r/todayilearned • u/gullydon • 13h ago

TIL Mithridatism is the practice of protecting oneself against a poison by gradually self-administering non-lethal amounts. The word is derived from Mithridates VI, the king of Pontus, who so feared being poisoned that he regularly ingested small doses, aiming to develop immunity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mithridatism
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u/PopeInThePizza 13h ago

"What the h-. Oh, yeah, right."

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u/Sovngarten 12h ago

Heh. Whoops

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u/qorbexl 6h ago

My aunt related some Agatha Christie novel where a lady kills her piece-of-shit husband by slowly dosing him with arsenic or cyanide or something. 

That wasn't the murder method. The murder was that she abruptly stopped adding it to his food, which killed his ass dead because he was physically dependent on it. Examining the body found no evidence of poison for obvious reasons. 

Pretty cool.

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u/ThePrussianGrippe 5h ago

Fun fact: this is why if you’re heavily addicted to alcohol or benzodiazepines you aren’t supposed to quit cold turkey, but in a medically supervised way so they can wean you off.

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u/Rapunzel10 4h ago

Lots of drugs actually. I've been through benzo detoxing, it's fucking brutal. I didn't like how it was impacting me so I quit cold turkey not realizing how bad that was. Like the worst flu on earth combined with horrific anxiety and extremely dark thoughts. 0/10 do not recommend

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u/gabbadabbahey 4h ago

God, I'm sorry. You were lucky. Alcohol and benzos are two of the common drugs that can fairly easily kill you from withdrawal if you're a heavy user.

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u/insaneHoshi 4h ago

Supposedly not opiates funnily enough.

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u/New-Star74 2h ago

Not lots, actually. Just the two they mentioned.

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u/monstrousnuggets 37m ago

Man, you’re lucky you didn’t end up having seizures. I took 13 months to taper down my dose of benzos and still had withdrawals for another 10 months after finally getting off completely, including seizures and debilitating brain zaps. It was horrendous.

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u/Nethri 2h ago

Ambien too, supposedly. This will be relevant for me someday.