A few weeks ago, I mentioned to a friend that I was interested in learning more about psychedelics, especially how they might help me with depression and anxiety. That's a broad category of plant medicines including psilocybin ("magic") mushrooms, MDMA (ecstasy), DMT (Dimitri or the Businessman's Trip), ketamine ("special K") and some others. My friend told me he'd recently taken his first "trip," which he described as life-changing. I asked him a real estate developer living in Northern California, married with kids " why he decided to try a psychedelic substance. "My work felt increasingly stale and meaningless," he explained to me over a beer. "Despite a massive amount of reflection and coaching around how to break the rut, I felt as though I was still off track." When I confided my interest in psychedelics to a few other friends, several said they had tried the drugs and experienced several benefits: from easing anxiety to finding spiritual insights to combating depression and, among some with cancer, helping to reduce the fear of dying. They are hardly outliers. According to a new YouGovAmerica study, "one in four Americans say they've tried at least one psychedelic drug," amounting to some 72 million U.S. adults. When I queried my psychiatrist about participating to help improve my mental health, he was supportive, with two caveats: Do it with a trained therapist or guide, and do your best to ensure that the substance is what it's said to be.