Madness and Medicine: Tales of Mad Honey
Honey has written itself into human cultural history in several disparate ways, perhaps the most interesting of which is the convergent history of ‘mad honey’, hallucinogenic honey which is consumed all over the world. different cultures incorporated mad honey into their society at different times in human history. Today, scientific papers on the subject of ‘mad honey’ are still being published in major academic journals. One group of scientists produced a study which investigated the natural neurotoxins present in mad honey, while another group of researchers found that topical administrations of ‘mad honey’ improved wound healing rates in rats. Scientific questions are being asked of a substance which has been incorporated into human historical narratives for thousands of years. The result is a clear indication that the effects, consequences and benefits of eating mad honey are still not completely understood.
Mad honey is found throughout Eurasia. The honey is a product of bees which pollinate various rhododendron species, all of which contain a neurotoxin named Grayanotoxin. The effects of mad honey on humans has been described in relative detail. consumers can suffer from fevers, stomach pains, hallucinations, as well as vomiting and nausea. Despite the known risks, people have continuously harvested mad honey from Nepali mountainsides, thee products of which are sold on a large medical supplement market in Asia.
Honey as a Poisonous Temptation
Modern clinicians estimate that a low number of people require hospitalization after consuming the product in high volumes. Yet, the history of mad honey begins in the west, with the Greek general Xenophon’s (430–355BCE) account of his campaign in Turkey. Honey holds a significant place in Ancient Greek mythology. As the food of the gods, it’s role in the house of Zeus on Mt Olympus was mirrored by its importance as a sweetener in everyday ancient life. There was no such thing as sugar in the Northern Mediterranean, thus honey was revered along with ripe fruit as a luxury. Historians have to dismantle their image of modern-day tourist hot spots in Greece and Turkey so that they can understand how Xenophon’s troops would have been so keen to consume honey on the march. Mad honey, once eaten, caused large swathes of Xenophon’s army to be crippled by stomach cramps and delirium at Trabzon on the Black Sea coast. In the ancient Mediterranean the use of poisonous plants and foods as biological weapons was not uncommon, and the aim of many of the tacticians who used mad honey to their advantage was to immobilize and cripple opponents.
Honey as a Cultural Commodity
Today, the nature of mad honey is central to high country village life for Nepal’s Kulung people. A sacred enterprise, the honey hunters are portrayed as a mysterious sort of person in a recent documentary about their exploits. To hunt honey using their method, men have to have ‘the dream’, which tells them it is their destiny to become a honey hunter. The job is terrifying in its scale, as people carry long rope ladders up to the cliffs which hang in the mist. Once there, the honey hunter will climb up the side of the mountain to the top of the cliff, before lowering themselves off the ledge and descending to the huge hives from which the honey is extracted. Helpfully, fires are burned below and smoke rises to appease the insects. Once hanging, level with hives, the hunter proceeds to hack at the monolithic combs until whole chunks fall away. The bees are not impressed, and though the smoke supposedly calms them down, they sting the hunter without mercy. Hunters return to the ground pocked with bee stings, scraped by the rock, and discombobulated by the smoke.
Honey as a Rare Luxury
The efforts people have to make to reach the substance provided by nature often define how they react to the consumption of it. honey was a luxury in the Ancient Mediterranean because it was one of the only sweeteners available to people, and unlike fruit, it doesn’t perish. It was a highly valued commodity, becoming the mythological food of the gods. Honey’s universal esteem was to be the cause of great loss of life when Mithridates VI Eupator, Rome’s deadliest enemy, resorted to Gorilla warfare in the turbulent terrain of his home country. Mithridates placed mad honey hives along the road which the Romans would have to take through Pontus. Whether they were obviously placed in a pile, or surreptitiously perched in trees of rock crevices is unknown, but the result of the calamity is well-documented thanks to the Mediterranean penchant for written narratives. Pompey’s army was unable to resist the honeycombs which appeared in front of them. They had been marching and fighting through Anatolia for months, and now a treat suddenly appeared, in the hills near the Black Sea coast. Roman and Greek historians described how Pompey’s troops fell for the trap, gorging themselves on honey, only to be entirely incapacitated by the Grayanotoxins within. Mithridates had taken advantage of the fact that honey was so revered and relatively rare to entice his enemy into causing their downfall. It is hard to imagine such an event happening now when armies can carry their sweet provisions with them when in deployment.
Honey as a Trade Good
In Nepal, mad honey is not a trap for the Kulung people, it is a trade good, to be collected and then sold to consumers in far off Kathmandu, and even other parts of the world. The traders who carry off the honey to Kathmandu certainly know that the honey is a trap of sorts, sold to the highest bidder for the chance to suffer and cleanse. But it is also a commodity and culturally important consumable. the Kulung people value the effects of mad honey, as do the consumers who pay the traders to deliver them the product. it is an enticing prospect for the uninitiated, to have a troublesome experience which involves vomiting and pain, in the hope of achieving a cleansed feeling, and perhaps even a dream which transcends reality as they have understood it in the past. Whether or not mad honey can produce the effects that many websites for tourists now propose that it will is not clear. It is almost certain that delirium can be enlightening, but it can also be terrifying. The Kulung people understand the concept of honey induced terror well, as the only people who can collect it must have a dream or vision, or risk being cursed. Unlike in the military cases of mad honey use in the Mediterranean and Black Sea regions, knowledge of how poisonous mad honey is has turned hunting honey in the Himalayas into a sacred pursuit which a person undertakes at their peril, and with the utmost respect.
Convergent Histories
Historical narratives often converge on the same substance without either tale ever acknowledging each other. they are products of similar modes of human curiosity which culminated in two, three, or four different opinions of the same product. Honey has made an impression on humans on every continent, for its sweetness combined with a delightful liquid syrup texture. mad honey still captures convergent communities today. there are mindfulness, a health supplement, tourism, and curiosity shop websites which discuss the values of the toxins passed to humans by rhododendron flowers via bees. the conversation about whether the substance is poison, such as it was employed by Mithradates during his war with Rome, or medicine which empties the bodies of all poisons, including the honey itself, seems to be unending. However, while people may make YouTube videos about the search for the mysterious ‘mad honey’, the reader should remember that sometimes the best way to experiment with plants is to take the best local knowledge to heart and understand the practices which have survived for centuries. In Turkey, the warlords of the ancient world employed mad honey as tempting bio-weapon during gorilla warfare. In Nepal, mad honey is culturally significant medicine, which causes transitory pain and suffering, before gifting a consumer a dreamy transcendent state of mind and body, if the dose is correct. In different historical contexts, mad honey might mean myriad different things to cultures and communities who incorporate it into their daily lives.
History should not always be focused on the chronologies of experiences marked out by dates. History is about facts, feelings, objects, stories, geology, biology, and journeys, marked out by the way they have impacted society. History can be read geographically, as in the case of honey. Which ‘mad honey’ fact is more important? Who found it first, who used it as a poison? who wrote myths about? or, who used it as a medicine? No one topic is more important than the rest, yet each topic adds to the contextualization of mad honey within the human narrative. Mad honey has converged on humanity as a poison, weapon, myth, and medicine, as a whole
