Biblical descriptions of angels describe large numbers of swirling, almost fractal wings with thousands of eyes incorporated into them. Or burning bushes that talk, and describe behaving better. Having experienced psychadelics, this is very similar to many hallucinogenic trips. This is due to action at serotonin receptors which both cause the visual disturbances as well as empathogenic behaviour.
Ergot mold is a relative of lsd that easily could have been present at the time due to poor storage techniques for rye/grain.
Is there any other evidence that suggests a psychadelic trigger may have helped Christianity get its start? There's mushrooms hidden in the tablecloth folds of some famous last supper artworks.... it just made so much sense when I saw a "realistic biblical angel representation" today. Like, it's just so accurately the exact type of visuals lsd (and its brother ergotism) and mushrooms can produce. It also can often feel like you are in the presence of a greater being, and very often they seem to offer benevolent advice, or warnings of poor behaviour. Everything just matches to me, but I'm an uneducated fool when it comes to this topic.
No, none. The only mind-altering substance for which there's good evidence for religious use in the ancient Mediterranean -- in any religious context -- is alcohol. Other drugs like opium had medicinal uses, but there's no documentary evidence for religious use, and very little archaeological evidence.
The big exception is a Judahite shrine at Tel Arad, Israel, dating to the 9th-6th centuries BCE, which has been found to have traces of THC on one of the altars (Arie, Rosen, and Namdar 2020). Certainly interesting, but not hard drugs; certainly not psychedelic; and quite unique.
There has been a suggestion of psychedelics used at Mas Castellar, a 4th-3rd century BCE village in Catalonia, which started as a Greek settlement and became iberianised. In one house on the site a cup was found with 'traces of beer, yeast, and rye ergot fungus'; also found was a human jaw bone with evidence of cereal consumption and traces of ergot (Pons, Arbulo, and Vivó 1998). Ergot has famously been claimed to be a hallucinogen used at Eleusis in Greece -- on no evidence whatsoever! -- so some observers have seized up on this as somehow corroborating a thing for which no evidence exists, namely Greek use of ergotised barley at a cult site 2000 km away. The idea that it's evidence of religious use is very weak: (1) ergot occurs naturally, so there's no automatic implication of intentional use; (2) ergot is toxic -- really nasty stuff, it can cause convulsions, vomiting, diarrhoea, and stroke, and persistent use will cause gangrene -- so systematic intentional use is implausible; (3) hallucinogenic effects aren't documented in connection with Eleusis in Greece, but neither are the less desirable effects of ergot, though we have a fair amount of relevant documentary evidence; (4) Mas Castellar did have a cult site, but these finds weren't in the house that archaeologists have interpreted as the main cult room.
The upshot is that the ergot traces found at Mas Castellar are most likely the result of people simply taking poor care of their rye.
Generally speaking, people in the ancient Mediterranean were very poorly informed about the more interesting effects of some plants that were available to them. Cannabis use, for example, was all about rope-making and eating the seeds. Where ancient medical writers do show rare signs of being aware of mind-altering effects, they're buried in loads of nonsense. Having said that, Arie et al. 2020 (see above) do note a 4th century CE burial in Jerusalem which shows signs of cannabis use as a treatment for pain. I wrote an answer back in 2020 which looked more generally at evidence for use of mind-altering substances in the ancient Mediterranean (and also in Ukraine, where there's much better evidence for use of THC).
Edit: a few typos. Also, I'd better point out that none of this, tenuous as it is, comes anywhere near ancient Christian religious practice. The possible use of THC at Tel Arad puts that in play in a proto-Jewish context, but as I said we're still not looking at anything psychedelic.
Since you mentioned Biblical angels, I think it's worth leaving this answer by u/sunagainstgold here which discusses the whole "eldritch angels" thing