How Psilocybin Mushrooms Can Help Treat Eating Disorders
I lay on my mattress feeling the fattest I had ever felt before. Every part of my body felt bloated and balloon-like. “How does this feel?”, the mushrooms asked me. “Do you really think how your body looks like is the end of the world?”, they queried. They fully knew the answer and they wanted me to admit it. I couldn’t hide from the truth, and I knew that they wouldn’t let it go if I kept resisting. In all plant medicine ceremonies, what resists persists. And so I responded, “You’re right. How my body looks really is not the be-all-and-end-all in my life. I have so many other important things to be concerned about and giving my time towards. Worrying about my stomach or legs just wastes my time!” [edited note: thin privilege, fatphobia and weight discrimination is real, with negative consequences affecting the well-being of people in larger bodies. This is me checking my privilege and noting that unfortunately body size does matter only until we treat all body sizes equally].
This was my second hero’s dose of psilocybin mushrooms in a ceremonial form. In my first ceremony, I was shown how my eating disorder was a coping mechanism and not something part of my identity. As such, I could easily let it go - if I so wanted. Like how I learnt my eating disorder as a way to cope, I could also learn new coping mechanisms that were healthier and kinder. In this second healing ceremony, there were some deep debunking of lies that I had been telling myself for years, mainly around body image.
The mushrooms showed me how these lies and self-limiting beliefs cannot physically live in my body any longer. They were sapping my energy. This is because lies have no substance. They are empty.
To survive in the body and mind, they continuously use up my head space, deplete me of my emotional resources and detract me from my own essence. They cannot fit comfortably in the body. They are foreign forms. It’s like putting in a piece of a puzzle in the wrong place. It’s like a bad game of Tetris.
Truth on the other hand, can always survive in the body. Truth is eternal. It is whole, has substance and is real. It fits so beautifully and snug in the body, heart and soul. It’s like falling into the softest and fluffiest cloud.
Psilocybin mushrooms work in a way whereby they shut off the default mode network (DMN) in the brain. Basically, if you had to imagine walking down the same path, day in and day out, soon you would start to walk that well-trodden path on autopilot. This is how our default bran network operates. The more we tell ourselves stories and beliefs about our bodies, our capabilities, the past, the future, the more that all starts to become true. Remember, our thoughts create our reality. And so, when in a trip, we can finally experience new ways of thinking about ourselves. New paths - new ways of existing - are illuminated.
The mushrooms in essence show us ourselves. They show us fresh paths that have not yet been walked. They are resolute in their stance when they say that these uncharted territories aren’t as scary to walk down as we may have thought previously.
I came into this ceremony prepared. The years of work that I had done in therapy and and with my life coach, helped me realise that I am ready to take on the next step of my recovery: My recovery back to self. Coupled with the ceremony being very well held, when confronted with the hard truths around my body dismorphia and my eating disorder, I resisted nothing.
The truth was sometimes hard to swallow and painful to experience, and the mushrooms made sure I was getting the message by sending electrical-like shots through my body, begging me to wake up and focus on the bigger picture.
I realised that if I had to continue thinking about myself in the ways that I currently am, those shocks are going get harsher and more unbearable - and not just when doing a magic mushroom trip, but in real life too. Living by the laws of lies will only result in a painful and shocking existence.
For the last few years, psilocybin mushrooms have played an important role in helping me untangle parts of myself from my addiction around food and exercise - in big doses, microdoses and everything in between. They have helped me heal from the trauma of the disconnection from my essence (fueled by my eating disorder) by integrating those missing parts back into my soul. Each time after healing plant ceremonies, I feel more and more grounded, connected, whole and at peace with who I am.
When the truth is revealed, it is hard to turn back to the shadows.
Have you ever done a plant medicine journey, in a ceremony form? If so, I would love to hear your experiences!
To read up on my other tools that I have utilized in my eating disorder recovery, check out my article, How to Overcome an Eating Disorder: 31 Tips.
If you’re curious about microdosing, I wrote a review on microdoing on Lion’s Mane, a non-psychoactive mushroom.
