have no doubt that some christians likely dabbled with these things, as did their jewish forbears, and certainly some sects of paganism where this was explicitl

have no doubt that some christians likely dabbled with these things, as did their jewish forbears, and certainly some sects of paganism where this was explicitly allowed/incorporated but it's one thing to acknowledge these various strands as ever having existed, and quite another to take fragmentary evidence out of context and use it as a basis to spin a whole narritive that all of the historical understanding is somehow fundamentally incorrect, and that there is some 'hidden teaching' (which incedentally and conveniently is almost always more permissive w/r/t intoxication/sexuality) there's also the detail that this misunderstanding is also predicated on a false notion that medieval people were as hostile to medicinal plants as we have become after the advent of the pharmaceutical industry - if these plants are not 'evil' and 'suppressed', then it is less 'shocking' and 'world changing' to find references to them in what we might think are surprising places to our modern mind