How Magic Mushrooms Could Change Your Mind-Body Connection

Back in the 1990s, a guy—referred to as Mr. A—self-medicated his debilitating body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) with magic mushrooms, a substance better known as psilocybin among scientists¹. During the acute effects of psilocybin, Mr. A no longer perceived himself as deformed or disgusting. Psilocybin appeared to help him correct his distorted body image, and after having self-medicated like this thrice, he started questioning whether he might not be as deformed and disgusting as his BDD led him to believe. These psilocybin-induced experiences prompted Mr. A to seek treatment. A life-changing decision.

BDD is challenging to treat. Just like people with eating disorders (EDs), people with BDD tend to have rigid thought patterns about their appearance that are exaggerated and incorrect². Frustratingly to providers, loved ones, and people affected, these thought patterns are very difficult to change. Neither psychotherapy nor medications have proven consistently successful in treating BDD, and even if the treatment works initially, most people will continue relapsing². Yet, despite this urgent need for new therapeutic strategies, the medical promise of psilocybin has laid dormant for over a quarter of a century. Now, research is finally confirming that psilocybin does hold therapeutic potential for BDD as well as EDs. In this post, I dig into how psilocybin can help change our brains to perceive ourselves in a healthier, more accurate way.

How Can Magic Mushrooms Treat BDD and EDs?

Psilocybin derives from a hallucinogenic mushroom, which means that upon ingestion it can trigger hallucinations². This characteristic is one of the major reasons people use “magic mushrooms” recreationally. At higher concentrations, psilocybin can “dissolve” your ego, meaning that you feel as if you are psychologically (and even physically) united with everything around you, including other people. Even at lower concentrations, psilocybin induces a state of bliss, increased open-mindedness and heightened emotional and cognitive flexibility. It is these latter characteristics that researchers are trying to exploit for treatment of mental illnesses.

It is still unclear exactly how these psychological changes come about, but it likely has to do with serotonin receptors³. Research has found that psilocybin activates a subset of serotonin receptors in the brain, called 5-HT2a, and the more receptors that are activated, the more intensely a person feels the psilocybin effects³. Psilocybin also changes how different brain regions speak to one another, one example is the default mode network⁴. The default mode network (DMN) is composed of several brain regions that together are involved with self-reflection and mind-wandering. During periods of self-reflection, the brain regions comprising the DMN display increased connectivity to one another⁴. Mental illnesses like BDD and EDs are characterized by abnormal DMN activity, and this is thought to contribute to their inflexible thought patterns about themselves⁴. While more research is needed, it is possible that the effects of psilocybin on the DMN enable people with BDD and EDs to have less rigid thoughts and self-perceptions. In fact, in one study, participants with EDs or BDD reported feeling more open-minded, self-loving and self-forgiving after psilocybin administration². For several of the participants, this experience was sufficient to motivate them to seek treatment.

Psilocybin Can Change Both Your Senses and Your Cognition

Despite these new neuroscientific insights, we still do not know exactly why and how psilocybin is so effective in changing our self-perception and consequently our body image. Our self-perception is the result of a bidirectional relationship between our senses and our cognition. Thus, when our self-perception changes, it could be because the way we receive sensory input has changed (i.e., the sensory level), or, in contrast, psilocybin may have changed the way we interpret those sensory inputs (i.e., the cognitive level).

For people with BDD and EDs, we know that they have abnormalities in how they interpret sensory stimuli. For example, people with EDs are more likely to adopt a fake rubber hand as their own. In other words, they tend to misinterpret their sensory signals. On the other hand, there also appears to be a dysfunction in their actual sensory processing. People with BDD have altered activity in their visual cortex when seeing objects and they even misjudge the size of these objects. Similar to how they can misjudge their own body’s size.

Interestingly, psilocybin is known to modulate areas in the brain that are important for sensory information processing⁴. Specifically, under the influence of psilocybin, your brain reduces how much it “filters” and processes new sensory information. In other words, you start receiving more “raw” sensory input. This reduction in sensory processing is thought to be one of the reasons that we “expand” our senses with psilocybin. It may also explain how psilocybin helps people with ED and BDD rethink their body’s appearance in new and healthier ways.

Proceed With Attention

Psilocybin is not a standalone treatment. All new research studies combine it with psychotherapy before, during or after the psilocybin administration. Therapy helps ensure that the psilocybin-induced brain activity changes are used most effectively for a person’s treatment purposes. If you are considering psilocybin therapy, always ensure that you combine it with evidence-based psychotherapy.

Even though psilocybin could be a (long awaited) game changer for BDD and ED treatments, the research studies are still limited by small participant numbers and insufficient monitoring. More research is needed before we really know how and to whom psilocybin can help, but the work is promising.

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