Nutmeg is poisonous in high doses and can lead to hallucinations, seizures, and other complications.
this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
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The "Anarchist's Cookbook" covered this 😂
How much are we talking? Are there any documented suicides by nutmeg?
2 to 3 teaspoons is lethal. 1.5 to 2.5 will get you high though. I don't recommend it as you can see there is an overlap.
Edit: Toxic. Not lethal
Lol. The only "high" I got when I tried it was flu-like symptoms. Do not recommend.
Same. Tried that shit as a teenager and I couldn't get out of bed for a full 24 hours. Felt like the worst flu of my life. The only thing even close to a "high" was the extreme tunnel vision I got when I tried to stand up. It was so bad that I couldn't even sit up to watch The Price is Right. Had no choice but to sleep it off.
Scared me away from drugs so badly that I didn't even try weed or alcohol until I was well into my 20s.
That’s probably why it’s still legal
Yah, that seems to be the concensus.
IIRC when I took it recreationally itwas many many grams to get to the hallucinations part. It was hard to stomach. Unless the safety profile is pretty narrow I'd say it would be difficult to complete suicide with nutmeg.
Sadly the hallucination effect does not correlate with the toxicity,especially the hepatotoxicity with nutmeg.. You can absolutely kill of your liver and die an agonizing death a few days later and have no hallucinations at all.
You teste it or put it in a pill or pouch or something?
Parachuted some and mixed some with milk. I wouldn't recommend. Nothing worth possibly dying over.
It's funny because I am cooking with nutmeg, and was saying that. A quick search tells me that you can have hallucination from 15g of nutmeg.
However, with the strong taste, sounds like a good netty bad poison
Everything is toxic if you eat too much of it
Even water!
Yep
... except cannabis, presuming you don't have a genetic disposition to schizophrenia. Nearly no one has ever died of a marijuana overdose. Compare that to alcohol (or, indeed, water). In fact, the only reason I say "nearly" is just in case; its safety has been known for a long time.
This is in fact one of the core reasons why I finally stopped being a straightedge and accepted taking it. (Though smoking is still a no-no and the worst way to experience anything, basically.)
Nearly no one has ever died of a marijuana overdose.
That's just because the amount needed to OD is extremely large. You're more likely to die from other reasons consuming enough marijuana to OD from it.
So? My point still stands that it's one of the safest mind-altering substances in the world, overdose-wise.
There's a lot of things that are toxic at high levels but the typical volume avaliable commercially is never going to work, you need some kind of refined to the toxic elements only type of substance, which there's at least a possibility no one has figured out how to do that refinement, as there's no sense in it.
I mean yeah that's their point, the dose needed to OD on THC is bonkers, so it's pretty much perfectly safe
Fun fact: alprazolam (Xanax) also has a ridiculously high LD50, about 1220mg/kg in female rats. For a human that weighs 57kg, that works out to 69.5 grams, or about 2.5oz of pure alprazolam. The maximum dose for prescription is 4mg, or .004g; you would need to ingest >17,000 4mg bars of Xanax to consume a fatal dose.
Almost all of the time, "fatal overdoses" of Xanax are in combination with other drugs, like alcohol, which can act as a synergist and depress respiration. But most of the time, you'll just black out for a few days.
(But. We don't know that actual LD50 in humans, only in rats and mice. It's possible that the human LD50 is either lower or higher.)
Toxic =/= deadly. You can absolutely consume enough cannabis to trigger a toxic response. It won’t kill you, but you may wish it did. Just because it’s not “deadly” doesn’t mean it’s good for you in any dose.
True, I'm not saying to go nuts on it at all! All I'm saying is that, relative to alcohol or other actually bad drugs, it's incredibly mild on average. Same with psilocybin; these two consistently top charts in relative drug safety. All other mind-altering substances are more dangerous (again, on average).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_herbs_with_known_adverse_effects
The list itself says it is incomplete and I immediately thought of a couple items not listed that have known toxicity issues:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perilla_frutescens#Traditional_medicine,_phytochemicals,_and_toxicity
You can easily kill yourself with a water overdose (and it's actually fairly common),so yes.
Nutmeg was already mentioned - high doses can easily kill someone, sadly even without hallucinations simply by killing off ones liver and dying an agonizing death a few days later. The same goes for cinnamon, but with a much lower dose.
There are a few more, but I don't want to give people too many ideas.
To make it short: Yes, possible,but it's mostly a very slow death over multiple days that fucks you up really bad and is a horrible way to go.
"The poison is the dose" is a saying for a reason.
Nutmeg can be relatively fast toxic , but it's soo much that the spice taste of it would be terrible overwhelming any food.
But it can relatively easily kill your kidneys.
So never overdo it.
Heard it can get you high but line between death and high is so thin it's not worth it.
Also effects last for nearly a day
Only dead for day...that sounds great.
IIRC, you'll need around four ground nuts to achieve LD50, which would be difficult to consume.
I mean, as humans, toxicity isn't a deterrent, it's a selling feature!
Yeah, the reason we like booze is because it's toxic and fucks up our brains.
Tamil proverb says
அளவுக்கடந்தால் அமிர்தமும் நஞ்சு
It's emphasizing that even the most potent, life-giving elixir can become poisonous if taken in excess.
Goodness those characters are so pretty!
just kidding
Actually a lot of spices contain unsafe levels of heavy metals, so you definitely could hurt yourself with them
All at once, absolutely, but it's going to take a LOT of most things.
Theoretically, anything is poisonous if you have enough of it. We even get oxygen poisoning by breathing air that is too rich in oxygen for too long.
Licorice is not that common a spice any more, partially because it's toxic at pretty obtainable levels, though people who like the flavor still typically won't accidentally consume a dangerous amount.
It really depends on the herb but as a general rule you likely cannot. If you are cooking and decide to add double or triple or even 10x the herbs / spices then the recipe suggests you will be fine. The worse case scenario is that you make it taste bad. That being said everything is poison at high enough doses but for culinary herbs that is a huge dose. You will really have to force yourself to eat large enough quantities since it will taste very unpleasant.
There are plenty of other plants that are more dangerous.
Generally speaking, I think you're right. Herbs and spices are safe. But I wanted to add a caveat: caution is always a good idea. You could damage organs like the liver or kidneys, specially if you have an issue with them.
For example, too much turmeric can result in liver damage: https://www.jeffersonhealth.org/your-health/living-well/the-trouble-with-turmeric-associated-liver-injuries
Another example: Rooibos tea is awesome but there's this guy who drank a bit too much, and ended with liver failure: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4435260/#B4 There are more reports of hepatoxicity here: https://www.mskcc.org/cancer-care/integrative-medicine/herbs/rooibos-tea
Caution is a good idea but as long as you aren't drinking gallons of tea or taking tons of herbal pills you should be fine.
Cinnamon can cause permanent damage in high doses.
Other than that and the others mentioned here, probably just old, rotting ones would be bad.
How high?
It appears to be 0.1mg/kg of body weight too avoid coumarin overdose (which is much stronger in Cassia than ceylon cinnamon), which is toxic to the liver: https://ovidsp.dc2.ovid.com/ovid-new-a/ovidweb.cgi?T=JS&PAGE=fulltext&D=ovft&AN=01445481-201002000-00007&NEWS=N&CSC=Y&CHANNEL=PubMed
You can overdose on water, so I'd say "yes."
Galium Odoratum is sufficiently poisonous that one should only use 3-3.5g per liter of beverage (usually a wine-based cocktail named "Maibowle") to avoid liver problems (apart from those caused by alcohol).