The person Donald Trump chose to be the next Surgeon General wrote in a book that people could try using psychedelic drugs that are not proven to work, as a way to feel better. She also wrote in a newsletter that using mushrooms helped her find someone to love.

Dr. Casey Means suggests thinking about psilocybin therapy with guidance. This is interesting because psilocybin is against the law in the US. It's called a Schedule 1 drug, which means it's seen as having no medical use and a high risk of being misused. However, Oregon and Colorado have made psychedelic therapy legal, but some cities in Oregon have stopped it again.

The main job of the surgeon general is to give people in America good information about how to be healthier and avoid getting sick or hurt. In the past, surgeons general have used their job to teach people about health problems like AIDS and stopping people from killing themselves. In 1964, the surgeon general warned that smoking was dangerous, and this helped to make America healthier.

Some people became famous, like Dr. C. Everett Koop, who worked for President Ronald Reagan. He changed rules a lot. But other people were easily forgotten.

Means was chosen like others Trump picked before, based on being famous, not on knowing about the job. Trump said he chose Means because Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told him she was great. Trump said he didn't know her himself.

Means studied at Stanford University and got her degrees there. She started working as a doctor in Oregon, but she didn't finish. Her license to work as a doctor is not active now. When we called her, she didn't want to talk about it.

In her 2024 book “Good Energy,” she suggested using psychedelics. She wrote the book with her brother, Calley Means, who is a businessman now working for the government as a health advisor. He has said that he invested in medicine companies that focus on psychedelics.

This book talks a lot about keeping your body healthy, which Casey Means calls having "good energy." She gives some ideas to help people deal with problems and bad thoughts that make us feel bad and stop us from being healthy.

One idea is to think about using therapy with psilocybin, which is in magic mushrooms. She writes about her ideas on this in a long piece of writing.

She said that if you are interested, you should try special therapy with psilocybin. She added that studies show this therapy can be very important and helpful for some people, like it was for her.

Some studies say psychedelics might be helpful, but we don't know if the good things are better than the bad. Psilocybin can make you hallucinate for hours, and it can be good or scary. It's being studied with therapy for mental health and drinking problems, but not much in healthy people. It can cause a faster heart rate, feeling sick, and headaches. It's dangerous to take it without help. Hallucinations could make you walk into the road or do other risky things.

Means said that psilocybin and other psychedelic drugs have been seen in a bad way. She said MDMA, also called ecstasy, can help people with PTSD. But last year, the FDA did not say yes to using MDMA for PTSD because some experts thought the research was not good and it could be risky.

In her book, Means calls psychedelic drugs "plant medicine". She explains that she tried mushrooms for the first time around January 1, 2021. She did this because she felt like she heard a voice in her head saying, "it's time to get ready."

She wrote that she felt like she belonged to a very long line of mothers and babies from the start of life. She also said that, for her, magic mushrooms could open a door to another world where she didn't have her usual worries and thoughts.

In a newsletter from October, Means said she used psychedelics to help her "make space to find love at 35." She wrote that she "tried plant medicine with people she trusted" to get ready for a relationship, and added a mushroom emoji. She said she wasn't telling others to do the same.

This month, Means wrote about what she wants for health policy in the White House. She said she wants healthier food in schools and thinks ultra-processed foods should have warning labels. She also wants people to look into vaccine safety and stop conflicts of interest. She didn't talk about psychedelics directly, but she said that researchers don't want to study "normal, natural, and drugs that can't be patented". She thinks some research money should go to other ways of helping health.

Calley Means has also said he supports using psychedelic drugs. In a blog post from 2021, he wrote that he first tried psilocybin when he was having a difficult time. He said it was "the most important thing that ever happened to me in my life – for myself, my job, and my beliefs." In 2022, he said he "sold all my savings" and used the money to buy shares in two companies that are working on psychedelic drugs. He didn't reply to messages asking for his opinion.

Casey Means' hearing to become Surgeon General hasn't been planned yet. Trump picked Means after people had questions about Janette Nesheiwat's work history. Nesheiwat used to work for Fox News and was Trump's first choice, but he took back her name.