Myristicin

Myristicin is a naturally occurring phenylpropene found at concentrations of 4–8% in the volatile oil of nutmeg (Myristica fragrans) seeds, and in smaller quantities in black pepper, parsley, dill, carrot, and other plants. It is the primary psychoactive constituent responsible for the well-documented but generally undesirable deliriant effects of nutmeg at high doses, though its precise mechanism of psychoactive action remains incompletely understood.

Nutmeg intoxication — colloquially described in online drug communities as one of the most unpleasant psychoactive experiences available — has been known for centuries. Medieval European herbalists documented nutmeg's narcotic properties. In contemporary harm reduction contexts, nutmeg/myristicin is most frequently encountered as a substance of use by individuals with no access to other drugs (prisoners, adolescents, institutionalized populations) rather than as a substance of deliberate recreational choice.

The myristicin experience is characterized by: extremely slow onset (6–8 hours after ingestion), long duration (up to 36 hours), profoundly unpleasant subjective effects including severe nausea and vomiting, dysphoric sedation, dry mouth, urinary retention, and confused delirious thinking without the clarity or insight of psychedelic experiences. The experience is so uniformly unpleasant in community reports that deliberate recreational use is genuinely rare. Myristicin is also of pharmacological interest as a structural precursor to MMDA, a psychedelic amphetamine, though the metabolic conversion of myristicin to MMDA in humans has not been convincingly demonstrated.