, 2025: 5,935 clients across 5,375 administration sessions, behavioural adverse events at 2.42 per 1,000 sessions (n=13), medical adverse events at 2.79 per 1,000 (n=15), seven severe reactions requiring hospitalisation, and roughly 32.6% of clients from out of state. The authors are explicit that this is aggregate data with no individual outcomes, no follow-up, no effectiveness measure and selection bias.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13224104/
Korthuis, Cook, Gregoire and colleagues published a prospective observational cohort in *JAMA Network Open* (2026;9(8):e2630608) following 346 adults at 24 of 26 licensed Oregon service centres. At one month, 91.5% reported benefit; at three months, participants reported reduced depression, anxiety and PTSD symptoms. Four participants (1.2%) had adverse behavioural reactions requiring medical attention, there were no serious physical events, and seven people described the experience as harmful at three months. It was funded by SAMHSA and NIH/NIDA among others.
https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2026.30608
Tier that honestly: this is a prospective observational cohort, not a randomised trial. There is no control group. It tells you what happened to people who chose to do this in a regulated setting, which is useful and is not the same as proving the drug caused the improvement. The lead author states plainly that psilocybin is inappropriate for people with psychosis, bipolar disorder, or who are pregnant.
Colorado's licensed healing centres are operating as well; we are not printing a current license count because we could not verify one against state licensing data this session. Compare the two systems at /vs/oregon-vs-colorado-psilocybin-therapy, /legal-status/oregon and /legal-status/colorado.
New Mexico is third and not yet open. Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham signed SB 219, the Medical Psilocybin Act, in April 2025, effective June 20, 2025 — the first US state programme enacted by a legislature rather than a ballot measure. Qualifying conditions include major treatment-resistant depression, PTSD, substance use disorders and end-of-life care. The Department of Health remains in rulemaking with a statutory implementation date of December 31, 2026, and the programme is not accepting patients.
https://www.nmhealth.org/about/mcpp/mpp/
See /legal-status/new-mexico, and /legal-status for everywhere else.
On the interaction side, the evidence is thinner than the confidence with which it gets repeated. Halman and colleagues' 2024 systematic review in the *Journal of Psychopharmacology* pulled 52 studies from 36 reports and found that SSRIs generally diminish psychedelic effects, that non-selective MAOIs such as phenelzine nearly abolished or strongly blocked LSD effects, and that one case report of ayahuasca plus fluoxetine produced severe nausea, vomiting and disorientation resembling serotonin toxicity. Chronic lithium was associated with earlier onset and increased hallucinatory effects, with seizures reported anecdotally. The authors flag heavy reliance on 1950s-to-70s literature and case reports.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10851641/
The lithium signal that drives Oregon's 30-day rule is weaker still in study design terms: Nayak and colleagues (*Pharmacopsychiatry* 2021;54(5)) found seizures in 47% of 62 online lithium-plus-psychedelic reports versus 0 of 34 lamotrigine reports — self-reported internet posts from Erowid, Shroomery and Reddit, not a controlled study. Anecdotal-tier evidence, taken seriously anyway because the failure mode is a seizure. Our pages: /guides/psilocybin-and-lithium, /guides/psilocybin-and-maois, /guides/psilocybin-and-ssris and /guides/psilocybin-drug-interactions.
PsyBear takeaways
Ceremonial-rights work has been genuinely effective for ayahuasca and has delivered nothing lawful for psilocybin in the US. The FDA is closer but has no approved product. State programmes are the only lawful screened option today.
1. Chacruna's decade is real work, aimed at a different plant. Its sexual-abuse awareness guide and its Brazilian regulatory advocacy are substantive. Neither gives you a legal psilocybin session in the United States.
2. Every federal religious exemption so far is ayahuasca. UDV, Santo Daime, Church of the Eagle and the Condor, Church of Gaia — reported, and all DMT-containing brew. GAO-24-106630: six psilocybin petitions, three withdrawn, three pending, zero granted.
3. Two churches lost on procedure, not merits. *Soul Quest* (11th Cir. 2023) held district courts cannot even review a DEA denial. *Iowaska* (D.C. Cir. 2024) turned on standing. A closed door and an unlocked door look identical from a distance; these were closed.
4. The Utah injunction protects one group under one state's RFRA. Starting a church on the strength of *Jensen v. Utah County* exposes you to federal prosecution. Psilocybin is Schedule I under 21 C.F.R. § 1308.11 everywhere in the US, including Utah.
5. The FDA track leads on paper and has approved nothing. A rolling NDA review and a priority voucher are process, not permission. The underlying effect is −3.6 MADRS points, company-reported, unpublished, TRD-only.
6. The lawful option is unglamorous and it is the one that screens you. Oregon's ineligibility criteria — active psychosis ever, lithium within 30 days, current ideation of harm — are not bureaucracy. They are the reason the adverse event rates in those two 2026 papers are low single digits per thousand sessions. A church or a dealer screens you for nothing.
7. If you have bipolar disorder, a psychosis history, or you take lithium or an MAOI, this is a conversation with a clinician, not a facilitator intake form. Start at /guides/safe-trip, read /dosage before you think about an amount, and bring /guides/trip-preparation to whatever you decide.
Psilocybin remains Schedule I under US federal law outside licensed state programmes and authorised research. Nothing in state law, and nothing in the Utah ruling described above, changes that. This article is legal and scientific commentary, not legal or medical advice, and not a suggestion to buy from unlicensed sellers or to represent an informal group as a protected religious organisation.
Key Takeaways
The ceremonial-rights track has won every federal religious exemption to date — and all of them are for ayahuasca/DMT. GAO-24-106630 found DEA received six psilocybin religious-exemption petitions between FY2016 and January 2024: three withdrawn, three pending, none granted. The one psilocybin religious win, the Singularism case in Utah, rests entirely on Utah's state RFRA and creates no federal protection. Meanwhile Compass Pathways has an FDA rolling NDA review for COMP360 in treatment-resistant depression, on a group-mean effect of −3.6 MADRS points — statistically solid, clinically modest, still unpublished. If you want a lawful, screened, lower-risk psilocybin session in the United States in 2026, the answer is not a church and not a prescription. It is Oregon or Colorado today, and possibly New Mexico later.
FAQ
- Has the DEA ever granted a religious exemption for psilocybin?
- No. GAO-24-106630, published May 30, 2024, found that DEA received 24 religious-exemption petitions from FY2016 through January 2024. Six were for psilocybin: three were withdrawn, three were pending, and none were granted. Every federal Controlled Substances Act religious exemption reported to date is for ayahuasca or DMT.
- Does the Utah Singularism ruling make psilocybin churches legal?
- No. In Jensen v. Utah County, Judge Jill Parrish granted a preliminary injunction on February 20, 2025 and later enjoined the state criminal prosecution of founder Bridger Lee Jensen. The court rested on Utah's state RFRA (SB 150, 2024) and did not reach the federal claims. It constrains Utah officials only and creates no federal protection — psilocybin remains Schedule I under 21 C.F.R. § 1308.11.
- Which US states have legal, licensed psilocybin services?
- Oregon and Colorado have operating licensed programmes. New Mexico passed SB 219, the Medical Psilocybin Act, signed in April 2025 and effective June 20, 2025, but the Department of Health is still in rulemaking with a statutory implementation date of December 31, 2026 and is not yet accepting patients.
- Is COMP360 psilocybin FDA-approved?
- No. Compass Pathways announced on April 24, 2026 that FDA granted a rolling NDA submission and review for COMP360 plus a Commissioner's National Priority Voucher for treatment-resistant depression. That is a review process, not an approval. The Phase 3 COMP005 result was a −3.6-point MADRS difference versus placebo at week 6 (95% CI −5.7 to −1.5, p<0.001), company-reported and not yet peer-reviewed.
- Can I use Oregon psilocybin services if I take lithium?
- The Oregon Health Authority states clients may be ineligible if they have taken lithium within the last 30 days, if they have ever been diagnosed with active psychosis, or if they are experiencing ideation of harm to self or others. Facilitators may also decline any client. The lithium rule rests on weak evidence — Nayak et al. (Pharmacopsychiatry 2021) analysed self-reported online posts, not a controlled study — but the reported failure mode is seizures, so the caution is warranted. See /guides/psilocybin-and-lithium.
- How safe were Oregon's regulated psilocybin sessions?
- Two 2026 papers describe it. A Frontiers in Psychiatry dashboard analysis covering January to December 2025 found 5,935 clients across 5,375 sessions, with behavioural adverse events at 2.42 per 1,000 sessions, medical adverse events at 2.79 per 1,000, and seven severe reactions requiring hospitalisation. A prospective observational cohort in JAMA Network Open (2026;9(8):e2630608) followed 346 adults and found four (1.2%) had adverse behavioural reactions requiring medical attention, no serious physical events, and seven describing the experience as harmful at three months. Neither study is a randomised trial.