#Humans consuming magic flowers full

There, native species of rhododendron flowers produce a potent neurotoxin called grayanotoxin, which can affect the nerves, heart and respiratory system.

#Humans consuming magic flowers full

Mad honey is still gathered by beekeepers braving forests full of bears in the Kaçkar mountains above the Black Sea in Turkey. Want more health and science stories in your inbox? Subscribe to Salon's weekly newsletter The Vulgar Scientist. The Roman soldiers couldn't help themselves and pigged out until they couldn't move, leaving them easy for the slaughter. Later, when the Greeks under King Mithridates were retreating from Roman general Pompey the Great in 97 BC, Mithridates ordered his men to lay pots of honey as they made their tactical withdrawal. The ancient Greek commander and historian Xenophon (434–354 BCE) mentioned a disease afflicting his men with delirium, vomiting, and diarrhoea while they retreated from the Persians on Anatolia's Black Sea coast.

Well, I'm here now, and I've always been partial to sampling the local delicacies. When the Greeks under King Mithridates were retreating from Roman general Pompey the Great in 97 BC, Mithridates ordered his men to lay pots of honey as they made their tactical withdrawal. As a journalist I had to get the hell out, and so I joined the Russian exodus to Istanbul. Thanks to Vladimir Putin starting a nightmarish, fratricidal war with our neighbor, Ukraine, that would have to wait. At the start of the year I was working on an article about Russian mushrooms that make you trip for eight hours and think you died as many times in a row. Hence, just to be safe, I bought two small jars from two different merchants, and watched carefully from where they poured the sweet sticky stuff. One can find deals here, but tourists like me are also apt to be ripped off. I picked up two jars from the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, an ancient marketplace of kiosks selling carpets, caviar, old Ottoman daggers and scimitars, spices, trinkets and antiques. Mad honey's psychotropic effects are not well-documented on the Anglophone side of the internet trip reports on Erowid, the online psychonauts' Bible, are sparse. A couple of spoonfuls of mad honey, either on their own or with hot water or boiled milk, are enough to induce a mildly psychotropic sensation.

Mad honey, or deli bal as it's known in Turkish, is one of the most expensive honeys in the world - and the deadliest. Unlike most honey, consuming it would lead to visions, vomiting and horrific diarrhea. Like most honey, it was predictably sweet, but with a faint smoky flavour that burnt the throat and the tongue. But by the time I read it, I had already gulped down three. 'Don't eat two big spoons of mad honey a day,' read the awkward warning on the side of the jar.