On January 8, 2023, thousands of Jair Bolsonaro supporters smashed through police barricades in Brasília, trashing Brazil's congress, supreme court, and presidential palace. They wore yellow and green. They waved crosses. They live-streamed prayers for military intervention.

And some of them, according to testimony compiled by UC Berkeley's Altered States podcast, had been spiritually prepped for battle in ayahuasca ceremonies.

Not the tie-dye tourist kind. Not Silicon Valley microdosing circles. We're talking União do Vegetal (UDV)—one of Brazil's oldest, most buttoned-up ayahuasca churches, where members wear pressed shirts, follow strict hierarchies, and drink hoasca, the sacred DMT brew, under the guidance of mestres who often came from military or government backgrounds.

For decades, UDV was seen as the respectable face of Brazilian psychedelic spirituality—a bridge between Indigenous plant wisdom and Christian mysticism. But former members now say that bridge became a recruitment pipeline straight into Bolsonaro's far-right movement. And the allegations are as wild as they are chilling: that the very rituals designed to expand consciousness were weaponized to shrink it.

"The Left Wants to Destroy the Forest"

Here's how it allegedly worked.

Brazilian law prohibits religious institutions from engaging in electoral propaganda. So inside UDV temples aligned with Bolsonaro, the politicking came wrapped in spiritual language. Former attendees describe ceremonies between 2018 and 2022 where mestres didn't endorse candidates outright—they issued "spiritual warnings."

"They told us the left wanted to destroy the family, the church, and the forest," one ex-member, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, told researchers. "They said darkness was rising, and only a strong leader blessed by God could stop it."

Another recalled a mestre directly linking the ayahuasca spirit—known in UDV theology as Mestre Gabriel, the faith's founder—to Bolsonaro's "divine mission" to save Brazil.

The framing was subtle but effective. Bolsonaro wasn't a politician. He was a spiritual warrior. Voting for him wasn't civic duty—it was cosmic obedience.

And here's the kicker: ayahuasca makes you extremely suggestible. Your body goes slack, your defenses drop, and your mind cracks open like an egg. When a trusted authority figure speaks during that state, it doesn't feel like propaganda. It feels like God talking.

"You don't question the mestre during a session," the same ex-member said. "You surrender."

The Psychedelic Patriots

UDV's political tilt didn't come out of nowhere. The church has always attracted conservative professionals—lawyers, engineers, military officers—and its theology emphasizes discipline and order over ecstatic chaos. When Bolsonaro rose in 2018 with his "God above all" slogan and promises to restore traditional values, some UDV leaders saw alignment, not contradiction.

But Bolsonaro's evangelical base—the pastors who powered his campaign—initially had a problem: ayahuasca. For years, they'd branded it as witchcraft, demonic, a gateway to hell. How could they accept a church that literally drinks DMT?

The answer, according to observers of Brazil's religious right, was pragmatism dressed up as prophecy. Suddenly, influential evangelical leaders began blessing UDV ceremonies as legitimate "Christian mysticism." They condemned marijuana as satanic but gave ayahuasca a pass—as long as the visions came with conservative sermons.

Pastor Silas Malafaia, one of Bolsonaro's most prominent allies, never publicly endorsed ayahuasca. But he stopped attacking it. Other smaller evangelical figures went further, calling UDV members "psychedelic patriots" and framing their visions as divine revelations supporting Bolsonaro's cause.

The hypocrisy was staggering. But it worked.

Indigenous Wisdom, Colonial Extraction

There's a savage irony buried in all this.

Ayahuasca comes from the Amazon. It was used for centuries by Indigenous peoples like the Huni Kuin, Yawanawá, and Shipibo-Conibo for healing, vision, and connection to the forest. UDV itself was founded in 1961 by a rubber tapper named José Gabriel da Costa, who learned the practice from Indigenous ayahuasceros in the Amazon.

Bolsonaro's government, meanwhile, spent four years trying to destroy the Amazon and the people who protect it. He slashed environmental enforcement budgets by 24 percent. He mocked Indigenous leaders on television. He sided with agribusiness giants who poisoned the rivers where the sacred vine grows.

Yet his followers had no problem drinking from that same vine when it suited their political high.

"It's the same colonial logic," says Dr. Beatriz Labate, an anthropologist who studies ayahuasca religions and who was not involved in the Altered States investigation. "Extract the knowledge. Erase the people. Rebrand it as your own."

One leader from the Huni Kuin nation, speaking on condition of anonymity, said simply:

"They took our medicine and made it sick."

The Damage Is Done

Today, UDV's leadership insists the church remains apolitical. On its official website, the organization states that it "does not support or oppose any political party or candidate" and that members are free to vote according to their conscience.

Many rank-and-file UDV practitioners—likely the majority—are horrified by the allegations and adamant that their local temples never engaged in political manipulation. Some have left the church entirely. Others are pushing for internal reform.

But the fracture is real. Brazil's broader ayahuasca community, which includes the rival Santo Daime church and dozens of independent Indigenous-led circles, has watched UDV's reputation crumble. Trust is gone. The idea that a sacred plant medicine could be hijacked for fascist propaganda has shaken the movement to its core.

The Acid Test

In the end, what happened inside some UDV temples isn't really about ayahuasca. It's about power.

Power doesn't care if you're sober or tripping. It doesn't care if your revolution is led by a preacher, a general, or a mestrein a white button-down. It will use whatever language you hold sacred—Christian, Indigenous, psychedelic—to make you believe submission is enlightenment.

Under Bolsonaro, religion and psychedelics collided in a toxic ceremony. Divine revelation met digital manipulation. The brew that once dissolved egos was used to harden them. And believers who thought they were opening their minds were, in some cases, having them quietly reprogrammed.

On January 8, 2023, they showed up in Brasília waving crosses and chanting "Deus, Pátria, Família"—God, Fatherland, Family, the trinity of fascist nostalgia. Some had never been politically active before. Now they were holy warriors.

The right wing didn't just storm the capital that day.

They stormed consciousness itself.

And that might be the most dangerous invasion of all.