The effectiveness of magic mushrooms as a treatment for anorexia nervosa has been studied by scientists at the University of California, San Diego. The results of the treatment for an otherwise therapeutically resistant disorder are described in the paper “Psilocybin therapy for females with anorexia nervosa: a phase 1, open-label feasibility study,” published in Nature Medicine.
The team’s work is also the subject of a News and Views piece in the same journal issue.
As part of the study, ten participants with anorexia who were in partial remission were given psilocybin. Patient acceptability, side effects, primary outcomes, and the presence of eating disorder-specific psychopathology were evaluated.
Researchers concluded that treatment with psilocybin was safe and well-tolerated. Positive changes were reported three months after the last dose, and some participants showed clinically significant improvements in their eating disorder psychopathology. Some people responded very favorably to a single administration of the treatment. Fortunately, nobody experienced any major side effects.
“Participants received a single 25-mg dose of synthetic psilocybin in conjunction with psychological support,” the authors of the study explained in their research.
“The primary aim was to assess safety, tolerability and feasibility at post-treatment by incidences and occurrences of adverse events (AEs) and clinically significant changes in electrocardiogram (ECG), laboratory tests, vital signs and suicidality. No clinically significant changes were observed in ECG, vital signs or suicidality.”
Overall, researchers believe that the psilocybin therapy’s effects on anxiety and cognitive flexibility may help break people free of the rigid thought patterns and ingrained behaviors that contribute to their eating disorders.
