Tried the following:

Took 2 gallons of cheap box wine. Added the following spices:
2 oz star anise
2 oz basil
2 oz allspice
2 oz nutmeg
2 oz cinnamon
2 oz black pepper

For all the spices except the basil, I used unground spices. I did not break them up, I just threw them in whole. After 3 days, I filtered the wine from the spices and put into a few wine bottles.

Drank a glass of the spice wine.

I AM TRIPPING MY BALLS OFF.

Err how can you trip balls? Did you drink the whole two gallons??

The question I would think you should ask is - "why ...", not the universal question of disbelief, "how can you ..."

I don't need anyone to believe me. If you have spices and wine/beer/spirits lying around your house, draw your own conclusion.

Well nutmeg is well known to be psychoactive at higher than 'cullinary' doses, so I'm sure it has something to do with that, whether it has synergised with the other ingredients is a different matter.

I think nutmeg is also MAOI. Did you ground the nutmeg or just the basil? We made cola with grounded nutmeg a long time ago. It was definitly active, but we had to drink a lot and it tastet awful.

The goodies are soluble in ethanol. Read up on the ouzo effect and why this system creates a very stable delivery system.

I only ground up the basil, because I can't find basil that is both dry and not crushed up. Cinnamon sticks, whole star anise, whole nutmegs, whole peppercorns, whole allspice berries. Where I live, you can buy 2oz boxes of any of these spices for $0.99 per box. The 2 gallons of box wine cost me a whopping $6. I used white wine so that there would be less particulates like lees in the mix, but I'm sure other alcohol would work.

Interesting. How awful did it taste?

How much do you have to imbibe for effects?

"I AM TRIPPING MY BALLS OFF."

Erm, would it be at all possible to describe the subjective effects of such a concoction in a more articulate way?

Indeed, this is pretty much not DMT-Nexesque...


Kind regards,

The Traveler

Be careful with ingesting big doses of nutmeg, it's quite toxic! It's safer to use nutmeg oil.

Like totally over spicing a meal. The effects where nothing special. We laughed a lot similar to marijuana (when you don't use it regularly). We used fresh nuts and grinded them to powder. I also think it causes some kind of black outs etc. but I don't remember exactly because it was more than 10 years ago. There are propably better and less toxic substances you can get effects...

Apologies for not being specific.

Taste - it actually didn't taste that strongly of spices. The anise was by far the most powerful taste. It basically just tasted like wine. Keep in mind that everything but the basil was whole, so there weren't a lot of particulates in the first place, making it easy to filter.

The experience -
T0:00 Drank about 5 oz of the spiced wine (I'm ball parking, but this was about half of a 10 oz (US) glass)

T0:10 Everything seemed usual. It felt like I just drank a little bit of wine.

T0:15 Something felt a little off. Normally this amount of alcohol just makes me feel mellow. I started feeling stimulation and giddiness, which is very unusual for me after glass of wine.

T1:00 I start getting visuals. I can't really describe them in terms of another substance. Colors were brighter, but in a way I haven't experienced before this. It was as if the colors were painted on the objects in view. The colors would sometimes run into each other. Light seemed brighter than usual. I got light tracers as well.

T2:00 Experience starts taking on a different shape. I got spaced out, and my heart was racing.

T3:00 This was the beginning of the peak. My mind was racing, but saying very little. My heart rate was up. My pupils appeared normal and my eyes remained white. The visuals were more intense.

T5:00 I started coming down, but I didn't crash. It was gentle. By this time it was late and I went to bed at about T6:30.

Next morning I felt amazing, I had tons of energy.
__

Just want to update everyone, I've done more specific trials in myself with each of the spices in the mix. I used 1tsp in 4 oz of wine, soaked for 1 hour, to try and mimic the dosage of the original mixture. I filtered out as much of the spice as possible with a wire mesh strainer / coffee filter. For these tests I used ground basil, and whole nutmeg and allspice broken into large chunks.

Anise - I got no effects
Pepper - I got no effects
Cinnamon - The effects of the alcohol felt a little more intense but that may have been placebo.
Basil - I felt energized. My vision was a little blurry, but I wouldn't call it psychedelic. I think it may have some activity but I can't put my finger on it. Effects lasted 3 hours.
Nutmeg - I already knew it was active. However, I didn't get a wasted feeling as I would with the whole spice. My heart raced, my face got flushed, colors got brighter, but no real tracers. Effects lasted 7 hours.
Allspice - My mind raced and I got a lot of visual effects which I described above. Effects lasted 5 hours.

Did a test of a different spice. 1 tsp of ground, dried parsley in 4oz of wine, soaked for 1 hour, then filtered. I now understand why Shulgin made the link between spices and amphetamines (the so called "essential amphetamines) after drinking the wine. It really felt a lot like an amphetamine. I was turbocharged. The color-changing visual effect described above was more intense than any of the above spices that I tried this with. I had some mental cloudiness and some spaced out, day dream style images; I would not call them real hallucinations. The effects were the longest yet, lasting about 8 hours.

I got the original recipe from an old book on mulled cider. I wasn't really trying to trip out, I just like to make hard cider and tried some interesting spices. But after doing some research in the PiHKAL "TMA" entry, these spices are all listed. There are a lot of others that I haven't tried. It's also interesting to note that in the middle ages, spices were used as medicine, and were often given in wines of varying strength.

Food for thought. I will continue to give subjective reports, but I'm curious if I'm just sensitive to this as I haven't seen anything in the literature about this phenomenon. Has anyone else tried this? If so let me know.

Over the weekend I tried 1 tsp of ground dillweed in 4 oz of wine. It was basically the same as the parsley above. However, I got more mind effects and less visuals.

Found something about parsley. Apiole (or spelled apiol in the older literature) was given as an anti-malaria drug in the late 1800s. I saw a toxicology report from that period that apiole can produce an intoxication "similar to quinine", which was described as changes in vision, confusion, increased heart beat, and occasionally hallucinations.

Apiole is an allyl benzene compound. A lot of the spices have similar compounds. These compounds are very lipophilic, which makes them very difficult to administer PO (by mouth). However, they are all soluble in ethanol. Ethanol is miscible in water, and it is rapidly absorbed by the body. Due to it's miscible effect with water, it can get into the brain via the so called Trojan Horse route (piggybacking on something that is accepted by the BBB). So maybe this is why I'm getting effects. Apiole, as an example, has an XLogP3 value of 2.7, so given the right circumstances it can easily get into the brain.

More research has to be done to see if others get these effects. 1 tsp of dried herb, soaked in wine for 1 hour, produces very noticeable effects in me, but 1/2 a tsp might be a threshold effect, I'm not sure. Parsley so far has been the most noticeable and it produced a strong effect with a higher dose (2 tablespoons produced +++), so tread lightly.

I tried the same prep (1 tsp - 4 oz wine) of thyme and rosemary.

Thyme - felt a lot like a benzo
Rosemary - some mild pain relief effects and some visual distortions.

Please let me know if anyone else is experiencing this. I gave a friend some of my original product, and he got some serious effects.

Interesting thread, will be following. I ran into a site stating parsley contains myristicin; isn't this the active component of nutmeg? Also, that different varieties of parsley contain different ratios of apiole:myristicin.

Yes, myristicin is one of the actives in nutmeg. I have found some uses in older pharmacy books about apiole (spelled apiol in the older texts) being used to help relieve menstrual pains for women and to induce menstration. I found some places online that sell an apiole tincture to be used sublingually.

Perhaps parsley is strong when I make the wine out of it because it contains 2 of these compounds?

Update - After a number of spiced wine tests, I've settled on the following as the best combination for "Space Wine":

1 glass of white wine
1 tbs unground star anise
1 tbs unground peppercorns
1 tbs basil
2 whole nutmeg nuts

Soak the mixture for 24-48 hours. Then filter out the spices and drink. The effects come on quickly. It feels euphoric, has some visuals, and is really something fun to try.