Psilocybin could kick-start anorexia recovery, early results suggest

An active ingredient in magic mushrooms, psilocybin has shown early promise for treating eating disorders

This story discusses topics such as eating disorders and suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling or having thoughts of suicide, help is available. Call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 or use the online Lifeline Chat . If you or someone you know is struggling with an eating disorder, you can contact the National Association of Anorexia Nervosa and Associated Disorders helpline by calling (888) 375-7767. And for crisis situations, you can text “NEDA” to 741741 to connect to a trained volunteer at Crisis Text Line .

It was 2022, and Christina was running out of options. The Londoner, then age 34, was desperate to fix her anorexia nervosa, even as the disease consumed her. After six years of battling the disease, she’d tried various forms of behavioral therapy and months of in-patient care, but nothing stuck. At its worst, the disease was preventing her from sleeping and zapping so much energy that she was unable to climb her stairs or brush her teeth. She needed a radical fix.

“You become your anorexia,” says Christina (a pseudonym to protect her privacy). “You have no life around it. You don’t laugh. You don’t smile. You don’t find joy in anything,” she recalls. Her relationships suffered, and she almost lost her job and house.

Eventually, a frantic Google search for “cures for anorexia” alerted her to a clinical trial for the psychedelic psilocybin—an active ingredient in magic mushrooms—as a treatment for the disease. She signed up.

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“I genuinely believe, had I not done that trial, I would either be stuck in a hospital loop, or I wouldn't be here today,” she says. “It saved my life.”

Life with an eating disorder can turn the mind and body into a prison. Intrusive, never-ending thought spirals drive compulsive behaviors such as binging, overexercising, purging and restrictive eating. Conventional psychiatric treatments, such as cognitive-behavioral therapy or antidepressants, work in only about half of patients. People with anorexia are more than 18 times more likely to die by suicide than the general population—the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder.