Safety
Legal worship allows you to openly ask questions, have candid conversations, and—if things go wrong—involve legal authorities.
Religious abuse and predation threaten worshippers of all stripes
Often, the biggest danger in worship settings is the church itself, church leaders, and other members. Protect yourself by fully maintaining autonomy and judgment. If something doesn’t feel right, stop. If you worship with psychedelic sacraments, learn what you are doing, be safe, and be sincere. You are in charge of you.
Autonomy and Sincerity Protect Worship
Predation and abuse occur in religious spaces. Don’t look for TDA to keep you safe. It can’t. You keep you safe.
TDA promotes your safety and community safety, by declaring that you are sovereign, not an institution or leaders. TDA’s mycelial organizational structure replaces toxic elements of religion with individual autonomy. Those toxic elements of religion—hierarchy, authority, and dogma—shrink individuals, by aggrandizing institutions and leaders. TDA leaves members with all the autonomy and good judgment they had when they joined and reminds you that you are in charge of you.
Part of your religious journey might be to increase your safety, by learning about boundaries and consent, and by building organic connections with people you trust. Those connections can be more accessible and stronger than top-down institutional safeguards. The wider you build your network of trusted friends, the safer you can become.
Be aware that TDA does not host or sanction activities, events, or ceremonies. Members worship by themselves, unless they decide on their own to join with other members in private events. In this way, TDA evolves organically, as members independently connect. The network of those varied connections is the TDA community.
Please remember, you have no duty to protect TDA or any TDA leader. TDA has no institution. TDA has no leaders. Your only duty it to yourself. So, please, call out bad behavior and bad actors. Involve law enforcement where appropriate. Your courage can remove contamination and help TDA’s mycelial worship community grow and evolve in healthy ways. Again, though, your duty is to yourself.
If you, worship with psychedelic sacraments, remember that these sacraments increase suggestibility and vulnerability. Protect yourself by doing your research, selecting a proper set and setting, and worshipping with people you know well and trust. Don’t surrender your autonomy. Look for settings where you feel comfortable, not confused. Know what you ingest. “Secret” sacraments always are red flags. Removing clothing, touching or being touched 100% is not ever a required part of legitimate worship. Predation often hides behind tradition, authority and dogma.
You can increase your legal protection, by being safe and sincere in your psychedelic worship. Keep your head low, just as worshippers have always done where rulers are hostile. Consider growing your own sacrament and worshipping only with trusted people in a house church model. To guide your life, write a creed of your religious beliefs, values, and goals. If you ever need to prove that you are sincerely worshipping, your creed could come in helpful.
Remember that employers and family courts often will not hesitate to trample psychedelic worship claims and rights. In such situations, the cost of proving religious rights is cost-prohibitive to most people.