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When I was 20, I was living with anorexia nervosa, an eating disorder that likely would have killed me if I hadn’t taken psilocybin mushrooms.
At the time, I was studying clinical nutrition and dietetics. I worked at the university recreation center as a personal trainer and spin instructor. On the outside, I looked disciplined, accomplished, and deeply invested in health. On the inside, my world was shrinking. As my eating disorder became more rigid and consuming, I pushed away friends and loved ones until the illness occupied nearly everything.
I had struggled with depression and self-harm as a teenager. After a sexual assault during my first week of sophomore year, my need for control intensified beyond what I could contain. Food and my body became the outlet. What began as an attempt to feel safe evolved into years of self-erasure. In the pursuit of control, I lost it entirely.
As a dietetics student, I turned away from Western medicine, not out of evidence-based skepticism, but because I had absorbed toxic wellness culture that glorifies self-reliance while quietly discouraging lifesaving care. I tried yoga. I read the books. I studied eating disorders academically while living inside one. I meditated, journaled, intellectualized.
Alongside this wellness culture was hyperindividualism, the belief that healing, success, and worthiness are solitary pursuits. That pleasure is distraction. That rest is indulgent. That needing people is weakness.
But my chronically starved brain was not becoming enlightened.
It was losing agency.
Inside the Experience
Mushrooms changed my life.
I was in a new relationship with someone who carried real gentleness. He had experience with psychedelics and his own history of trauma. He was safe at a time when safety felt abstract. We were not seeking healing in a ceremonial or clinical sense. We were young, curious, and imperfect. But there was care, intention, and trust.
We took a full dose.
I was living in a beat-up old house on Vine Street in Cincinnati. My all-inclusive rent was $500. I lived in an upstairs loft with low, slanted ceilings, a curtained-off closet, and a twin bed tucked into a nook. Twinkle lights traced the ceiling. An abstract mountain tapestry was draped across the wall with old nails I had stolen from my grandpa years earlier.
As the mushrooms came on, we stretched and listened to music. The first effects appeared as I looked down at my arm. My freckles and my sprouting seed progression tattoo, an homage to Peace Is Every Step, began to move gently to the sound of Alone by Petit Biscuit. We laughed. Something softened.
I felt connected. To my partner. To color. To music. To life.
My world, dulled by isolation, starvation, and fear, became vivid again.
After a brief and overstimulating trip to the park, lovingly chaperoned by roommates who were trip-sitting, we returned home. I crawled into bed and pulled the comforter over my body.
I felt heavy, gutted, and consumed by a grief I didn’t understand.
I communicated to my partner that I needed to be alone with whatever was moving through me.
Wrapped in my grandmother’s blanket, I walked to the bathroom.
Everything was yellow.
The walls. The ceiling. The shower.
Then I looked in the mirror.
Seeing the Illness Clearly
I saw a scared little girl.
Hollowed cheeks. Protruding hip bones. Sharp shoulders. Every rib my body had to bare. A body reduced to its edges.
For the first time, I could see what I had been unable, or unwilling, to see.
I was sick.
I needed help.
I was killing myself.
I dropped to my knees and sobbed over the ways I had punished my body. Faces flashed before my mind one-by-one: my family, my friends, my coworkers. The people I had pushed away. The people whose concern I had resisted.
I cried for my mother, for the quiet terror of watching her daughter disappear.
On that bathroom floor, wrapped in my grandmother’s blanket, something clarified.
Psilocybin did not show me novelty or escape.
It allowed me to feel radical compassion.
Compassion for my body.
Compassion for my fear.
Compassion for my humanity.
I returned to bed and asked my partner to hold me. For the first time since the assault, I let someone see me cry.
I was no longer alone.
What Psilocybin Was and Was Not
That experience did not cure my anorexia, depression, or trauma.
What followed were years of integration. Slow, unglamorous, relational work. I still needed treatment, nourishment, therapy, accountability, and time.
But the experience gave me something I had not had before.
A glimpse of a life not fully consumed by the illness.
A sense that help was possible.
A feeling that connection was not dangerous.
From a neurobiological perspective, psilocybin appears to increase neuroplasticity, the brain’s ability to form new connections and loosen rigid, overlearned patterns of thought. In anorexia nervosa, rigidity is not metaphorical. It is neurological.
By temporarily altering activity in the default mode network, which is associated with rumination, self-criticism, and a fixed sense of self, psilocybin may create a brief window in which new perspectives can emerge.
For me, that window was not intellectual.
It was embodied.
I did not think my way into compassion.
I felt it.
Letting go of the eating disorder also meant grieving the identity built around discipline, control, and being “good.” Healing required mourning not just the body I harmed, but the version of myself I believed I had to be to deserve care.
Research, Ethics, and Caution
Early clinical research suggests that psilocybin, when administered with psychological support, is safe and tolerable in individuals with anorexia nervosa. Participants report shifts in emotional processing, self-perception, and cognitive flexibility. Ongoing pilot studies are exploring repeated dosing, neural mechanisms, and preliminary outcomes.
Survey data also suggest that psychedelics such as psilocybin and LSD are frequently rated by individuals with eating disorders as providing meaningful symptom relief, particularly in anorexia nervosa.
This experience occurred outside a clinical setting and should not be interpreted as a recommendation or replacement for evidence-based treatment.
Psychedelics are not substitutes for therapy, nutritional rehabilitation, or community support.
What they may offer is interruption.
A loosening of the illness’s grip.
A moment where the eating disorder is no longer the loudest voice in the room.
Similar mechanisms are being explored with other novel interventions such as ketamine, which has demonstrated rapid antidepressant effects and is under investigation as an adjunctive treatment for eating disorders marked by depression and cognitive rigidity.
Given the high mortality rate of anorexia nervosa, any intervention that safely increases flexibility, compassion, and connection warrants careful, ethical study.
Closing
Psilocybin did not cure me.
But it helped me choose to live.
For some of us, healing begins not with answers,
but with the first moment we can imagine living differently.
Resources and Support
If you or someone you love is navigating an eating disorder, recovery does not have to be rigid or lonely to be effective.
At Eighty Twenty Nutrition, my work is grounded in evidence-based care, curiosity, and respect for the complexity of healing. If this piece resonated, you’re welcome to learn more about my approach or reach out for a conversation.
No pressure. No quick fixes.
Just support, information, and a place to begin.
Evidence, Context, and Ongoing Research
Psychedelics are being investigated as potential adjunctive treatments for eating disorders, particularly anorexia nervosa. At present, these approaches remain experimental and are not part of standard clinical care. Early clinical trials, case reports, and survey data suggest possible benefits, but high-quality evidence establishing efficacy and long-term safety is still limited.
Most published research to date has focused on psilocybin, with smaller bodies of exploratory work examining ketamine, MDMA, and ayahuasca. Proposed therapeutic mechanisms include increased cognitive flexibility, shifts in rigid body image beliefs, changes in reward processing, and facilitation of trauma processing, all of which are known to be disrupted in eating disorders.
Current research priorities emphasize safety, feasibility, ethical implementation, and appropriate patient selection, particularly given concerns related to malnutrition, psychiatric comorbidities, and equity of access.
Below is a selection of peer-reviewed sources and study protocols that informed the scientific context of this piece.
Selected References
- Gukasyan N, Schreyer CC, Griffiths RR, Guarda AS.
Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy for People With Eating Disorders.
Current Psychiatry Reports. 2022. - Cuerva K, Spirou D, Cuerva A, Delaquis C, Raman J.
Perspectives and Preliminary Experiences of Psychedelics for the Treatment of Eating Disorders: A Systematic Scoping Review.
European Eating Disorders Review. 2024. - Peck SK, Shao S, Gruen T, et al.
Psilocybin Therapy for Females With Anorexia Nervosa: A Phase 1, Open-Label Feasibility Study.
Nature Medicine. 2023.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/erv.3101 - Calder A, Mock S, Friedli N, Pasi P, Hasler G.
Psychedelics in the Treatment of Eating Disorders: Rationale and Potential Mechanisms.
European Neuropsychopharmacology. 2023. - McCoy K, Reed F, Conn K, Foldi CJ.
Separate or Inseparable? Serotonin and Dopamine System Interactions May Underlie the Therapeutic Potential of Psilocybin for Anorexia Nervosa.
Physiology & Behavior. 2025. - Rodan SC, Maguire S, Meez N, et al.
Prescription and Nonprescription Drug Use Among People With Eating Disorders.
JAMA Network Open. 2025. - Spriggs MJ, Douglass HM, Park RJ, et al.
Study Protocol for “Psilocybin as a Treatment for Anorexia Nervosa: A Pilot Study.”
Frontiers in Psychiatry. 2021. - Downey AE, Boyd M, Chaphekar AV, Woolley J, Raymond-Flesch M.
“But the Reality Is It’s Happening”: A Qualitative Study of Eating Disorder Providers About Psilocybin-Assisted Psychotherapy.
International Journal of Eating Disorders. 2023.
This list is not exhaustive and reflects a rapidly evolving area of research. Inclusion does not imply endorsement of off-label or non-clinical use.