NEW YORK -- A Greenwich Village storefront church has been luring converts by giving a legal LSD-like 'designer drug' to followers as the eucharist for communion, the Daily News reported in Sunday's editions.
'Our Eucharist is Dipropyl Tryptamine -- a very powerful Angel of the Host,' reads a flyer distributed by the Temple of the True Inner Light, a self-styled 'psychedelic' church in Manhattan's East Village.
The pamphlets are circulated at places where potential converts are likely to be found, such as the sidewalks of the East Village, Strawberry Fields in Central Park and Grateful Dead concerts, the News reported.
Dipropyl tryptamine, known as DPT, is a synthetic version of the psychedelic drug dimethyl triptamine, or DMT, which is found naturally in virola trees in South America and long used by Indians in religious rites.
Both are powerful psychedelics that, like LSD, can cause 'paranoia, depression, flashbacks, psychosis and delusions of grandeur,' Dr. Frank Sapienza, a Drug Enforcement Administration pharmacologist, told the newspaper.
But while the organic DMT is illegal in the United States, synthetic DPT is not on the federal government's list of controlled substances.
'It can be considered a designer drug,' Sapienza said, using the term for intoxicating chemical compounds designed in laboratories.
Although DPT is not specifically banned, officials said the church could be prosecuted under the federal designer drug law, the News reported.
'If this ever becomes a major problem, like the drug Ecstasy, then the federal government will probably step in,' DEA spokesman Bill Deac said.
Disciples of the Temple of the True Inner Light say DPT is central to their Christian theology as well as to their recruitment efforts.
'The psychedelic is Christ,' a member calling himself Theo told the News. 'The psychedelic is instructing us at this time to offer communion to the public with DPT.'
A woman calling herself Mary Eva said, 'DPT is one of the angels.' According to the temple's theology, God's other angels include marijuana, peyote and LSD.
Mary Eva said the DPT is synthesized into small crystals for the use during communion. First-time converts smoke the drug, which is wrapped in raspberry leaves. More experienced members ingest a DPT tea.
Mary Eva said members are not worried about federal drug indictments.
'Why should we be afraid of mere humans when the psychedelic has revealed himself to us?' she said.
