America's only psychedelic mushroom store is a church in Oakland. We celebrated communion

February 3, 2022

America’s only psychedelic mushroom store is a church in Oakland. We celebrated communion

Zide Door’s front door faces the street in an industrial area of Oakland, California. But the portal to America’s only openly operated access point for psychedelic mushrooms is completely unmarked. Because this self-proclaimed Church of Entheogenic Plants does not advertise or proselytize.

In fact, it took an August 2020 raid by the Oakland Police Department to literally put her on the map. Before that, Zide Door could not be found anywhere on the internet, including Google Maps.

As a veteran cannabis reporter walks into Zide Door today, he can’t help but recall the early days of medical marijuana in California. In that earlier era, even pharmacies in the friendliest of jurisdictions faced the daily threat of law enforcement raids.

The first wave of cannabis retail didn’t look like today’s Apple Stores. And there’s a reason for that: they were usually run by someone with one foot in the underground market and the other in civil disobedience. They formed these pioneering collectives with modest funds and the reasonable expectation that “the man” could show up unannounced at any moment, put on the handcuffs and seize everything in sight.

A step into the legal psychedelic future

The security at Zide Door is friendly but also well equipped to deal with potential problems. To join the Church (40,000 people have done so), you must appear in person, be over the age of 18, have valid government-issued identification, and sign a waiver stating that you are not a law enforcement officer or whistleblower and that you accept entheogen plants as part of your religion.

Apart from some worn furniture, a small altar for the sermons and a few decorative flourishes, the place looks like a basement punk rock club.

In a back room, behind the pulpit and pews, a series of display cases offer a range of cannabis and psychedelic mushrooms. The mushrooms are available dried, mixed into chocolate bars or as a tea. They are all dice– which can be efficiently grown indoors – but like cannabis strains, they come in a wide variety of colorful names. The menu that day offered 14 varieties, including Avery’s Albino, Golden Teachers, and Cambodian.

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According to the knowledgeable and thoughtful church members behind the counter, the most common questions are: How will this make me feel? how much should i take

The answers: “that depends” and “that depends.”

A church pamphlet goes into more detail on everything from the history of religious use, to proper dosage, mindset and tuning, setting intentions, to the church’s teaching of religious evolution, which borrows heavily from Terrence McKenna’s “Stoned Ape Theory.”

Entheogens: legalized but not yet legal for sale

With federally licensed, taxed and regulated cannabis now well established in many US states, it’s important to remember that the movement to end cannabis prohibition has a long history of civil disobedience – including the provision of cannabis as medicine and even as a religious sacrament under what can best be described as gray market conditions.

Psychedelic mushrooms and other entheogenic plants and fungi appear to be taking the same journey.

In May 2019, voters made Denver the first city to decriminalize psilocybin, the active ingredient in “magic” mushrooms. Over the next two years, other cities followed: Oakland, Santa Cruz, Washington, DC, and a few small Massachusetts towns, all of which enacted similar legislation. Other municipalities — including large cities like Denver and Detroit — have enacted policies that make psilocybin and other entheogen laws the lowest priority for law enforcement.

While these laws effectively decriminalize possession and use, there is currently no state or locality that permits or regulates its commercial cultivation, distribution, or sale.

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Pioneers are already emerging

Despite this, a number of underground “brands” have emerged in decrim-law areas, many offering value-added products such as mushroom chocolates.

In Oregon — where all drugs were decriminalized — a separate law (Oregon Measure 109) passed by voters in November 2020 legalized psilocybin statewide. The Oregon Board of Health is developing regulations for sales and distribution that will, according to the ballot initiative, allow psilocybin for “personal development,” with the mushrooms only being grown and administered in licensed environments.

A state advisory board overseeing implementation of the new law has until January 2023 to get the program up and running.

The founder of Zide Door started with cannabis

Church founder Dave Hodges dresses and speaks much like the computer repair technician he once was before diving into California’s gray “Wild West” medicinal cannabis market in 2009.

When Hodges opened The San Jose Buyer’s Collective that year, it was operating without a local license, as such a license did not exist.

“My business plan,” he says, “was that within the first six months we would search and then pursue litigation to change the law. But that’s not how it happened.”

Instead, over the course of six months, Hodges watched as dozens of other clubs followed in his wake. When local officials decided to fight back against the current, he was among their first targets. In 2010, the San Jose Cannabis Buyer’s Collective sued the city, charging it with unlawfully forcing landlords to evict medicinal cannabis collectives from their properties. That lawsuit was unsuccessful, but Hodges managed to hold the line until 2015, when San Jose passed a strict medical cannabis ordinance that forced him out of the city.

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Oakland is once again the cradle of progress

Four years later, Hodges reappeared in Oakland. In January 2019 he opened the doors at Zide Door. At first he only supplied cannabis. For the past 15 years, unlicensed cannabis clubs in Oakland have operated under the auspices of Measure Z — a local, voter-approved ordinance directing police to treat marijuana enforcement as the lowest priority.

But Hodges went a step further by founding a church and claiming freedom of religion under federal law to consume and supply cannabis on the premises. The church is decidedly non-denominational and totally free of dogma, but it does preach and provide education. Hodges says his church is 100% genuine, even if it started out as a Halloween costume.

It’s true: For a costume party, he disguised himself for the first time as a preacher from his self-proclaimed Church of More Pot. But when he joined Burning Man the next summer, something unexpected happened.

“People wanted religion to be a real thing.”

So did Hodges over time.

June 2019: Oakland decriminalizes entheogens

Six months after the Zide Door opened, an independent psychedelic activist group called Decriminalize Nature convinced the Oakland City Council to unanimously pass a resolution to effectively decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms and certain other entheogenic plant drugs as part of a growing wave of successful local efforts to decriminalize psychedelics. along with the decriminalization of all drugs in Oregon.

“Entheogenics for religious use,” says Hodges. “When Oakland passed this resolution, it was a sign. I’ve been interested in mushrooms for a long time, but haven’t tried them yet.”

You’ll forgive a veteran cannabis reporter for double checking that.

Here’s the founder of America’s only openly operating psychedelic mushroom church, who defiantly reopened the doors a day after a traumatizing and expensive police raid and said he first tried mushrooms less than three years ago?

“I’ve been drawn to them for a long time, but the reason I didn’t try them was because I wanted to prove to myself and to everyone who’s looking at me that cannabis doesn’t lead to other drugs.”

Incidentally, entheogen actually comes from the Greek word entheos, which means divinely inspired, filled with the Spirit of God.

“They say things agree with the mushrooms”

After smoking “up to two ounces of cannabis a day” for decades, Hodges decided he had disproved the Gateway theory. Also, he couldn’t get the church to supply mushrooms and include them in their sermons without trying them first.

And so began a journey that took him from micro doses to macro doses to heroic doses and beyond. He describes a series of encounters with “beings on the other side” who he says offer him guidance and support in his own life and in the operation of the Church.

“My intention is to try to understand religion and where it comes from. I now realize that our rapid evolution from ape to what we are today was not only guided by these mushrooms, but also by beings on the other side who wanted to offer help. They say things will level out with the mushrooms and they definitely will if you’re on the right track.”

Embracing the legal challenge

Assuming that these otherworldly beings encountered after consuming 30 grams of psychedelic mushrooms do not provide evidence admissible in court, the question arises as to whether the practices carried out within the Church of Entheogenic Plants, meet the standards of the freedom of religion enshrined in the federal government or not law remains an open question.

The case law on the subject is far from settled, as Hodges readily acknowledges. That’s another reason he’s dying to sue the city of Oakland over the 2020 raid. In that operation, police confiscated money, cannabis and mushrooms – but no criminal charges have been filed in the 18 months since.

“If we can win a federal judgment against a local law enforcement agency for persecuting our church, we can open anywhere in the country,” Hodges says. “And that’s what we intend to do.”

David Beehive

Veteran cannabis journalist David Bienenstock is the author of How to Smoke Pot (Properly): A Highbrow Guide to Getting High (2016 – Penguin/Random House) and co-host and co-creator of the Great Moments in Weed History podcast with Abdullah and Bean.” Follow him on Twitter @pot_handbook.

View David Bienenstock’s articles

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