37
Nutmeg is poisonous in high doses and can lead to hallucinations, seizures, and other complications.
The "Anarchist's Cookbook" covered this 😂
How much are we talking? Are there any documented suicides by nutmeg?
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.
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.
Everything is toxic if you eat too much of it
Even water!
Yep
"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.
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
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.
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 overdose on water, so I'd say "yes."
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.
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).
I mean, as humans, toxicity isn't a deterrent, it's a selling feature!
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
this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2025
37 points (95.1% liked)
No Stupid Questions
40799 readers
274 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS