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Possible evidence of CB1 agonism from nutmeg

trumpet153

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Nov 17, 2015
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So here it goes, a person I know quiet well, bob, has had experience with a fairly wide range of drugs over several years. In his earlier years when his drug use was fairly sporadic he on a pretty large number of occasions took the common household spice nutmeg as a drug. Like many of the other people he has now seen taken this drug he did not find the effects to be extremely unpleasant as it seems a few suggest but rather extremely similar to marijuana. Effects began at around T+3:00 and would continue until T+15:00 +- 4:00, and include sedation, appetite increase, red glazed eyes, and increase in humor.

Now bob had not taken nutmeg for several years as of 3 weeks ago when he, after somehow ending up on the subject with his roommate and told him one can indeed get high eating the relatively common spice. The roommate, who has a moderate marijuana tolerance at the time takes a moderate sized dose of ground nutmeg the two owned and reports only mild effects. Bob however is intrigued, and a few days later purchases a jar of whole nutmegs from the local market as he recalled he preferred to take them this way.

Bob took 6 of the whole nutmegs, a dose he remembers to be on the high average side from former use. He receives mild effects, including no reddening of the eyes.

Now Bob is concerned he may be receiving a drug test in the near future and immediately following this incident stopped smoking marijuana for the first time in probably 3 years. Over which Bob was a moderately heavy daily smoker, with a significant tolerance to pot, compared to his roommate Bob would not get red eyes when he smoked while the roommate would.

Bob today took 6 nutmegs out of the same exact bottle he did 3 weeks ago but had received extremely mild effects, and the effects produced were extremely powerful. Subjectively described as being almost too much from the very experienced drug user at times, and including powerfully increased appetite, strong sedation and dream like sensations, as well as eyes which are redder then Bob has seen since, well before he started smoking every day years ago.

Bob is aware that the leading theory of nutmegs effects are believed to be serotonergic and possibly also dopamatic, but Bob is also familiar with the effects of a wide variety of serotonergic and dopamatic drugs, and can certainly say the subjective effects of nutmeg are nothing like any of them, and frankly, precisely the same as CB1/2 agonists he has tried.

Bob presumably had no tolerance to nutmeg for either of the exparements as they were spaced three weeks apart and after a multiple year absence of nutmeg use. the nutmegs were of the same size in the same quantity out of the same bottle, the only difference was a 20 day absence of marijuana use. To Bob this presents strong evidence of CB agonism in nutmeg.
 
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Crazy shit man, I too have read up on nutmeg quite a bit. Just for you (and the sake of the medical world) I am going to research this in a real lab setting one day. Thank you for your time and info and great theory!

Edit: I actually tried it once a long long time ago with no effect but I barely took any as I don't like the taste. It definitely could be worth researching though.
 
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Hey! If you ever have the capabilities to actually do so be sure to let bob know the results; He would also like the add the note that in addition to the effects previously described, Bob also noted significantly, not totally, dilated pupils during the second experience, An effect he associates much more with serotonergics then cannabinoids. So he does not want to dismiss the possibility of some serotonergic activity. But he does not feel like it is responsible for the entirety of the effects.

He cannot comment on if pupils were dilated on the experience producing mild effects, with a cannabinoid tolerance, 3 weeks ago. The pupil dilation is definitely noticeable now but is not to the extent that perhaps ecstacy or LSD would produce.
 
Well I understand that this post didn't make much of a splash but it seems that my hypothesis was correct. I don't know if i can post links but googling "nutmeg cannabinoid system" will bring up an article where nutmeg oils were found to directly impact the CB system. not through CB agonism but rather enzyme blockade
 
This issue is still very much up in the air. Threre are two interesting findings, but they still need to be tied together to actually show that nutmeg acts via the cannabinoid system.

1. Nutmeg extracts are active in the mouse tetrad assay (CB1 activation produces 4 characteristic behavioral effects in mice). That is an interesting finding, but the responses included are not specific to cannabinoids -- it is a good assay for cannabinoid-like effects, but it doesn't necessarily confirm that the effects are mediated by cannabinoid receptors. It's too bad they didn't run a blockade study with a CB1 antagonist (the study wasn't published in a pharmacology journal).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19703539

2. Nutmeg extracts inhibit FAAH and MAGL (enzymes that metabolize endocannabioids).
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27296774

However, before getting excited by these findings, it us important to be aware that drugs that inhibit enzymes that metabolize endocannabinoids do not appear to be active in the tetrad assay unless administered with an exogenous cannabinoid. For example: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20590565

So ultimately this story is currently incomplete. There are hints that nutmeg may be cannabimimetic but that hasn't been confirmed conclusively.
 
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I tried nutmeg maybe 16 years ago and it was the worst, most depressing anxiety-ridden, introspective buzz ever. I became so panicked at one point my arms started to go numb and I thought I was going to die and got my mother to call an ambulance. Horrible stuff.
 
I agree from personal experience that nutmeg has similar effect to cannabinoids, even when the volatile fraction has been steam-distilled out!

There is no elusive evidence of this, still, that it binds to any CB receptors.
 
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