Reading Navigation
“Psychedelics Transformed My Life. I Hope My Story Can Help Others”
Daniel O’Shaughnessy, author of The Naked Nutritionist, has transformed his life with the help of psychedelics — here, he shares his healing journey from using anabolic steroids and partying to discovering psychedelics.
Psychedelics helped Daniel O’Shaughnessy confront and heal from his childhood trauma and body dysmorphia.
As a nutritionist with a background in functional medicine, from the outside, it looked like O’Shaughnessy was leading a positive, healthy life.
But behind the scenes, he was dealing with addiction, partying, anabolic steroid use and crippling body dysmorphia.
O’Shaughnessy says that working with psychedelics such as psilocybin and ayahuasca helped to turn his life around, sharing how he felt that integrating his psychedelic experiences was a vital part of his healing journey.
Portraying The Perfect Image
O’Shaughnessy says that experiencing childhood trauma, including being bullied, developed into an inner need to feel better about himself and his body through partying and using steroids.
This led O’Shaughnessy to a point of “darkness” and “dark thoughts”, however, he found that traditional psychotherapy was limiting in its ability to help him.
“I was portraying this image of perfection as a nutritionist and thinking that’s how I had to live my life,” says O’Shaughnessy.
“There was a side of me I wasn’t showing, which was partying a lot on the weekends and cyclic anabolic steroids because of body dysmorphia. I felt like I needed them to fit in and feel better about myself.”
O’Shaughnessy explains that his long history of trauma and of being rejected early in life made him feel like he never really fit in — and he had not accounted for how much his childhood impacted his adult life.
“I always felt like I had to have amour on the shield from potential rejection or abuse.”
O’Shaughnessy says he got to a point where it became too much, and he was beginning to see the side effects of his steroid use.
“I was in therapy at the time, I was getting help. But it wasn’t scratching the surface.”
From Partying To Psychedelics
O’Shaughnessy says he had become aware of psychedelics during his university days when it was still legal to purchase dried mushrooms in UK stores.
“We would take them, but we never had that introspective experience,” he says.
“At the time, I was more into drugs of control such as cocaine.”
At this point, O’Shaughnessy was introduced to LSD which he describes as being “petrified of”.
“I remember taking it and just sobbing for hours, not really understanding the process. But it sparked something — I started to think that psychedelics could be useful for what I was going through, or at least revealing.”
From this inspiration, O’Shaughnessy began researching other compounds, learning more about such ayahuasca and psilocybin ceremonies.
“Mushrooms opened the scope for deeper healing.
I made a lot of mistakes early on, so it’s important to be careful and not do this alone without understanding concepts like letting go of control or ego death.”
“Eventually, I found myself in an ayahuasca ceremony after a breakup. It was like standing in an experience of emotions: this is what forgiveness feels like, this is what anger feels like, this is what rejection feels like.”
“To get there, I had to let go of control, which was the hardest thing for me.”
Sparking The Healing Process
These psychedelic experiences sparked a long healing process for O’Shaughnessy, who explains that psychedelics have removed limiting beliefs.
He explains that the experiences also unlocked suppressed memories.
“I went through learning about my shadow, uncovering trauma and remembering things. Through psychedelics and therapy, I remembered I was sexually abused as a child, which I can now talk about because I have processed it.”
“It took five or six years of working with the medicine before I reached that point, which was when my nervous system was ready.”
Importantly, O’Shaughnessy emphasises he did not do this work alone, but worked in a supportive environment with psychologists, breathwork, diet and other practices.
“That context mattered. It feels like a syllabus that unlocks as you’re ready.”
Healing Through Feeling and Understanding
O’Shaughnessy highlights that scientific research around psychedelics focuses mainly on pharmacological perspectives. However, he feels that this misses an important part of the picture: the qualitative experience.
“How do psychedelics facilitate forgiveness? How do they change you as a person?” asks O’Shaughnessy.
“For example, I had a difficult relationship with my brother. In an ayahuasca ceremony, I saw a vision of us caring for our sick mother together. This helped bypass my ego and move towards forgiveness.”
“I had one experience that showed me something simple: ordering a soft drink instead of alcohol. That was enough for me to stop drinking.”
O’Shaughnessy says that psychedelics also showed him what his body actually looked like for the first time, compared to how he perceived it.
“Ego dissolution isn’t death, it is removing the masks you have created. But afterwards, you still have to do the work.”
Integrating the Psychedelic Experience
An important part of healing through this process is integrating the insights gained from the psychedelic experience into our everyday lives, O’Shaughnessy emphasises.
He notes that psychedelics “reveal things” but we have to apply these revelations to see the benefits.
“I developed self-awareness and reflexivity, meaning I can now question my behaviours in real time,” he says.
“A regulated nervous system is key to healing. I used to think supplements were enough, but I know now that trauma shows up in deeper ways.”
To integrate his experiences O’Shaughnessy has trained in breathwork, which he describes as a “powerful tool”.
“Meditation helps. I know I will feel anxious if I don’t do it. Journaling is also good but I think self-honesty is crucial, asking questions such as what am I doing and what is my lifestyle like?”
Following his journey with psychedelics, O’Shaughnessy has now stopped drinking, partying and using steroids and has instead started to express his emotions.
“The healing process is complicated. There are many tools we can use, but we have to come back to what works best for us personally, and be compassionate with ourselves along the way.”
Daniel O’Shaughnessy is the author of Letting Go of Perfect: A Gay Man’s Guide to Healing from Body Dysmorphia and The Queer Guide to Nutrition and Lifestyle (publishing September 2026), both exploring the intersections of queer health, body image, nutrition and healing.
