Psychedelics offer new route to recovery from eating disorders

This is a thoughtful magazine article overview of the potential for psychedelics - psilocybin, MDMA & ketamine - to be helpful for eating disorders. Marianne Apostolides writes: "Psilocybin, MDMA, and ketamine can lead to a new sense of self and a release from rigid rules for people with anorexia, bulimia, and binge-eating disorder.  Taking MDMA was pivotal for me as I recovered from bulimia. Unlike the people in clinical trials currently assessing the effectiveness of psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy for eating disorders, I didn’t take the drug in a treatment room. Instead, I was at a rave, a lollipop in my mouth, dancing and running my hands through the buzz-cut hair of a friend’s girlfriend. I was also in a state of revelation, enthralled by what I felt in my body: not disgust or discomfort or revulsion, but utter okay-ness. That sounds like a small thing, but, for someone with an eating disorder, it was pure glory.  That was decades ago. Like many with serious and enduring eating disorders, I’ve cycled from one disorder to the other—anorexia, bulimia, binge-eating disorder, all accompanied by obsessive exercise. The behavior is part of my life, sometimes dominating, often kept in check, but never at rest: it’s always there, threatening to overtake me.  This experience is all too common, and often dangerous. Anorexia is the single most deadly psychiatric disorder, with mortality rates from suicide and cardiovascular complications estimated from 3–10 percent. Relapse rates for bulimia are upwards of 60 percent. And binge eating disorder—defined by out-of-control consumption without the purging that characterizes bulimia—is the most widespread of any eating disorder, affecting an estimated 2.8 million Americans. Given the extent of the problem, and the recent wave of triumphs for psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy—success in treating PTSD, smoking addiction, end-of-life anxiety, major depressive disorder, social anxiety in autism-spectrum disorder, and more—I became curious: If the drugs alone could induce a profound change of perspective for me as a bulimic woman, how might that insight be transformed into therapeutic benefit with the guidance of therapists, in a therapeutic setting, with a mindset focused on the disorder and on health (which, in a way, is just a different kind of order)? I spoke with leaders in the field to find out."

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