The Poison Review

MAD HONEY SEX: THERAPEUTIC MISADVENTURES FROM AN ANCIENT BIOLOGICAL WEAPON. Demircan A et al. Ann Emerg Med Dec 2009;54:824-829.

Abstract

“Mad honey” — made from pollen of Rhododentron species – contains a grayanotoxin that opens sodium channels and maintains excitable cells in a state of depolarization. Signs and symptoms of intoxication include dizziness, nausea, vomiting, bradycardia, and hypotension.  This Turkish paper unfortunately does not go into the pharmacology of the toxin, but does demonstrate that — at least in the authors’ neck of the woods — poisoning is most common among middle-aged men who ingest the honey for its supposed aphrodisiac properties.  Symptoms usually resolve completely within 24 hours which, as the authors point out, is consistent with the description of mad honey poisoning in Xenophon’s Anabasis, written in approximately 400 BC:

“All the soldiers who ate of the honeycombs lost their senses, seized with vomiting and purging, none of them being able to stand on their legs. Those who ate but a little were like men very drunk, and those who ate much like madmen, and some like dying persons. In this condition, great numbers lay on the ground, as if there had been a defeat. The next day, none of them died, but recovered their senses about the same hour as they were seized . . .”