23 Jul 2025 9 min read

From DMT to Divine Liturgy: What Psychedelics Showed Me About Spiritual Warfare

Why I Left the New Age for the Ancient Faith

The spiritual world can be a terrifying place.

Take it from me - I’ve been down to the depths and back again.

My first few breakthrough experiences on dimethyltryptamine (DMT) were overwhelmingly positive and life-changing, but they would eventually give way to something dark and evil.

Thank God I didn’t let it consume me.

I was raised in a Christian household. I went to a Christian elementary school during the week, and then attended church on Sundays.

My involvement with the church kept up until I moved from my hometown to the big city.

I let my faith slide. I stopped going to church. Prayer faded into the background.

After several years of living a secular life, I felt myself yearning for a deeper spiritual connection.

I didn’t want to go back to Christianity. I was distrustful of organized religion.

I started exploring.

This led me to a new-age way of thinking.

I didn’t call it that at the time, but that’s what it was.

In fact, I didn’t want to call my belief system anything at the time, since I didn’t want to be lumped in with other people who felt the same way.

Gradually, I started going down the path.

I began exploring meditation. Then I got into yoga, since meditation was built into the practice.

I was browsing spiritual websites, and watching related YouTube content.

I started listening to speakers like Alan Watts and Terence McKenna. There was a channeler named Bashar, whose content I binged for hours at a time.

I took a trip to Peru, ventured into the rainforest, and drank ayahuasca.

While I was there, I met another traveler from the States. He knew how to make DMT, and taught me his method.

Several months after I got back to Canada, I gathered the materials I needed and synthesized some DMT in my apartment.

At first, I eased into it, but after a while I was pushing the boundaries of how far into these altered states I could go.

I was not disappointed.

I had found the spiritual depth that I was seeking.

These trips revealed all kinds of mysteries about life, the universe, and our understanding of reality in ways I couldn’t possibly describe or even remember.

It convinced me that God was real - even if my experience was just a chemical illusion. The mere possibility of imagining such a reality pointed to something greater - an almighty Creator.

We don’t have the language to describe what happens during these trips. It’s too complex.

With other psychedelics like mushrooms or LSD, if someone were to fall into a trip, they would eventually realize that they were on drugs and start to wonder what they consumed that brought them there.

However, with DMT, it’s different - it’s like the bungee jumping of psychedelics: short-lived and intense.

If someone going in blind were to sit on the couch, and slip into a breakthrough DMT trip, they could come out of it convinced that God had reached out and communicated directly with them. Nothing anybody says would convince them otherwise.

It made me feel powerful. I felt like I had access to deep knowledge about the universe nobody else knew.

I let it get to my head.

I started doing it more often, while also overusing other psychedelics like magic mushrooms.

However, through it all, Christianity kept creeping through.

I would have a crazy breakthrough, think about it for a minute, and then compare the experience to a Bible story, a verse, or a parable Jesus told.

But the deeper I went, the darker it got.

The trips had once felt divine, healing, and cosmic, but the light gave way to something else that was cold, calculating, and cruel.

The breakthrough portions of the trips became more extreme and turbulent.

I started to feel low-level demonic energies trying to get in - entities that didn’t want to teach me anything.

People talk about the ‘machine elves’, and I’ve encountered them before, but this was different.

They worked to undermine me. They wanted me to feel small and weak.

I used to think I was fighting them off and succeeding, but looking back, I was completely out of my depth.

This wasn’t just exploration anymore. It was spiritual warfare.

I eventually lost the ability to breakthrough when I smoked. It was for the best. Part of me wondered if I did permanent damage to myself from using it so often.

I quit using psychedelics - telling myself that I wasn’t going to touch them for at least 10 years.

I attended church for the first time in years.

It was a non-denominational protestant church - the kind that has a rock concert and a TED talk.

It would be a laughable situation to me today, but I felt humbled when I was there.

I had been living the hookup and stoner lifestyle for so long, I forgot what it was like to be in a wholesome family environment.

Years passed with sporadic church attendance and occasional but growing prayer.

I already turned away from psychedelics. Years later, I quit smoking pot.

I eventually came to discover Orthodox Christianity thanks to some content creators on the internet.

After doing some research, I decided to attend a divine liturgy at a Greek Orthodox Church.

It felt weird, and I had to hype myself up before going inside.

Once there, it continued being strange.

The entire service was in Greek. I couldn’t understand anything that was going on.

Speaking with some of the parishioners, the attitude I felt was “It’s nice to meet you. We’re glad you came, and that you’re interested in Orthodoxy. However, this probably isn’t the right place for you.”

I don’t fault them. This is a Greek church, and I was an outsider.

In spite of that, I found beauty in the service, the music, and the atmosphere.

I decided to give it another try. I found an English speaking church a short drive from where I live, and attended the following Sunday.

I got there early while they were serving Orthros (Matins). It’s a service of prayer, psalms, and hymns done in preparation for the Divine Liturgy.

I sat in the back row next to a couple of other single guys and tried to follow along. Hopefully they could help me out if I had any questions or ran into trouble.

I signed myself with the cross when it seemed appropriate, and followed along when people lined up at the front of the chapel to kiss a book containing the gospels.

For the most part, I just took everything in. The sights. The music. The chanting. The sermon. The smell of incense.

When it was over, I was invited into their basement for a meal with the rest of the congregation.

To me, this was a little unusual. Most churches I’ve been to normally serve coffee after their service, but this place was serving lunch.

Hey, who am I to turn down free food?

In reality, Orthodox Christians are expected to fast the morning of the Divine Liturgy.

The Eucharist is supposed to be the first thing we consume, so afterwards everybody breaks the fast by having lunch together.

The woman who leads the choir - which is excellent, by the way - came over and struck up a conversation. I told her a little about myself, and she introduced me to some of the other church regulars.

It was a warm and friendly experience. I felt at ease. This Orthodox Church felt like home from the first time I visited.

It wasn’t just the atmosphere or the people. Mainstream Christianity had left me searching for something deeper.

A big draw that pulled me into new-age thinking was the attitude surrounding mysticism.

I don’t mean fantasy or superstition, but the lived experience of God's presence encountered through prayer, asceticism, and the sacramental life.

With the protestant churches I attended, mysticism was largely ignored. In a few cases, it was condemned.

But the Orthodox Church embraces the mystical. It’s a big component of life here on earth and existence in general.

The services in the Orthodox Church are more involved compared to other churches I’ve attended. There is a protocol that people follow: standing, bowing, venerating icons, lighting candles, burning incense, receiving the Eucharist, getting a blessing from the priest.

It affects all of your senses.

In the Christian Reformed Church where I grew up, along with other protestant churches, we would gather, pray, sing songs, and listen to a sermon. In the Orthodox Church, we worshiped.

The history of Orthodoxy runs deep. It is the direct continuation of the Church founded by Christ and the Apostles.

It’s carried the early traditions to the present day; surviving wars, communism, Islamic conquest, and all manner of persecution.

Attending this church feels like I’m connected to thousands of years of history.

Nikola Tesla famously said, "If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration."

New-age practitioners have a good understanding of this concept. Crystals, drugs, and meditation all produce different energies that can affect a person’s mood and well-being. A lot of these practices claim to have healing energies or properties.

The Orthodox Church also understands this concept. It knows that humans are a fallen people, wounded by sin, haunted by demons, and sickened by our thoughts and deeds.

The Orthodox Church sees itself as a hospital for the soul. People attend the services to get better.

And I got better.

I gave up the drugs, and eventually I stepped away from casual sex and hookup culture.

I used to be big into yoga, but now it didn’t seem right. Even though it has health benefits, most of the classes came with new-age packaging I wasn’t into anymore.

I used to argue about things like current affairs, politics, and conspiracies. Now, I don’t care as much about those topics, and when they come up in conversation, I don’t get worked up over it.

People around me started to notice the changes I was making in my life.

They saw that I had become less selfish. I was helping other people and volunteering my time.

My energy was calmer and more grounded.

I was reading a lot more, and my social life was improving.

I came to the conclusion that venturing into the psychedelic realm is a lot like wading into the ocean.

The ocean is a marvelous place full of beauty and wonder. I’ve had a lot of fun in the ocean.

But it isn’t my natural environment. And the ocean claims thousands of lives every year.

A friend from church once warned “Beware of unearned knowledge.”

Psychedelics showed me that God was real, and that I must follow His will. I’m not allowed to pretend that I don’t know whether or not He exists.

My stakes have been raised.

My priest told me about a warning from St. John Chrysostom: “The road to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops.”

The stakes my priest has are much higher than mine. Not only is he responsible for his sins, but if he gives the wrong advice to his parish, he’s responsible for the sins of everybody following that advice.

This is why it’s important that we pray for our priests, bishops, and metropolitan daily.

Thankfully, God meets us where we are - not where we’re supposed to be. We have the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a host of angels, and an army of saints cheering us on and interceding for our souls.

If you're flirting with psychedelics, take this article as a warning. I've been deep into that world, and barely made it back.

If you’re already using them, stop before you do harm that can’t be undone.

Don’t wait. Start praying. Go to church.

The stakes are higher than you think.

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