A small church in Santa Fe, N.M., has grown up around a unique sacrament. Twice a month, the congregation meets in a ritualized setting to drink Brazilian huasca tea, which has psychoactive properties said to produce a trance-like state.

The Supreme Court confirmed the UDV church's right to exist in 2006. The church doesn't seek new members and prefers to keep a low profile. It did, however, agree for the first time to open up to a journalist.

UDV stands for Uniao do Vegetal — literally translated "the union of the plants." Huasca tea is brewed from two plants: a vine and the leaves of a bush found in the Amazonian forest. The concoction contains DMT, which is considered a powerful and illegal hallucinogen by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Anthropologists who've trekked to the Amazon to try the "vine of the soul," as it's called, have described the intense experience it produces as death, returning to the cosmic uterus and rebirth.

The Church Service

So, this is no ordinary congregation, even though it sounds like people are arriving for a church supper.

Sixty people are gathering inside a large salon in a nondescript adobe house south of Santa Fe. They're hugging, visiting and pulling on forest-green shirts with the letters UDV on the pocket in preparation for tonight's session.

The Santa Fe church is the largest of the six UDV congregations in the country, numbering only 300 members in all. There are 17,000 practitioners in Brazil, where the church started.

The UDV in the U.S. is extremely media shy, fearing misunderstanding and caricaturing of its beliefs and practices. Most members are private about their huasca religion. (The church elders who invited NPR asked not to record interviews with individual members.)

Barbara, an electrologist, says the tea cured her Lyme disease; Satara, a substitute teacher, claims huasca amplifies perception of herself and the world — like turning up the volume on a radio. Joaquin, a tattooed massage therapist, says the tea is much more spiritual than tripping on acid; and Pete, a martial arts teacher, says he's here to be part of a community of people all trying to get closer to God.

One of things that strikes you about this church is how structured it is.

The lengthy bylaws are read during every ceremony. Members wear uniforms. They sit in identical folding green chairs arranged in concentric rings facing an altar — above hangs a picture of the young religion's founder, José Gabriel da Costa. Mestre Gabriel, to his followers, was a Brazilian rubber tapper who tried huasca and created a religion around it in 1961.

People turn serious as soon as a bell rings.

Not 'A Drug At All'

We don't consider the tea to be a drug at all. The effect of the tea is that it increases a person's ability to feel and perceive reality.

Tai Bixby, UDV church Santa Fe head pastor

Tai Bixby is a real estate broker and representative mestre, or head pastor, of the Santa Fe congregation.

"We don't consider the tea to be a drug at all," Bixby says. "The effect of the tea is that it increases a person's ability to feel and perceive reality."

Jeffrey Bronfman, national UDV vice president, says people use it to connect with their spirituality.

"The tea is really an instrument to help us get in touch with our own spiritual nature. It's not something that takes people into a state of disorientation," Bronfman says.

'Ayahuasca' Tourism

Curiosity about the psychedelic tea has led to a boom in ayahuasca tourism — another name for the brew. More than 40 ayahuasca lodges in Peru advertise on the Internet with pitches like, "Your vibrations will begin to harmonize with the flow of nature! Click here for rates."

Some of the experiences turn out badly. Articles have described a few spiritual seekers who've died or gone berserk during rituals and women who've been molested by unscrupulous shamans.