Are psychedelics going mainstream? Meet the doctors, scientists and even PTA moms turning to drugs to enhance their minds

Austin, Texas, is known for keeping things weird, but last week, the city got downright trippy when 600 people descended on it to expand their minds.There were neuroscientists and researchers, wellness gurus and biohackers, seasoned psychonauts who’d journeyed to South America to take ayahuasca with a shaman — and enough women who looked like PTA moms to staff an entire elementary school fundraiser.They’d come for the magic mushrooms, the mind-bending molecules and the tantalizing promise of a better brain.Welcome to the new frontier of wellness, where psychedelics are no longer just for tie-dyed hippies.Today, they’re attracting an increasingly mainstream crowd, with many betting that these once-taboo substances could be the next big thing in mental health.“It’s astonishing to me how legitimate it looks these days,” Rick Doblin, a leading advocate in the field, told me backstage at Dave Asprey’s inaugural Beyond Psychedelics Conference, held October 12-14.“I’m still so used to it being something that was a career ender for people, even wanting to do psychedelic research,” said Doblin, who founded the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) in 1986.These days, the landscape looks very different.Major institutions, including Johns Hopkins and Mount Sinai, are investigating the potential applications of psychedelics in mental health care.

Investors have poured substantial sums into the burgeoning industry, betting that these substances could help treat conditions that have proved difficult to manage with conventional approaches.The legal barriers are shifting, too.Some states and cities have moved to decriminalize certain psychedelics, while others have established regulated pathways for therapy assisted by psilocybin, the hallucinogenic compound found in some fungi. Even Washington is taking notice.

In April, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to accelerate the review of qualifying...