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'Mad honey' that can stop your heart is being sold online
- NDlurker 17d agoOld 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 https://youtu.be/wDOvmhqvIA8
- phoronixrly 16d ago[flagged]
- pigbearpig 16d agoWhat makes you say it's LLM? > Every article you read here is written by university scholars and researchers with deep expertise in their subjects, sharing their knowledge in their own words. We don’t oversimplify complicated issues, but we do explain and clarify. We believe bringing the voices of experts into the public discourse is good for democracy.
- coldtea 16d agoSuch assurances mean almost nothing these days. But to be frank this specific article doesn't seem particularly AI to me.
- trelane 16d agoDunno about AI, but I was turned away by the sheer amount of ad spam on the site
- dolebirchwood 16d ago> What makes you say it's LLM? Probably the usual "big words hard" mindset of people who aren't used to reading well-written prose.
- phoronixrly 16d agoQuite the opposite. It's the completely devoid of creativity section titles, the use of triades, and the general rhythm of the text. All of this garnered with the general sense of filler content...
- daedrdev 17d agoI 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 17d agoAs 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.
- Loughla 16d agoDatura 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.
- AngryData 17d agoIf you buy psychoactive honey/drugs online, it is on you to find out what it is and what kind of dosage you should take.
- Forgeties79 17d agoYes 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 16d agoI agree they don’t “deserve” to die, but someone comfortable with that level of risk management is quite hard to fully protect from themselves.
- Forgeties79 16d agoMost 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.
- Xirdus 16d agoNot only they don't deserve to die - they deserve to not die from this, no matter their level of risk taking.
- bloaf 16d ago> Many to many are born. For the superfluous ones the state was devised... The state, I call it, where all are poison-drinkers, the good and the bad: the state, where all lose themselves, the good and the bad: the state, where the slow suicide of all—is called “life.” But why would we poison our society by trying to protect these superfluous ones? They may not deserve death, but the more we eliminate the consequences of irresponsible actions, the more irresponsibly people can be and survive, thrive, and even rise to the throne.
- meindnoch 17d agoA lot of things sold online can stop your heart.
- nozzlegear 17d agoA reasonable person wouldn't expect honey to stop their heart though.
- pizzafeelsright 16d agoThere are no longer any reasonable people with the shift in demographics.
- nozzlegear 16d agoWhat do you mean?
- pizzafeelsright 15d agoEvery culture has a different understanding of what is reasonable. Cultures shift with demographic changes. It is reasonable to behave one way in one culture and not another. Your peers are no longer your peers.
- edelbitter 16d agoThen again, many reasonable people would avoid, rather than specifically seek to buy raw honey from India (or the vicinity).
- trelane 16d agoI 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.
- nkrisc 17d agoThey 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 16d agoi believe ingestion is the primary concern, but the smoke can also lead to symptoms, yes.
- nkrisc 16d agoThat makes sense. We definitely weren’t going to eat random plants, but we could have easily accidentally grabbed some for firewood or kindling.
- SoftTalker 16d agoYou 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 16d agoFlorida's manchineel tree (with the tiny apples) is the OG wood you don't burn because it blinds you.
- blacksmith_tb 16d agoOr oleander [1], which people occasionally poison themselves with by burning its wood. 1: https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/immunology-and-microbiology/nerium-oleander#:~:text=inhalation%20of%20smoke https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/immunology-and-microbio...
- mock-possum 16d agoMetta Beshay, my new favorite drug explainer, has a neat video on the subject: https://youtu.be/5X3dCBQYdek https://youtu.be/5X3dCBQYdek
- Dylan16807 16d 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.
- SoftTalker 16d agoI 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?
- atomicthumbs 16d agobecause we already have actual medication that does that in a controllable and well-characterized way
- pnw 16d agoGrayanotoxin is a neurotoxin with a lot of unpleasant side effects. It would make a terrible drug for high blood pressure.
- cma 16d agoThere could be a case for doing it for people that will refuse anything but natural if it doesn't have other problems, assuming not synthesized, but there's a problem of funding the safety studies and standardization process if a patent is unlikely to result.
- what_hn 16d ago[dead]
- maxerickson 16d agoIf 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.
- robotnikman 16d 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.
- uxhacker 16d agoI know of rhododendron honey from killing Pompey’s army in around 60bc.
- sans_souse 16d agoThat was you??
- rubyfan 16d agoYou’ve got to wake up.
- GaProgMan 16d agoI 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 16d agoMy 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.
- robocat 16d agoWait till you're 65. It's more than disbelief, people start to actively moronify you. I'm not that age yet, but I've see it happening to purple my parent's age
- anonreeeeplor 16d ago[dead]
- pigbearpig 16d agoThis is the original article and has better images IMHO. https://theconversation.com/mad-honey-that-can-stop-your-heart-is-now-being-sold-online-worldwide-290090 https://theconversation.com/mad-honey-that-can-stop-your-hea...
- epestr 16d agoThe posted one also removes a link to the original author's Google scholar page.
- Al-Khwarizmi 16d agoAnd 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).
- uxhacker 16d agoBut the risk is actually more broad than the article points out. Any honey where enough of the nectar comes from rhododendrons could be dangerous. Grayanotoxin containing Rhododendron occur not just in Nepal, but in Turkey, North America, and Europe. I think there are other plants that the bees concentrate the toxins of.
- ChrisMarshallNY 16d agoI know that West Virginia has entire Rhododendron forests. They are pretty awesome.
- getnormality 16d agoAnd yet we are only hearing of this now, whereas botulism risk for example is a widely known reason to avoid honey for infants. It must end up being rare for some other reason.
- tmoertel 16d agoAnother is Kalmia latifolia, the mountain laurel, the state flower of Pennsylvania. According to records at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History [1], "Benjamin Smith Barton (an American botanist in the late 1700s) wrote that in the autumn and winter of the year 1790, many people died in Pennsylvania from the effects of wild honey, collected from Kalmia plants." [1] https://carnegiemnh.org/collected-day-1959/ https://carnegiemnh.org/collected-day-1959/
- measurablefunc 16d agoJoe Rogan endorses consuming mad honey according to the copy on this site: https://realmadhoney.com/products/mad-honey-us https://realmadhoney.com/products/mad-honey-us. So there is an entire supply chain from Nepal to the consumer.
- liaym 16d agoIf 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 https://youtu.be/r-jZyTP4K4g
- lousken 16d agothat reminds me to buy some, anyone tried it already?
- binyu 16d agoJust 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.
- saintfire 16d agoIn a linked article it said something like 77% of cases were deliberate consumption of mad honey for thereputic qualities.
- ButlerianJihad 16d agoI took a novel synthesizer drug in the 1980s. They called it a Moog Stabilizer.
- giantg2 16d agoJust use ghost pipes for your grayanotoxin.
- mgerdts 16d agoHad to look that up and stumbled across this: > The information about ghost pipe containing grayanotoxin is based on a single source from 1889. (Yes 1889, not 1989!) https://unrulygardening.com/ghost-pipe-faqs/ https://unrulygardening.com/ghost-pipe-faqs/ They are also listed as endangered in several states. I see them with some regularity in Wisconsin, even had one in my yard a few years back.
- VladVladikoff 16d agoThis article seems rather reckless. They admit that there is insufficient evidence to secure the safety of consuming ghost pipe, and go on to talk about creating an ethanol extraction (intended for consumption), without really explaining why one would extract with ethanol. I’m all for wild medicinal remedies but in 2026 we could take a slightly more scientific approach than a paper from 1889. Funny though, it grows in my back yard, perhaps I could find I way to study the full chemical composition. I do certainly lack the equipment however.
- temp123789246 16d ago“You don’t want to sell me death sticks”
- cedws 16d agoI’m surprised it’s even legit. I’ve heard of aphrodisiac honey that’s just been laced with viagra.
- aaron695 16d ago[dead]
- mlinhares 16d agoSome people survive by sheer luck.
- YouGuysAreBorin 16d ago[flagged]
- nelox 16d ago'Natural' is either the bees knee’s, or a death trap. Take your pick. edit:typo
- sleepybrett 16d agosaw a video on youtube the other week, some guys made mead out of this stuff. Claimed the effects were still present. I wonder what the concentration of the psychedelic comounds ends up being vs raw honey.
- kjellsbells 16d agoDiscussed in a 2017 National Geographic article[0], archived here[1]. Notice the article text's description of the honey being sold on the black market. Seems that now everyone is shopping there. [0] https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/honey-hunters-bees-climbing-nepal https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/article/honey-hu... [1] https://archive.is/Xdd01 https://archive.is/Xdd01 That said, clinicians have been writing about this for some time, eg [2] from 2007: [2] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17540490/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17540490/
- AstroNutt 16d agoFor you guys that watch YouTube. The channel is Mass Spec Everything. Here are a couple of interesting videos he did on various honey brands and regions. Pretty interesting stuff. https://youtu.be/FTaRFX4bKhI https://youtu.be/FTaRFX4bKhI https://youtu.be/FCFtVu6hFdw https://youtu.be/FCFtVu6hFdw
- weare138 16d agoYou could always this stuff online.