The person Donald Trump chose to be the next top doctor wrote in a book that people could try psychedelic drugs (which are not proven to work) as treatment. She also said in a newsletter that using mushrooms helped her find someone to date.

Dr. Casey Means suggests thinking about therapy that uses psilocybin with guidance. This is interesting because psilocybin is not legal in the US according to the national law. It is a Schedule 1 drug, which means it is seen as having no medical use and a high chance of being misused. 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 Americans good information about how to be healthier and avoid getting sick or hurt. In the past, surgeons general have taught people about health problems like AIDS and how to stop suicide. In 1964, the surgeon general warned that smoking was dangerous, and this helped to improve America's health.

Some people, like Dr. C. Everett Koop who worked for President Ronald Reagan as a top doctor, became famous and changed rules. Others were easily forgotten.

Means was chosen in a way that Trump often does, picking people who are famous instead of those with strong ideas about rules. Trump said he picked Means because the Health Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., liked her a lot. Trump said, "Bobby thought she was great," and that 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 practice medicine is not active now. When we called her, she didn't want to talk about it.

In her 2024 book “Good Energy,” she suggested ideas about psychedelic drugs. She wrote the book with her brother, Calley Means, who is a businessman. He now works for the government as a health advisor and has said he put money into companies that make psychedelic medicines.

This book talks a lot about how our bodies use energy, which Casey Means calls "good energy". She gives some tips to help people deal with problems and bad thoughts that stop us from being healthy and full of energy.

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

She wrote, "If you want to, you can try special therapy with psilocybin with a guide. Research shows this therapy can be very important for some, like it was for me."

Some studies say that psychedelics might be helpful, but we don't know if the good things are more important than the bad things. Psilocybin can make you hallucinate for hours, and these hallucinations can be nice or scary. It has been studied with talking therapy for mental health problems and drinking problems. But we don't know much about how it affects healthy people. It can cause side effects like a faster heartbeat, feeling sick, and headaches. It can be dangerous to take it without help. Hallucinations could make someone 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 that MDMA, also called ecstasy, can help people with PTSD. But last year, the FDA did not agree to use MDMA for PTSD because some experts thought the research was not good and it could be risky.

In her book, Means calls psychedelics "plant medicine." She says she tried mushrooms for the first time around January 1, 2021. She felt like she needed to do it after hearing "an inner voice" telling her it was time to get ready.

She said she felt like she belonged to a very long line of mothers and babies going back to the start of life. She also said that, for her, magic mushrooms could open up a new world where she didn't feel trapped by her own thoughts, feelings, and past.

In a newsletter she wrote in October, Means said she used special drugs to help her "find love at 35." She said she "tried plant medicine with people she trusted" to get ready for a relationship, and added a mushroom picture. She said she was not telling others to do the same thing.

This month, Means wrote about what she wants for health policy in the White House. She said she wants schools to serve healthier food 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 believes some research money should go to different ways of helping health.

Calley Means has also said he wants people to use psychedelic drugs. In a blog post from 2021, he wrote that he first tried psilocybin when he was having a hard time. He said it was the most important thing that ever happened to him in his life, work, and beliefs. In 2022, he said he had used all the money from his retirement savings to buy stocks in two companies that are making and studying psychedelic drugs. He did not reply to messages asking for his opinion.

Casey Means still doesn't have a date for her important meeting. Trump picked Means after people had questions about Janette Nesheiwat, who was his first choice. Nesheiwat used to work for Fox News, and Trump took back her name.