Teens are drinking nutmeg in TikTok videos to get high. Here’s why that’s dangerous

Some teens experimenting with their parents’ spices aren’t doing so to help out with dinner.

They’re doing it to get high.

In a trend that went viral last weekend, teens mixed powdered nutmeg in a beverage of their choosing and recorded themselves drinking it on the short-form video platform TikTok, as reported by Heavy.com and DailyDot. Hours later, teens claimed they saw dancing elves, melting walls and smurf massacres — among other visions.

But almost all regretted their participation in the #nutmegchallenge immediately, reporting nausea, blurry vision and feelings of near-death. “I’m gonna see jesus soon,” one user wrote.

Nutmeg, grown from a tree native to Indonesia, is a common cooking spice known for its warm flavor and nutty taste. It can be left in seed form or grounded to a powder to add to almost any dish in small amounts, typically less than two teaspoons, or 10 grams.

But any serving larger than that is enough to cause symptoms like hallucinations, rapid heartbeat, nausea, delirium and even seizures, according to the U.S. National Library of Medicine. A compound called myristicin, found in the nutmeg’s essential oils, is said to be the culprit behind the visions, research reports.

At doses of 50 grams or more, those symptoms become more severe and can last for several hours, according to Healthline.

The spice’s hallucinogenic powers were first reported in the 1500s, when one pregnant woman in England ate 10 to 12 nutmeg nuts, according to a chapter in the book Medical Toxicology of Natural Substances: Foods, Fungi, Medicinal Herbs, Plants, and Venomous Animals.

Another important component in nutmeg is elemincin, which has been shown to decrease muscle coordination and activity, according to the book on the toxicology of natural substances.

In Illinois alone, 32 cases of “nutmeg toxicity” were reported between 2001 and 2011, a case review of nutmeg exposures over 10 years reported by the Illinois Poison Center revealed. The researchers found that 15 of those cases purposefully took the drug for its psychoactive effect, according to the 2014 study published in the Journal of Medical Toxicology.

To date, there are only two cases of death from a nutmeg overdose, the study said.

Nutmeg, however, is considered “safe for their intended use,” according to the U.S Food and Drug Administration as of April last year.

As part of their community guidelines, TikTok says they do not allow “content that displays drugs, drug consumption, or encourages others to make, use or trade drugs or other controlled substances.”

One TikTok user who noted the nutmeg’s “horrid” taste wrote that “it was a science project mom.”

This story was originally published April 14, 2020 at 3:04 PM with the headline "Teens are drinking nutmeg in TikTok videos to get high. Here’s why that’s dangerous."