UK NEWS: Psychedelics & Eating Disorders - Desperation or Innovation

Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. In the UK patients with eating disorders face a three-and-a-half-year delay between falling ill and starting treatment. Many die waiting. Enter psychedelics: private clinics now offer £5,000 psilocybin sessions promising to “reset” the anorexic brain. Investors call it a revolution. Survivors call it a gamble.

The UK Parliament’s 2023 report cautiously greenlights research, but the industry’s already sprinting ahead. Startups like London-based Awakn Life Sciences pitch psychedelics as a paradigm shift for disorders rooted in trauma, shame, and capitalism’s obsession with thinness. Meanwhile, the NHS prescribes fluoxetine, a drug which can help to mask symptoms and make them manageable, without necessarily tackling the societal issues which underpin the disorders themselves.

As ever, with capitalism, this isn’t just about science. It’s about profiting from a perfect storm: a desperate patient population, a gutted mental health system, and a cultural fetish for quick fixes. Psychedelics might ease symptoms, but they won’t delete Instagram’s algorithms or end poverty – two forces fuelling these widespread issues.

The question isn’t whether psychedelics can help. It’s whether we’re using them to heal, or to dodge the harder truths about why we’re so sick in the first place.

Psychedelic research for eating disorders is in its infancy. Take the 2022 King’s College trial on psilocybin for anorexia, a potentially game-changing clinical trial to assess whether the psychedelic compound found in magic mushrooms could help to treat anorexia. Dr Hubertus Himmerich, a clinical senior lecturer in eating disorders at KCL, who is leading the trial, said he believed that psilocybin could help to tackle low moods and obsessive-compulsive thinking in patients:

Psilocybin has been shown to have an effect on the serotonin system. This is important for the psychedelic effect, but also for regulating mood,” he told the Standard. “There have been previous observations in anorexia patients that have found that, after taking psilocybin, they have been less anxious and not restricted calorie intake as much.

The problem with psychotherapy and anorexia nervosa is that patients become stuck in a certain way of thinking… the psychedelic experience could give them a way to see the world through different eyes.

While heralded as another potential cure-all MDMA trials for binge eating disorder (BED) are sorely lacking. “We have some good info suggesting that this could be one of the more important uses of MDMA,” says Rick Doblin, executive director of MAPS. “But because of the lack of funding, we have not actually started any formal studies.” While MAPS studies are planned for the near future, the current lack of conclusive data makes any claims of MDMA’s efficacy as a treatment are as yet unproven.

The eating disorder community at large certainly isn’t completely sold. Beat, the UK’s leading eating disorder charity, warns of dangerous oversimplification in psychedelic hype, urging caution and emphasising the need to stop focussing solely on the management of or curing of symptoms, but tackling the societal reasons behind the disorder.

Some indigenous practitioners echo this sentiment. Psychedelics are said to reveal truths, but truths can destroy you if you’re not ready. Western trials skip the years of preparation required to truly appreciate the effects of these substances, and their wider ramifications.

The science isn’t useless, there is certainly some promise, but it is far from a saviour. Until studies address eating disorders’ tangled roots (trauma, genetics, systemic fatphobia), psychedelics risk becoming another tool to “fix” patients, rather than tackling the culture making them sick.

The irony of this would be the fact that psychedelics hold within them the potential to dramatically alter the culture making people sick in the first place.

Private equity firms don’t fund clinical trials out of pure altruism. They fund them because eating disorders are a large captive market. We have to be very careful to make sure psychedelics are not the latest shovel in a gold rush. Compass Pathways, backed by Peter Thiel, holds patents for synthetic psilocybin “formulations” tailored to anorexia. Their business model? Charge astronomical amounts per dose for a molecule that nature grows for free. The risk of stumbling into a situation where one, or a small number of companies patent and monopolize this burgeoning space is very real.

The UK’s psychedelic startup scene is equally opportunistic. Awakn Life Sciences, listed on the London Stock Exchange, recently completed a study into Ketamine therapy for binge eating disorder and a variety of other behavioural addictions. Their 2023 investor pitch deck dedicates three slides to “market size” and one to “ethics”. Meanwhile, venture capitalists pour millions into firms like Clerkenwell Health, betting on ketamine clinics to fill gaps left by NHS waitlists.

This isn’t solely healthcare, though doubtless we are discovering the effectiveness of these therapies, at its base it is still profiteering. Eating disorders thrive in secrecy and shame, making patients easy targets. Private clinics market psychedelics as “empowering” yet there have been numerous studies which undersell, or actively ignore bad outcomes. This can of course be attributed to clinicians’ biases, but if there is pressure to deliver a product to market for investors, corners will be cut.

Even Big Pharma is circling. Johnson & Johnson’s esketamine nasal spray, approved for depression, is due to be trialled for anorexia. Never mind that ketamine can worsen dissociation in trauma survivors, a common comorbidity in eating disorders. J&J’s response? “Risk mitigation protocols”.

The NHS, meanwhile, scrambles to keep up. Over 40% of UK eating disorder units have closed since 2019 due to funding cuts. Survivors face a grim choice: wait two years for NHS treatment or remortgage their homes for a “breakthrough” therapy that might traumatise them further. Again, the immense pressure of a progressively broken healthcare system pushes us towards the private sector. A sector in which, as discussed, these companies aren’t necessarily looking to cure anorexia, they are monetising the fact we’ve stopped trying to prevent it.

The message is clear: In the UK’s mental health crisis, the real profits lie not in healing, but in managed decline.

The British Empire once stole land, resources, and people. Now, it is actively encouraging and supporting companies which are taking advantage of spiritual traditions and rebranding them as innovation. Take iboga, a West African shrub used for centuries in Bwiti rituals to treat spiritual and physical ailments. Companies are patenting synthetic ibogaine derivatives. The Gabonese communities who safeguarded iboga? They’ll see none of the profits.

This isn’t new. Colonialists burned Amazonian ayahuasca ceremonies as “witchcraft” while Victorian doctors peddled cocaine-laced tonics for “hysteria”.

A large number of today’s psychedelic startups follow the same playbook: extract indigenous knowledge, strip it of context, and sell it back as therapy for diseases colonialism helped create.

Even terminology echoes colonial violence. “Breakthrough therapy” implies indigenous practices were primitive until white scientists validated them. “Novel formulations” erase millennia of communal wisdom. When Compass Pathways patents psilocybin it is not an invention it is biopiracy.

The UK’s role here is stark. British universities lead psychedelic trials for eating disorders, yet none are required to develop mutually supportive partnerships with the communities these medicines come from. Meanwhile, the Home Office still classifies psilocybin as Schedule 1, criminalising individual possession while letting corporations profit from trials.

The question here isn’t whether history repeats itself. It’s why we are still surprised when it does.

Psychedelics might treat individual brains, but they don’t fix broken societies.

In the UK, eating disorders have surged by 84% among teens since 2016, a crisis fuelled by TikTok influencers, food poverty, and a £6 billion diet industry.

Take social media, for example. Instagram’s algorithms actively push “thinspiration” content. Psychedelic trials don’t address this. Instead, they pathologise the trauma of living in a world that profits from self-loathing.

A psilocybin session won’t stop corporations monetising body insecurity but it might make you care less about it. That isn’t healing. It’s sedation.

Even if psychedelics work, they’re a Band-Aid on a haemorrhage. Anorexia isn’t caused by serotonin imbalances. It’s fueled by racism (Black teens are 50% more likely to exhibit bulimic behaviours but less likely to be diagnosed), classism (food insecurity doubles eating disorder risk), and a wellness industry that equates thinness with virtue. Psychedelics are being weaponised to absolve systems of responsibility. Perhaps, instead of regulating toxic industries, we’re drugging their victims.

The hard truth? No molecule can replace living wages, safe housing, or a culture that doesn’t treat bodies as commodities. Until we confront that, psychedelics are just another way to keep the sick quiet, and the rich richer.

The psychedelic industry’s promise to “cure” eating disorders reeks of déjà vu. We’ve seen this before: a flashy treatment emerges, politicians call it a revolution, and the underlying rot, austerity, inequality, cultural sickness, gets another free pass. Psychedelics are far from useless, they are incredibly effective, powerful chemicals with myriad individual and society-wide benefits, but they are being leveraged to sustain a status quo that manufactures trauma to privatise its solutions.

The real test isn’t whether psychedelics can treat eating disorders. It’s whether we’ll let them become another tool for distraction, or demand they fuel a broader fight. That means clawing back NHS funding from private contractors. Regulating social media giants instead of pathologising their victims. Returning stolen plant knowledge to indigenous communities.

Psychedelics won’t fix eating disorders. But they might, if we’re brave enough, help us see that the disease isn’t in our brains it’s in the system. And systems can be dismantled.