Psilocybin could kick-start anorexia recovery, early results suggest | Scientific American
August 5, 2026<br>7 min read<br>Add Us On GoogleAdd SciAm<br>Could psilocybin be the key to treating anorexia?
An active ingredient in magic mushrooms, psilocybin has shown early promise for treating eating disorders
By Alexandra Pattillo edited by Claire Cameron
Psilocybe cubensis.
Alexander_Volkov/Getty Images
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.<br>“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.<br>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.<br>On supporting science journalism<br>If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.<br>“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.”<br>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.<br>For decades, researchers have searched for more effective therapies, but progress has been slow. Now scientists are turning to more unorthodox approaches, including psilocybin therapy.<br>Research-wise, it’s early days. Still, 2026 could be a tipping point for psychedelics. The Trump administration has pushed U.S. drug regulators to embrace the field and fund studies into using these drugs to treat mental health conditions. In psilocybin’s case, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration could approve the psychedelic to treat depression or eating disorders within five years, predicts Robin Carhart-Harris, Ralph Metzner Distinguished Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco.<br>“Psilocybin therapy has the potential to stop a lot of unnecessary suffering,” says Jennifer Danby, a psychotherapist who specializes in eating disorders.<br>Inside a Psilocybin Therapy Session<br>Psilocybin has shown potential to treat post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and other psychiatric illnesses. Carhart-Harris says that there was an “intuition” that the psychedelic could break down mental barriers in anorexia, too.<br>This inkling, combined with the broader lack of effective treatments, inspired a small pilot trial involving 21 women. The participants had lived with anorexia nervosa for an average of 11 years. In that study, published last month, Danby and her colleagues found that psilocybin, combined with talk therapy, rapidly reduced anorexia symptoms and increased participants’ motivation to change.<br>The data follow another small study, published in 2023 in Nature Medicine, that found that four out of 10 patients with the condition experienced significant drops in their eating disorder scores after a single dose of psilocybin. If confirmed in larger trials, these results suggest that psilocybin therapy could kick-start anorexia recovery and provide relief.<br>In 2022 Christina joined the trial. Over six weeks, the group received three doses of oral psilocybin—first one milligram and then two 25-mg doses,...