“This could save lives, cure depression, help alcoholism, get people off opioids—why wouldn’t I want to be invested?” Shark Tank host Kevin O’Leary is sitting across from me in a restaurant talking about a recent investment. He was part of a $6 million round in MindMed, a company that’s taking psychedelic drugs and turning them into medicine. Its first drug has the potential to turn a person’s addictions—to cocaine, methamphetamine, morphine, sugar, alcohol—off like a light switch. It has a clear opportunity to help lower the nearly 70,000 annual drug overdose deaths that take place in the U.S. But the compound, 18-MC, has yet to undergo human efficacy trials, leaving open a big question: Will it even work?

Scientists have been aware of the potential of LSD and psilocybin (the psychoactive component in mushrooms) as addiction killers for decades. Outside of the lab, too, people have been experimenting with various psychedelics to cure drug addiction since the 1960s. In recent years, the U.S. government has opened up to the use of psychedelics to quell intractable health problems like depression and opioid addiction. Initial research seems to indicate that altering a person’s reality leaves them with indelible experiences that can lead to sobriety.

That is consistent with the rhetoric of so-called “psychonauts,” people who take psychedelics as a transformational exercise. Psychedelics “change one’s mind in enduring ways,” writes Michael Pollan in his 2018 book How To Change Your Mind. MindMed’s early research suggests that it’s the drugs themselves that are resetting the brain and freeing people from their cravings. The company is engineering variants as well as tiny doses of psychedelic drugs, both of which aim to treat patients without getting them high.

The company, which is not even a year old, was inspired by a Silicon Valley trend that has been simultaneously lauded and ridiculed: micro-dosing. While living in San Francisco, MindMed founder JR Rahn came into contact with hoards of tech workers who take minuscule doses of psychedelic drugs as way to wean themselves off of stimulants like Adderall, while maintaining a focused edge. But psychedelics get you high and can leave you in a mind-melded state for hours, which for a lot of people is a nonstarter. For both the micro-dosers and the people looking for help in recovering from an addiction—not to mention the Food and Drug Administration, the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the pharmaceutical companies that have the money and reach to bring a drug to market—that makes psychedelics risky business. Rahn’s first drug aimed at treating addiction has engineered out the psychedelic experience. But can it still be effective without the trip?