Anorexia can be treated with psilocybin ‘magic mushrooms:’ study

For people with anorexia, treatment options are scarce.

There are no medications approved for the eating disorder because none have been shown to work. And anorexia has the highest death rate of all psychiatric conditions, according to a 2020 study.

But now, a small study from researchers at the University of California, San Diego, has found that the psilocybin in “magic mushrooms” can successfully treat some people with anorexia.

It was “the most important experience of my life,” said one study participant, a normally reserved 32-year-old attorney.

“This drug altered how I felt about my body almost independently,” she said in a UCSD news release. “It was like a gift, altering my perception for me in a way that I’m not sure I could have done on my own.”

That kind of breakthrough is difficult to achieve with standard anorexia treatments, medical experts say.

“One of the things that makes anorexia so hard to treat is that, while most people with a psychiatric illness want to get rid of it, that’s not the case with this,” said Dr. Stephanie Knatz Peck, associate clinical professor at the UCSD Eating Disorders Center, as quoted in the Daily Mail.

“People become identified with their illness — they say they like themselves better or feel better with anorexia. So they might refuse to come back for more treatment,” added Knatz Peck, lead author of the study.

In recent years, psychedelics including psilocybin mushrooms, ketamine, MDMA, ayahuasca and other compounds — both synthetic and natural — have been used successfully to treat a growing number of mental health concerns.

Australia is now the first country to legalize the use of MDMA and magic mushrooms to treat PTSD and depression, and in the US, Oregon recently graduated a class of state-licensed magic mushroom guides to treat people with mental health problems.

But anorexia nervosa, and other eating disorders like bulimia, have proven very resistant to treatment and can lead to serious medical complications. In severe cases, people may require a feeding tube to ensure they have enough nutrients to maintain basic vital functions.

Counseling, including family therapy and cognitive behavioral therapy, can sometimes help normalize eating behavior, according to the Mayo Clinic, but people often relapse during stressful periods or in triggering situations.

To test whether psilocybin is safe and tolerable among people with anorexia, the research team gathered 10 women age 18 to 40 with the condition and gave each one a single dose of 25 mg of psilocybin.

Participants were treated in a clinical setting with a trained therapist; the individual sessions lasted several hours each because of the lengthy hallucinogenic trip that followed the dose of psilocybin.

“I was nervous,” said one participant, 24. “[I]n college I knew people who took ‘shrooms and had bad trips, and that really freaked me out. I always said I would never take hallucinogens for that reason.”

But she later described the session as “one of the most profound experiences I’ve ever had.”

The hallucinogen prompted her to review several good and bad events in her life, and “this one experience tied all those good and bad experiences together and put them through a more meaningful lens.”

Three months after their psilocybin session, each participant reported back to the researchers: 90% said they felt more positive about life endeavors and 70% reported an overall shift in personal identity and quality of life.

And four participants — 40% of the sample — had substantial decreases in their standard Eating Disorder Examination scores, low enough to qualify as being in remission from an eating disorder. None of the 10 women had gained a significant amount of weight after the therapy session.

Interestingly, 90% of participants thought that a single psilocybin dosing session was not enough. But not all experts are ready to call psilocybin a cure.

“[T]his study does not demonstrate that psilocybin therapy can be used to treat anorexia nervosa,” Trevor Steward, a senior research fellow in the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Melbourne, told New Atlas.

“While these results show this psilocybin therapy is safe under controlled conditions, it’s essential not to let the hype around psychedelics outpace the scientific evidence,” Steward added.

The researchers noted that their study had several limitations: In addition to being a small sample of only 10 participants, all were female and nine identified as white.

Moreover, there was no control or placebo group, a common issue in psychedelic drug trials because people taking psychedelics know within minutes if they’re hallucinating or not.

Additional research into the safety and effectiveness of psilocybin mushrooms is needed, and there are currently two clinical trials underway looking into psilocybin as a treatment for anorexia.