Nutmeg is a holiday spice staple, and most recipes don’t call for very much. But if you ingest a heavy-handed helping, according to toxicologists, you could have some issues. You could get poisoned, or you could get high.
Nutmeg is the seed of an evergreen tree, Myristica fragrans, and it actually has a complicated history:
In the Middle Ages, it was used to end unwanted pregnancies. More recently, desperate prisoners embraced it as a rather miserable drug substitute. So, on occasion, have teenagers, some of whom wound up at poison control centers. A couple of years ago, a man in Sweden claimed that nutmeg had induced him to spit at strangers on the street.
“It’s not that nutmeg cases are that common,” said Leon Gussow, an Illinois toxicologist who publishes a blog for professionals called The Poison Review. “But toxicologists do recognize it as one of the more interesting spices in the kitchen.”
Toxicologists say you would have to injest around two table spoons of the spice in order for it to have any affect, which could end up being symptoms like diziness, nausea and slowing down of brain function.
But it sounds like some people enjoyed the effects:
The effect was potent enough that nutmeg mythology eventually became part of prison culture, even into modern times. In the 1965 book, “The Autobiography of Malcolm X,” the activist describes purchasing it from inmates in a South Carolina prison, concealed in matchboxes, and stirring it into water. “A penny matchbox full of nutmeg had the kick of three or four reefers,” he wrote.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
The chemical in nutmeg that provides these effects is called myristicin, which belongs to a family of compounds with psychoactive potential. It has even been used in recipes for drugs like MMDA. The compound safrole is also in nutmeg, and it is sometimes used to make the street drug Ecstacy.
Hospitalizations from nutmeg overdose is very rare, and most of the cases are from people taking too much of the spice intentionally. So you should be good if you are just adding small amounts to your pies this Thanksgiving or dusting it on top of your eggnog.
[Photo from flickr user V Low]
