Jackson was bored with his massage therapy practice and was looking for something more interesting to do. Cannabis legalization had reawakened his interest in the use of natural, psychoactive substances as healing and spiritual agents. A once-a-month user of cannabis, he was enthusiastic about Johns Hopkins University’s research on the potential mental health benefits of psilocybin, the psychedelic “magic mushroom.” Jackson fondly remembered experiencing a spiritual awakening when he took LSD as a young man, but he had also seen the powerful drug send a friend into paranoid panic that lasted over a year.