Do You Know About the Narcotic Effects of Nutmeg?

By Ibo Nagano, Entheogen Review. Posted June 5, 2009.

When a human being eats nutmeg it opens his heart, and his sense is pure, and it puts him in a good state of mind. Take nutmeg and (in the same amount) cinnamon and some cloves and grind them up. And then, from this powder and some water, make flour--and roll out some little tarts. Eat these often and it will lower the bitterness of your heart and your mind and open your heart and your numbed senses. It will make your spirit happy, purify and cleanse your mind, lower all bad fluids in you, give your blood a good tonic, and make you strong (Rtsch & Mller-Ebeling 2006).

I have personally noted that nutmeg taken regularly in small amounts helps elevate mood, while reducing stress and anxiety.

Nutmeg is still used in Arabic and Indian folk medicine today, but its use as an herbal remedy in Europe is long forgotten. Use as a medicine never seems to have caught on in the United States, with the exception of its use as an abortifacient in the nineteenth century.

NUTMEG AS APHRODISIAC

One little-known application of nutmeg is its traditional use as an aphrodisiac. In India, nutmeg has been added to curry dishes and also to betel quids for its aphrodisiac effect (Rtsch 2005). Nutmeg is recognized as an aphrodisiac in Malaysia and in Arab countries, and its counterpart, mace, is prescribed by physicians in the Near East as an aphrodisiac (Forrest & Heacock 1972).

While the use of nutmeg as an aphrodisiac in Europe does not appear to have been well-known or widespread, several examples exist. William Salmon, a seventeenth century Englishman writing in 1693, described a self-experiment in which nutmeg oil rubbed on the genitals produced sexual excitation (Rudgley 1998, citing Salmon 1693). Most peculiar, perhaps, is an old German folk tradition in which a girl would swallow a nutmeg whole, collect the intact nut after it passed, and then powder and mix it in the food of her beloved. Doing such was supposed to cause the man in question to fall deeply in love with the girl (Rtsch 2005).

The traditional use of nutmeg as an aphrodisiac was recently put to the test by researchers at the Aligarh Muslim University in Aligarh, India. Their findings strongly support such an application. Their study was conducted by orally administering a 50% ethanol extract of nutmeg to male rats and monitoring changes in mating behaviors and sexual function. The extract was shown to significantly increase the frequency of erections and the mounting frequency, to decrease the amount of time between sexual episodes, and to significantly delay ejaculation in the test animals. In an earlier study on male mice, conducted by the same group, four of the six mice mated three females each while the remaining two mated five females each. This is in comparison to the control group, where two mice mated two females each and the remaining four mated only one female a piece. In order to test the purely libido-enhancing effects of nutmeg separately from the effects on physical sexual function, the research group anesthetized the genitals of the test animals and monitored the mounting behavior. While the rats could not properly perform, their attempts to mount were significantly higher than those in the control group. In addition, the research group conducted testing to determine the toxicity of the 50% ethanol extract, and found that doses up to eight times the active dose in the test animals displayed no signs of short-term toxicity (i.e., no mortality and no gross behavioral changes). The findings of these studies strongly corroborate the traditional uses of nutmeg to improve sexual function and enhance the sex drive, and suggest that nutmeg may be a safe and effective herbal remedy in treating sexual disorders (Tajuddin et al. 2003; Tajuddin et al. 2005).

NUTMEG FOR DREAM ENHANCEMENT

There is not much written about the effect of nutmeg upon dreaming. Many experimenters have described the effects of nutmeg as having a dream-like quality and of promoting vivid daydreams. Many users also report increased dream recall as well as an increase in the vividness and lucidity of their dreams. From my own experiences, as well, I have found that nutmeg increases dream recall.

The most complete report of the effects of nutmeg on dreams comes from Paul Devereaux, who ingested two teaspoons of ground nutmeg and sprinkled essential oil of nutmeg on his pillow and sheets as part of a self-experiment. Devereaux reported becoming fully self-aware during a dream where he was flying through a tunnel at high speed. Devereaux also found that his tactile senses were partially operational while dreaming. When flying over a landscape of sorts, Devereaux described snatching at the leaves of a passing tree and reported feeling "the pull of the branches and the foliage digging into my hand" (Rudgley 1998).

Devereaux's report reinforces the contention that nutmeg may have an effect on the lucidity of dreams and on dream recall; however, more definite support is lacking.

NUTMEG AS INEBRIANT

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