Sores erupt on your skin. You find small hairs and fibers inside the sores, inside blisters, seemingly sprouting from your skin. Pliny the Elder mentioned a similar condition, which was addressed by the topical application of honey. You feel itching, crawling sensations, as if insects or fungal threads were growing under your skin.

 

Sound horrible? For the sufferers of Morgellons Disease, it is. (Fun fact: every time I read about Morgellons Disease, I have the same nightmare later that night, in which tiny thread-like mushrooms sprout from my bones out through my skin. I'll not be sleeping tonight. Thanks, Internet!)

Morgellons Disease has long been considered a baffling mystery. After years of speculation among sufferers and physicians, the CDC's final verdict is in: it "exists only in the patient's minds."

 

Many doctors have not-so-privately speculated that it was a mental disorder, noting that drugs which help ease the symptoms of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder are often helpful at alleviating Morgellon's, too. And that the disease seems to exclusively strike the same demographic: middle-aged white women who are "more obsessive about physical ailments" (read: hypochondriacs) and more likely to be suffering from depression.

 

Morgellons does, admittedly, have a lot in common with a psychiatric condition known as "delusional parasitosis." This is a persistent delusion that the sufferer is afflicted with parasites, whether it be ants crawling under the skin or clouds of invisible biting gnats. 

 

The second part of Morgellons, the strange fibers, are also easily explained. If you examine your skin closely at any given time, you will find fibers there - from your clothes, your pets, bits of lint from the world around you. Obviously these fibers are more likely to stick to scabs and open wounds, which the CDC's study has analyzed as being self-caused.

 

Some experts consider Morgellons to be a disease which is essentially spread by the internet, a sort of remote affliction of mass hysteria. Most Morgellons sufferers are self-identified, and most of them learn about it via the internet. These support groups (of other Morgellons sufferers) can sometimes shore up what would otherwise be a somewhat fragile delusion.

 

There are other causes for the underlying problem which can sometimes be self-diagnosed as Morgellons, of course. Scabies is a (sadly) common disease which can cause itching and the sensation of something crawling under the skin. In this case, because something is crawling under the skin: the scabies mite. Hives and allergic dermatitis have also been misdiagnosed by the sufferer as Morgellons. 

 

The important lesson being, if you are suffering from a skin condition, please see a doctor before you diagnose yourself based on what you find online.