
Hallucinogen Honey Hunters - Hunting mad honey
A tribe in Nepal hunts wild honey made psychoactive by the rhododendron nectar bees feed on, a substance known locally as mad honey. Filmmaker Raphael Treza follows the harvest as it happens, filming the tribe's use of the honey as both traditional medicine and recreational drug, dosed carefully within the community for generations. The trip turns dangerous when Dipak, Treza's own translator, eats enough of the honey to overdose and lose consciousness on camera, a scene that turns the film's outsider curiosity into something closer to alarm. There is no narration standing between the crew and the tribe here, just the hunt, the honey, and its effects playing out in real time. The film sits with an uncomfortable question that the overdose forces into the open: how a substance folded so completely into daily and ceremonial life can still put down someone who has less experience with its dose. Short, unpolished, and shot on the ground rather than staged for the camera.