With some suggestions I've decided to make some changes to the honeybee magic system for my story.

My story revolves around bootleg mead that holds magical properties in a prohibition era New Orleans.

The basic premise for the system is that plants harness Low Magic by having their roots run deep into the ground, collecting the lost memories of ages long past. Honeybees then collect the pollen and convert it into honeycomb. This process infuses their hive with mystic properties. Specifically, the hive is protected by violent swells of emotion which act as a barrier by cleaning through the minds of approaching predators. until the predators retreat or die from shock.

While there are higher magics in my world, they typically have to be harnessed by savants or machinery. And low magic is hard to come by. Humans of course turned honeycomb into mead and started using it as a tool of magic.

However, due to how magic was distilled in order to make the mead it has become dangerous. It evokes a sort of magical addiction. Presumably where the use of the substance causes magical abilities or side effects, the absence of it causes a curse of some sort.

My thought is maybe the curses start so minor that it's easy to ignore them. Maybe curses leave the body after a while, though when is kinda hard to tell. People can usually get past the curse just fine (like a hangover) and just assume that the curse has passed. But some people don't realize that the curse is building inside them. Meaning they only strengthen the curse by drinking too soon. And as the curse is only abated by drinking, some people fall into a spiral where they must drink or risk the full wrath of the curse.

Curses typically have to do with memories or emotions or the mind in general. Lapses in judgment, inability to recall someone or something small, weakened emotional regulation would be examples of weaker curses.

However larger curses may include forgetting someone entirely as if they were never a part of your life, or explosive emotional instability, or long bouts of extreme incoherence followed by short moments of lucidity.