On the mountainsides of Nepal and Turkey, bees produce a strange and dangerous concoction: mad honey.
It's a rare variety of the natural fluid. Compared to the several hundred other types of honey produced around the world, mad honey is redder and slightly more bitter tasting, and it comes from the world's largest honey bee, Apis dorsata laboriosa.
Mad about honey
But what really distinguishes mad honey are its physiological effects. In lower doses, mad honey causes dizziness, lightheadedness, and euphoria. Higher doses can cause hallucinations, vomiting, loss of consciousness, seizures, and, in rare cases, death.
Here's one account of what it's like to take a moderate dose of mad honey, provided by a VICE producer who traveled to Nepal to join mad honey hunters on a harvesting expedition:
"I ate two teaspoons, the amount recommended by the honey hunters, and after about 15 minutes, I started to feel a high similar to weed," wrote David Caprara for VICE.
"I felt like my body was cooling down, starting from the back of my head and down through my torso. A deep, icy hot feeling settled in my stomach and lasted for several hours. The honey was delicious, and though a few of the hunters passed out from eating a bit too much, no one suffered from the projectile vomiting or explosive diarrhea I'd been warned about."
Here's another account from Will Brendza at The Rooster:
"Within 40ish minutes I could feel the honey creeping up on me. The back of my head started to tingle, like I was getting a scalp massage. Then, from within, I felt a warmth around my heart, in my chest and abdomen. Things slowed down a little, and my state of mind became tranquil. By the time we left the restaurant I was feeling good and strange."
"There are no visuals, though. The high is very much a bodily one and a mental one; a warm and relaxed sensation more like a sedative than your conventional psychedelic."
What is mad honey?
The psychoactive effects of mad honey stem not from bees but from what bees feed on in certain regions: a genus of flowering plants called rhododendrons. All species of these plants contain a group of neurotoxic compounds called grayanotoxins. When bees feed on the nectar and pollen of certain types of rhododendrons, the insects ingest grayanotoxins, which eventually make their way into the bees' honey, effectively making it "mad."
Rhododendron ferrugineumCredit albert kok
Bees are more likely to produce mad honey when and where rhododendrons are dominating. The reason has to do with scarcity: With fewer types of plants to feed on, the insects feed almost solely on rhododendrons, so they consume more grayanotoxins. The result is especially pure mad honey.
But accessing honeycombs that contain mad honey can be difficult. One reason is that rhododendrons grow best in higher altitudes, and bees often build their hives on cliffs near the plants, meaning harvesters have to climb mountainsides to harvest the honey.
However, harvesters bold enough to go for the honeycombs stand to profit. The Guardian reported that a kilogram of high-quality mad honey can sell for about $360 in shops around Turkey, while National Geographic noted that a pound of mad honey goes for about $60 on Asian black markets. In general, the value of mad honey is much higher than regular honey.
That's partly because many people believe mad honey has more medical value than regular honey. In the Black Sea region and beyond, people use it to treat conditions like hypertension, diabetes, arthritis, and
sore throat, though the research on the medical benefits of hallucinogenic honey from Nepal and Turkey is unclear.
In northeastern Asia, some buyers believe mad honey treats erectile dysfunction, which might explain why the majority of cases of mad honey poisonings involve middle-aged men, as noted in a 2018 report published in the journal RSC Advances.
How does mad honey affect the body?
Although the medicinal benefits of mad honey aren't clear, what's certain is that humans can be poisoned by consuming too much grayanotoxin-rich honey, which can cause dangerous decreases to blood pressure and heart rate.
Forensic toxicologist Justin Brower elaborated on his blog, Nature's Poisons:
"Grayanotoxins exert their toxicity by binding to sodium ion channels on cell membranes and preventing them from closing quickly, like aconitine. The result is a state of depolarization in which sodium ions are freely flowing into the cells, and calcium influx is on the rise."
This process can lead to a series of symptoms involving increased sweating, salivation, and nausea, Brower said, noting that symptoms typically disappear within 24 hours, as they did for a man in Seattle who suffered mad honey poisoning in 2011. While the exact amount of mad honey it takes to become poisoned depends on the individual and the quality of the honey, the 2018 RSC Advances report noted:
"Consumption of about 15-30 g mad honey leads to intoxication, and symptoms appear after half to 4 [hours]. The level of intoxication not only depends on the amount of mad honey consumed but also on the grayanotoxin concentration in the honey and the season of production. According to Ozhan et al., consumption of one teaspoon of mad honey may lead to poisoning."
Although Turkey records about a dozen cases of mad honey poisonings per year, a 2012 study published in Cardiovascular Toxicology noted that it's rare for people to die from the substance, though cases of animal deaths have been reported.
Mad honey throughout history
The strange effects of mad honey have captivated people near the Black Sea for millennia. One of the oldest accounts comes from 401 BCE, when Greek soldiers were marching through the Turkish town of Trabzon and came across a bounty of mad honey. The Athenian military leader and philosopher Xenophon wrote in his book Anabasis:
"The number of bee-hives was extraordinary, and all the soldiers that ate of the combs, lost their senses, vomited, and were affected with purging, and none of them were able to stand upright; such as had eaten only a little were like men greatly intoxicated, and such as had eaten much were like mad-men, and some like persons at the point of death."
"They lay upon the ground, in consequence, in great numbers, as if there had been a defeat; and there was general dejection. The next day no one of them was found dead; and they recovered their senses about the same hour that they had lost them on the preceding day; and on the third and fourth days they got up as if after having taken physic."
Centuries later, in 67 BCE, Roman soldiers weren't so lucky. As the soldiers pursued King Mithridates of Pontus and his Persian army, they stumbled across mad honey that the Persians had intentionally left behind, intending to use the substance as a bioweapon. Vaughn Bryant, a professor of anthropology at Texas A&M University, explained in a press release:
"The Persians gathered pots full of local honey and left them for the Roman troops to find. They ate the honey, became disoriented and couldn't fight. The Persian army returned and killed over 1,000 Roman troops with few losses of their own."
But mad honey was more often used for nonviolent purposes. People in the Black Sea region have long consumed small amounts of the substance (about a teaspoon's worth), in boiling milk or on its own, both for pleasure and as a folk medicine.
In the 18th century, merchants in the Black Sea region sold honey to the Europeans, who infused liquor with a bit of the substance to enjoy its milder effects.
Mad honey today
Today, beekeepers in Nepal and Turkey still harvest mad honey, though it represents a small fraction of the nations' total honey production. Both countries allow the production, sale, and exportation of mad honey, but the substance is illegal in other nations, like South Korea, which banned the substance in 2005.
While interested buyers in the U.S. can purchase mad honey from countries like Nepal and Turkey, it might be worth sticking with the regular stuff. After all, the handful of experiences posted on the website of the non-profit psychedelic research organization Erowid.org don't sound too enticing.
One user said they "wouldn't even recommend trying it." Another user suffered mad honey poisoning after taking too much, writing that the "symptoms can seem life threatening" and that they hope their report might help "some poor bastard out there not make the same mistake."
UC Berkeley recently announced the launch of its center for psychedelic research and education, thanks to an anonymous $1.25 million donation. This follows Imperial College London's 2019 founding of The Centre for Psychedelic Research and Johns Hopkins's Center for Psychedelic & Consciousness Research. The U.S. company, MindMed, which is working on clinical studies on ibogaine's efficacy in treating addiction, is planning an IPO. A host of similar Canadian companies have already entered that country's stock market.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
As psychedelics are catapulted into the mainstream, the following eight books cover a range of related topics, including clinical research and anecdotal tales. Whether you're an advocate, a newbie, or just curious, these books provide a great education on the therapeutic and spiritual potential of the psychedelic ritual.
Huxley on Psychedelics
Am I Dreaming? The New Science of Consciousness and How Altered States Reboot the Brain — James Kingsland
Science journalist James Kingland takes a broad view of altered states of consciousness, including lucid dreaming, virtual reality, hypnotic trances, and microdosing (and larger doses) with psychedelics. His journeys with ayahuasca, LSD, and psilocybin recount intense personal experiences and are worthwhile for anyone interested in the science behind these substances. In the end, Kingsland reminds us the real work of any trip is done in sobriety.
"In some ways the trip is the easy bit. The hard work starts when you try to integrate the lessons you have learned into ordinary life."
Drugged: The Science and Culture Behind Psychotropic Drugs — Richard J Miller
Northwestern pharmacology professor Richard J Miller was exposed to the power of psychedelics while attending Woodstock. This "religious experience" inspired his career in pharmacology. He wanted to discover how substances can alter neurochemistry this profoundly. In "Drugged," Miller investigates a range of mind-changing substances, including coffee, opium, cannabis, and antidepressants. The chapters devoted to psychedelics provide a great overview of their clinical and spiritual applications.
"The powerful effects of natural products such as Amanita muscaria or ergot suggest that they contain important chemical substances that, if isolated and understood from the structural point of view, might provide us with new insights into disease mechanisms or potential therapeutic opportunities for treating diseases."
Hallucinogens: A Reader — Edited by Charles Grob
UCLA Medical Center professor of Psychiatry & Biobehavioral Sciences, Charles Grob, was the first researcher approved to clinically study MDMA and ayahuasca in the '90s. His pioneering (and continued) work in these fields has pushed the field of psychedelic research forward. This 2002 collection features the writings of Ralph Metzner, Terence McKenna, Huston Smith, Rick Strassman, and an interview with Dr. Andrew Weil. The book closes with three exceptional essays by Grob on the psychology of ayahuasca, the politics of MDMA research, and psychiatric research with hallucinogens.
As Weil says of his experiences with psychedelics,
"It can give you a vision of possibility, but then it doesn't show you anything about maintaining that possibility. When the vision goes, the drug wears off, you are back where you were, you haven't learned anything but you have seen that something is possible. It is then up to you to figure out how to manifest the possibility.
Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers — Richard Evans Schultes, Albert Hoffman, and Christian Ratsch
This 1998 encyclopedia of psychedelic plants and fungi is the bible of cosmonauts. Everything is covered: history, culture, pharmacology, therapeutic applications, regional distinctions, chemistry, maps, and tons of photos. This resource should be in any serious cosmonaut's library. While grounded in research and respectful of the cultures that practice plant medicine, the trio of experts also understand their broader context.
"The psychic changes and unusual states of consciousness induced by hallucinogens are so far removed from similarity with ordinary life that it is scarcely possible to describe them in a language of daily living. A person under the effects of a hallucinogen forsakes his familiar world and operates under other standards, in strange dimensions and in a different time."
American writer William Seward Burroughs (1914-1997), author of the cult novel "Naked Lunch."
Credit: Evening Standard/Getty Images
Psychedelic Medicine: The Healing Powers of LSD, MDMA, Psilocbyin, and Ayahuasca — Dr. Richard Louis Miller
Richard Louis Miller has been a clinical psychologist for over a half-century. He's also the host of a popular syndicated talk radio show, where he discusses health, mindfulness, and politics. This platform led him to explore psychedelics in a broad scientific and political context.
This book is a collection of interviews from his show, featuring David Nichols, Stanislav Grof, Charles Grob, Roland Griffiths, Amanda Feilding, and Dennis McKenna. They cover a range of issues, such as MDMA as a therapy for PTSD, the efficacy of the current psychiatric paradigm, and psilocybin in depression treatment. These invaluable conversations include this important insight from MAPS founder, Rick Doblin.
"The fundamental problem with our drug policy is that it ascribes good and bad qualities to drugs themselves—"this is a good drug, that's a bad drug"—when really it's the relationship that you have with the drug that determines the value of it and whether it's harmful or helpful."
The Doors of Perception — Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley's landmark 1954 book on mescaline remains fundamental to psychedelics advocates. Huxley wanted to experience mystic visions, a feat mescaline offered. Yet he never fell prey to the whims of useless metaphysics. This stunning essay details a political and spiritual thinker applying pragmatic as well as transcendental understandings of the psychedelic vision.
"The other word to which mescalin admitted me was not the world of visions; it existed out there, in what I could see with my eyes open. The great change was in the realm of objective fact. What had happened to my subjective universe was relatively unimportant."
The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness — Alan Watts
When you get the message, hang up the phone. That summates the British philosopher's take on psychedelics. While his lane was more meditation and philosophy than drugs—though he was known for enjoying a drink—Watts has plenty to offer on altered states. Watts applies a critical eye to the slacker looking to get off on drugs, yet also recognizes the essential need for connection to nature in an ever-speedy society—this book was published in 1962. That's the thing about reading Watts: it always catches up to you, wherever you happen to be, trademark humor and all.
"It is not really healthy for monks to practice fasting, and it was hardly hygienic for Jesus to get himself crucified, but these are risks taken in the course of spiritual adventures."
The Yage Letters Redux — William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg
This correspondence between two of the Beat generation's top writers is a gem. Burroughs spent months traveling around South America looking for the legendary ayahuasca (yage), long before private planes shuffled Silicon Valley execs to glamping retreats. That meant purchasing bootleg ayahuasca and having colorful run-ins with locals. Many remember Burroughs as a junkie—he had his moments—but the writer also meticulously documented the pharmacology of his drugs. Kerouac owned the road, but Burroughs claimed the sky.
"Yage is not like anything else. This is not the electric euphoria of coke which activates the channels of pure pleasure in the brain, the sexless, timeless, negative pleasure of opium. It is closer to hashish than to any other drug. There are also similarities between Peyote and yage. But while hashish intensifies all sensual impressions, yage distorts or shuts down ordinary sensations, transporting you to another level of experience."
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Stay in touch with Derek on Twitter, Facebook and Substack. His next book is "Hero's Dose: The Case For Psychedelics in Ritual and Therapy."
Many mysteries surround Stonehenge. Who built it and what purpose did it serve? Why that arrangement of megaliths and lentels? How did Neolithic people move and erect such massive stones using 5,000-year-old technology? Because Stonehenge's builders left us no written record, historians, archaeologists, enthusiasts, conspiracy theorists, and outright cranks have tried for centuries to translate their prehistoric silence into answers.
As scientific tools and techniques have advanced, we've learned to better discern the forensic clues left behind in the megaliths, inhumed bodies, and landscape of the Salisbury Plain. Today, scientists have traced Stonehenge's "bluestones"—smaller dolerite stones found in the monument's interior—to quarries in Preseli Hills, Wales. They've also established that the bluestones likely served as grave markers for the people buried there, also from Wales.
Thanks to our scientific tools, and a reclaimed piece of history, another Stonehenge mystery has been solved. Scientists have pinpointed the source area for most of the monument's extant sarsens. And no, aliens did not carry these megaliths with tractor beams to create an interstellar landing pad. Sorry, cranks. Stonehenge's origin is far more terrestrial, found in a little spot near Marlborough Downs.
Discovering Stonehenge's signature
In 1958, engineers undertook the task of re-erecting a Stonehenge trilithon that fell in 1797. Three cores drilled into a sarsen disappeared soon after.
(Photo: John Franks/Getty Images)
"Sarsen" is the common term for the giant sandstone—more specifically, duricrust silcrete—megaliths that enwreathe Stonehenge. Fifty-two of an estimated 80 sarsens remain today. They form both the interior horseshoe and the uprights and lintels of the outer circle, as well as peripheral stones like the Heel and Slaughter Stones. The largest sarsens stand at about 30 feet tall and weigh around 25 tons.
The immense size of these boulders sits at the center of one of Stonehenge's most enticing enigmas. How did people, using only Neolithic technology, manage to move and prop up such massive stones? A major piece to that puzzle has been their source, as the answer would inform scientists on the opportunities and challenges facing the builders as they moved the sarsens.
To find that piece, David Nash, the study's lead author and a professor at Brighton University, and his team analyzed the sarsens using a portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer. This non-intrusive analysis allowed them to generate initial chemical characterizations for the stones' 34 chemical elements.
"Until recently we did not know it was possible to provenance a stone like sarsen," Nash said in a release. "It has been really exciting to use 21st century science to understand the Neolithic past and answer a question that archaeologists have been debating for centuries."
To further hone in on the source area, the team needed to generate high-resolution chemical signatures by analyzing a sample. Of course, the idea of tearing a sample out of this World Heritage Site would be near sacrilege. Luckily, a previously lost piece of history had recently been returned to the British people.
In 1958, a restoration program re-erected a Stonehenge trilithon that fell in 1797. After lifting the sarsens, engineers discovered cracks in one of the uprights (Stone 58). They drilled out three cores from the stone and inserted metal ties to reinforce its integrity. The holes were filled with sarsen plugs to hide the intrusion. However, the three cores disappeared.
Flash forward to 2018. Robert Phillips, an 89-year-old U.S. citizen and on-site worker during the restoration, returned one of the three cores. Nash and his team were granted permission to sample a piece from "Phillips' core." They used a plasma mass spectrometer to create a chemical signature for the monument, one they could compare to potential source sites across southern Britain.
They found a match in West Woods, Wiltshire. Fifty of Stonehenge's 52 sarsens share a chemical signature with the stones in this area, strongly suggesting they were sourced there. The area also sports a high concentration of evidence for early Neolithic activity, adding to its plausibility.
"To be able to pinpoint the area that Stonehenge's builders used to source their materials around 2,500 BC is a real thrill," Susan Greaney, senior properties historian at English Heritage, told the BBC. "While we had our suspicions that Stonehenge's sarsens came from the Marlborough Downs, we didn't know for sure, and with areas of sarsens across Wiltshire, the stones could have come from anywhere."
She added the evidence showed "how carefully considered and deliberate the building of this phase of Stonehenge was."
The study was published in Science Advances.
For every answer, another question
A view of Stonehenge during the Summer Solstice.
(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Thanks to Nash and his team, scientists now know the source of Stonehenge's sarsens. This clue can help them solve other Stonehenge mysteries. That most of the stones were sourced from one location, the study notes, suggests that they were erected at about the same time. It also reveals the routes the Neolithic builders had to traverse with their heavy loads.
But questions remain. Why did the builders choose West Woods when the Salisbury Plain is dense with sarsen? Why were two megaliths (Stones 26 and 160) sourced elsewhere? And were the missing stones gathered from West Woods or elsewhere?
These questions only touch on the sarsens. The question that intrigues so many of the monument's visitors remains hotly debated: Who built Stonehenge and why? Was it a burial site for the Stone age elite? A monument marking British unification? A Druid Mecca? We don't know, but as scientific tools advance, we may be able to break the prehistoric silence that has laid over Stonehenge for so long.
