'Mad honey' that can stop your heart is being sold online

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ssamizdis 4 days ago 61 commentsRead Article on phys.org

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Discussion (61 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

pigbearpig•about 2 hours ago

This is the original article and has better images IMHO.

https://theconversation.com/mad-honey-that-can-stop-your-hea...

Al-Khwarizmi•20 minutes ago

And can actually be read, the other is so as-ridden that I just gave up (I know I should probably install some blocker in my phone, but I'm lazy).

epestr•27 minutes ago

The posted one also removes a link to the original author's Google scholar page.

robotnikman•about 2 hours ago

>Eat a teaspoonful, and you might feel pleasantly warm and slightly lightheaded. Eat more than a few tablespoons, and your heart rate can drop to life-threatening levels.

Reminds me of the Futurama episode with the space bee honey. Wonder if the writers got the inspiration from this.

rubyfan•about 2 hours ago

You’ve got to wake up.

GaProgMan•about 1 hour ago

I have a genuine fear that someone will stop me in the street one day, grab me by the shoulders and say

> You have to wake up. Please wake up. We're all here at your bedside waiting for you to wake up. Just wake up. We love you. Please.

And I'm convinced it's because of that episode.

Waterluvian•28 minutes ago

My genuine fear is that you’ll just brush me off with a sensible chuckle and keep sleepwalking on down the street.

But seriously, I find that the one recurring theme in nightmares I have is that people simply won’t believe me.

uxhacker•about 2 hours ago

I know of rhododendron honey from killing Pompey’s army in around 60bc.

NDlurker•about 3 hours ago

Old Vice documentary about it. This is where I had first heard about it. Used to be really hard to find the honey online, like only one or 2 places that sold it

https://youtu.be/wDOvmhqvIA8

binyu•4 minutes ago

Just like many of the novel synthetiser drugs, unknown substances are very dangerous. The culprit here seems to be the victim thought he was consuming regular honey.

daedrdev•about 3 hours ago

I imagine the native also built up tolerance over generations, not just knowledge as the article contends . Dying from a specific action is quite the evolutionary motivator

culi•about 3 hours ago

As with many psychoactive plants and foods, the adaptation here isn't so much a genetic/physiological tolerance as it is an often in-depth body of knowledge/practices for how to utilize the drug/medicine safely. Look at the notorious Datura for example which can cause you to go into a delirious state for over 2 days. The amount of preparation, processing, and knowledge that goes into administering it safely is lost on modern day kids who simply read an Erowid experience about a powerful psychoactive plant that likely grows locally.

ux266478•about 1 hour ago

Most kids that are ingesting the devil's trumpet are doing so explicitly because they're chasing after the anticholinergic toxidrome and the badge of honor. "Safe" doses of nightshades like datura and belladonna dilate your pupils and make you sleepy. That's not what they're interested in the plant for.

Loughla•about 2 hours ago

Datura is fucking dangerous. Deliriants are no joke in general. That one in particular is really dangerous because it grows absolutely anywhere and is very easy to identify.

Source; chemistry was my favorite class in high school and college because it helped me understand how to extract what I wanted from plants like jimsonweed and Mimosa trees.

Also no one should do that.

skinfaxi•about 1 hour ago

As someone who as extracted dmt from mimosa hostilis, more people should do it than buy god knows what RCs on the darkweb.

liaym•about 2 hours ago

If anyone's interested there's also this recently released documentary in french by Hit the Road, where they show the process of collecting the honey and also the ritual side of it.

https://youtu.be/r-jZyTP4K4g

nkrisc•about 3 hours ago

They mention the toxin comes from the rhododendron flower. I remember camping in North Carolina once and one of the people I was with warned against burning anything from the rhododendron in the area, as supposedly the smoke would give you the runs.

I mostly thought they were joking, and I have no idea what specific type of rhododendron would be there (if any), but maybe there’s a glimmer of merit to it? Or maybe they were thinking of a different plant?

This was somewhere in the Blue Ridge Mountains, if I remember correctly.

john_strinlai•about 2 hours ago

i believe ingestion is the primary concern, but the smoke can also lead to symptoms, yes.

nkrisc•about 2 hours ago

That makes sense. We definitely weren’t going to eat random plants, but we could have easily accidentally grabbed some for firewood or kindling.

SoftTalker•about 2 hours ago

You also don't want to burn poison ivy because the oil (urushiol) is not something you want in your lungs if you are reactive to it.

riazrizvi•about 2 hours ago

Florida's manchineel tree (with the tiny apples) is the OG wood you don't burn because it blinds you.

blacksmith_tb•about 2 hours ago

Or oleander [1], which people occasionally poison themselves with by burning its wood.

1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/immunology-and-microbio...

Dylan16807•about 2 hours ago

> The problem is that the gap between a medicinal dose and a toxic dose is very small

What's this claim based on? I don't think it's the rat study linked nearby. I looked through it and they didn't really compare doses.

If it's a linear effect on dropping blood pressure, that seems like an overblown way to talk about it. If it's something else, I'd love to hear more.

maxerickson•about 1 hour ago

If you maintain the pairing with the statement about the concentration in the honey varying, it's somewhat harder to argue that it is overblown.

The concentration varies considerably due to bees harvesting pollen from different flowers and from some batches of honey being mixed and some not.

Dylan16807•about 1 hour ago

> If you maintain the pairing with the statement about the concentration in the honey varying, it's somewhat harder to argue that it is overblown.

Those are two separate worries connected by an "and". I'm not arguing worry #2 is overblown.

And it sounds like the problem of variance is that it isn't small. If one batch can be 5x as strong as another (made up number), then even a pretty good medicinal response curve leaves you vulnerable to that much variance.

SoftTalker•about 2 hours ago

I also wondered why, if it has this effect, it has not been purified to a standard concentration (or synthesized) and used to treat high blood pressure. Possibly because accidental overdose can be fatal?

pnw•about 1 hour ago

Grayanotoxin is a neurotoxin with a lot of unpleasant side effects. It would make a terrible drug for high blood pressure.

cma•9 minutes ago

There could be a case for doing it for people that will refuse anything but natural and it doesn't have other problem, assuming not synthesized, but there's a problem of funding the safety studies and standardization process if a patent is unlikely to result.

atomicthumbs•about 2 hours ago

because we already have actual medication that does that in a controllable and well-characterized way

lousken•40 minutes ago

that reminds me to buy some, anyone tried it already?

AngryData•about 2 hours ago

If you buy psychoactive honey/drugs online, it is on you to find out what it is and what kind of dosage you should take.

Dylan16807•about 2 hours ago

It's on you to figure out the dosage you can take, and it should be on the producer to label the dosage they're selling.

mcmcmc•about 2 hours ago

Good luck with that, doesn’t really seem like the kind of seller you can take to the FDA

Forgeties79•about 2 hours ago

Yes but also we need to deal with the reality of the world, which is 1) not everyone is going to and 2) they don’t deserve to die because of it.

sokoloff•about 2 hours ago

I agree they don’t “deserve” to die, but someone comfortable with that level of risk management is quite hard to fully protect from themselves.

Xirdus•about 2 hours ago

Not only they don't deserve to die - they deserve to not die from this, no matter their level of risk taking.

Forgeties79•about 2 hours ago

Most OD’s and such with drugs happens when someone trusts someone. They don’t just pick them up off the ground and go town. It’s basically the whole idea behind food safety. We don’t just expect everyone to know every detail of everything they consume.

measurablefunc•about 2 hours ago

Joe Rogan endorses consuming mad honey according to the copy on this site: https://realmadhoney.com/products/mad-honey-us. So there is an entire supply chain from Nepal to the consumer.

mock-possum•about 2 hours ago

Metta Beshay, my new favorite drug explainer, has a neat video on the subject: https://youtu.be/5X3dCBQYdek

meindnoch•about 3 hours ago

A lot of things sold online can stop your heart.

nozzlegear•about 2 hours ago

A reasonable person wouldn't expect honey to stop their heart though.

trelane•about 1 hour ago

I suspect if you're buying mad honey that's collected wild on cliff faces and then imported from Nepal, it is likely pretty clear to whoever got it that it is special.

Maybe kid could accidentally get a hold of it, or other adults that didn't buy it. However, from the article (as far as I could get before the ads locked me out) there is a type that tends to have this happen to them (middle aged men IIRC). So it seems to be intentional.

edelbitter•about 2 hours ago

Then again, many reasonable people would avoid, rather than specifically seek to buy raw honey from India (or the vicinity).

Bang2Bay•about 2 hours ago

Name a few. I want to be an informed person.

kayodelycaon•about 1 hour ago

Tobacco can make you really sick if ingested.

Anything distilled may contain methanol.

Mushrooms can be a different type than what’s on the label.

Fermented products may contain poisons from dangerous bacteria. If you’ve heard about entire churches full of people dying in South America from bad food, it most likely fermented corn.

Expired food products may be contaminated with bacteria. (Unless they canned, jarred, or too dry Etc.)

Fresh apples may contain enough pesticide to make you sick. Wipe them off with a paper towel before use if you’re not peeling them.

drop_star•about 2 hours ago

Yohimbine is popular for weightloss but its dangerous if not dosed correctly

Supermancho•about 2 hours ago

* Sibutramine (weight loss medication)

* Suldenafil or tadalafil (ED medication)

* SARMS (steroids in general)

* Caffeine powder (another game of guess the dosage)

Retro_Dev•about 2 hours ago

Caffeine is especially interesting, as it is commonly consumed and there are incidents where people are hospitalized because they accidentally ate too much - https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8824417/ (referencing the 6000 mg here)

Dylan16807•about 2 hours ago

> * Caffeine powder (another game of guess the dosage)

I found a study saying "the caffeine content in tested dietary supplements is 4–35% higher than the declared amount in most cases" which doesn't seem very dangerous.

You can overdose on caffeine in other ways, of course.

peddling-brink•about 2 hours ago

The dose makes the poison, or something like that.

- Sand (inhaled)

- Air (intravenous)

- Blood thinners or rat poison

tclancy•about 2 hours ago

Escorts, ideally.

emdash•about 2 hours ago

Water (in the right dosage)

fwip•about 2 hours ago

Knife.

nephihaha•about 2 hours ago

Taurine

rootsudo•about 2 hours ago

Exactly, thank you.