From the outside, Dominic Milton Trott appears to be the picture of healthy retirement. The 67-year-old former IT professional swims daily, follows a vegetarian diet, and lives a quiet life with his wife in North West England. Yet for the past 17 years, he has pursued a project far from the typical pastimes of pensioners: he has deliberately tried 182 different drugs.
The Unconventional Mission for Safer Use
Dominic's reason is not recreational thrill-seeking but a drive to write a comprehensive harm reduction manual. His goal is to provide others with the information needed to use psychoactive substances as safely as possible, if they choose to do so. His journey has involved snorting, smoking, and ingesting substances including crack cocaine, heroin, and crystal meth. However, he states that the single most frightening experience of his life came from a substance found in most supermarket spice racks: common nutmeg.
"This is going to come as a surprise because it sounds nuts, but it's absolutely true," Dominic told the Daily Mail. "It's nutmeg. Yes, the spice we use to put at the top of our custard tarts." In large quantities, nutmeg can act as a powerful and dangerous psychoactive. Of all the drugs he has sampled, including some of the world's deadliest, he said only nutmeg left him genuinely fearing for his life.
A Delirious and Near-Fatal Nightmare
The incident occurred years ago, before he had developed strict safety protocols. "I was young and stupid and I read somewhere that you can get high from nutmeg," he recalled. He decided to brew and drink a nutmeg tea. After a few hours with no effect, he assumed the experiment was a failure and went to bed.
He awoke at 2 a.m. in a state of utter delirium. "The room was spinning, everything was brightly coloured. Everything was sort of warping all over the place," he described. When he tried to get up to use the toilet, he found he couldn't stand and had to crawl. He hallucinated that his hands were sinking into the floorboards. The journey to the bathroom felt interminable, and when he finally arrived, he found he was physically unable to urinate.
"I had hallucinations, headaches, stomach pains," he continued. "I thought I was dying. I was off work for a week. It was seriously scary." He advises anyone curious to imagine their worst ever alcohol hangover and "multiply it by 10". He stresses it was not a 'high' or a 'trip' but a terrifying state of full-on delirium, which he equates to being close to death.
Warnings Beyond the Spice Rack
Dominic is categorical in his warning, especially to young people: any notion that nutmeg offers a 'good time' is false. "It's a dystopian, frightening, horrible experience. You lose your grip on reality... It is a poison," he stated.
His research for his book, The Drug Users Bible, also led him to a stark conclusion about a legal substance. He now ranks the harm associated with alcohol consumption alongside that of heroin and crystal meth, calling it "one of the most toxic and addictive drugs there is."
His project, inspired in 2008 by the alarming number of fatal overdoses, has been a colossal undertaking. He has travelled to 50 countries, including India, Colombia, and the Netherlands, to research and experience substances without legal fear. He estimates the total cost, including travel, at between £200,000 and £300,000, funded by his life savings after retiring from his internet company in his early fifties.
Unsurprisingly, his wife of 46 years, Christine, has not been supportive, once asking him, "What is wrong with you?" However, Dominic has never been hospitalised. He credits his healthy lifestyle—vegetarian diet, daily swimming, and no supplements—for maintaining his robust appearance despite his extraordinary experiments.
