why is it that all religions based on drugs are completely obviously based on drugs? And all the religions that arn't based on drugs you have to go through a thousand assumptions to reach drugs? The peyote religion - you eat a peyote. The mushroom religion - you eat a mushroom. The ayahuasca religion - you drink ayahuasca. It's pretty simple.
This ^ is an interesting point. What you refer to here ^ as “religions” aren't really religions in the same way that Buddhism or Christianity are religions, so it is probably more accurate to call them “religious practises”, ie the peyote religion is the people in a specific place who eat peyote as a religious (spiritual) practise.
Contrast that to actual religions like Christianity that have a distinct orthodoxy and a fixed body of mythology. Then there is cross-over cases like Santo Daime which is an organised religion which focuses on drinking ayahuasca. But note that Santo Daime is essentially just Christianity ('Santo' means 'Saint' in Portugese - a christian term), morphed into an ayahuasca drinking sect, the symbolism of Santo Daime is distinctly christian, they have merely replaced the wine of the christian eucharist with ayahuasca.
Similarly with Maria Sabina and her mushroom eating practises, they can hardly be called her “religion” given that she was a committed Catholic who worshipped Jesus.
Why did all these other religions go to such trouble hiding the drug use?
They didnt go to any trouble hiding anything, entheogenic mysticism has never really been hidden, it is plainly visible as the core essence of every religion. But it is only recognisable to people who are aware of the mental dynamics of the altered state (people who have tripped). Most people haven't tripped, so they are unable to recognise the esoteric interpretation of religion.
Jesus said: “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear. The {entheogenic} secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is said in parables so that they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and ever hearing but never understanding” (Mark 4:8/9)
That isn't hidden, it's taken from the words of the bible that are easily available for anyone to look at, here Jesus is talking about the exoteric/esoteric interpretive distinction, he is saying very clearly that the words of the scripture contain a meaning that only people with the right “ears” (ie the entheogenic interpretive lense) will be able to recognise and understand, everybody else will only see the words, not their (entheogenic) meaning.
Exoteric clueless outsiders can read the words of the scripture, but they cannot understand what those words are really about, because they lack awareness of the mystical altered state that occurs after the ingestion of entheogens.
To an esoteric psychedelic insider, all religious symbols are plainly obvious to recognise as allusions to taking drugs and tripping out, nothing is “hidden”, Jesus isn't a particular person, rather Jesus is an anthropomorphism of the mental dynamics that result from ingesting entheogens.