DOSE:	repeated	oral	Poppies - Opium	(tea)
	repeated	oral	Poppies - Opium	(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

320 lb

I have always liked opiated hashish, though I hear that indicates a sub-standard quality of both the opium and the hash. Regardless, it has always been my high of choice, though, for me, it has been extremely hard to find since the days of the drug wars. In it's absence, I do what I can.

Recently I have discovered that opium poppies are sold as ornamental dried flowers, and that unlike the seed teas, the pod tea is fairly palatable and potent. I am quite sensitive to most psycho-active drugs, though I acclimate quickly, and need very little to feel the euphoric effects. The tea works well for me, and I find it eminently drinkable when mixed with oolong or green tea and honey. The high seems to last the entire evening and over night, leaving a pleasantly swingy drone in my head the next morning.

However, I stumbled over an internet post that described not only making the tea, but also in consuming the left-over pulp. The author related that the high lasted well into the following day, adding that it wasn't ever particularly intense, but that it seemed to just go on and on. Not being particularly squeamish, I gave this a try and found the description to be quite accurate. The initial high seemed to be equal to what one expects of the tea, but it intensified a bit after about an hour, and then, after I had slept (and slept well), ran until the next morning or so, gradually tapering off.

Since that time I have tried goosing the end of the high with another dose, and find that it is very, very easy to overdo it, pushing myself into an itching, irritated bundle of raw nerves. A friend of mine and I, each on our own, have since then been experimenting with eating the ground pods raw, unsteeped, gaging dosages. He has reported the feeling of approximately one and a half medium sized pods (spread out over a day) as akin to the feeling of a vicodin, but lasting throughout, without any peaks or valleys. For myself, codeine and vicodin make me sleepy, so that analogy doesn't apply. I found that the dry ground pods give a high equivalent to smoking opium, though nowhere as intense nor as debilitating, just as with the tea. Additionally different from the opium high I am used to, I find no difficulty doing physical work, in fact the high seems stimulating, like weak coffee, in the first hour or two, also lending me an air of focus and an attention to detail.

In addition, the fiber of the pulp seems to help offset the constipating nature of the opium, though not entirely. However, I found that I require a greater amount of the plant matter than my friend, perhaps fifty percent more, more than two pods spread out over a day. Whether this is because I weigh perhaps twice what he does, or because of a uniqueness in my own chemistry, I am not sure, but I suspect the former. Ultimately, the high seems no different from the high the tea brings, though the effects last substantially longer.

This seems a thoroughly inviting method of inebriation, I only have three hesitations: ONE--On an empty stomach the dry material sometimes produced sudden and unexpected bouts of nausea, which were quite intense at times, though they passed quickly, but I was never sure if or when they would repeat. Fortunately I never did vomit, on any of the occasions, but it could have gone either way.

TWO—From my experiences with mushroom picking, I have learned to be cautious of parasites. I think that rather than eating the dry plant pulp, or encapsulating it, it likely would be better to brew the tea, sparging the material with very hot water to reduce the possibility of infestation. I feel much better about ingesting the resulting mash than I do about eating the dry herb, and it seems to have little effect on the longevity of the high, though it seems stronger in it's initial phase and less so in the longer term.

THREE—Lastly I am concerned about the alkaloids in the plant matter that may not be present in traditional opium, and therefore may not be well understood or known at all. One must assume that the opium sap and the other alkaloids in the poppy plant developed as a poisonous deterrent to animals who might eat the flower. That begs the question of whether the plant is safe for people to eat. It is entirely possible that it may cause liver or kidney problems, if ingested in sufficient quantity, over a long enough period of time. As yet I have been unable to find any information relating to this subject, so it remains, to me, an outstanding issue.

These objections aside, I find that eating the poppy is a preferable alternative to smoking opium or taking opiate pills. Saving my one ultimate preference, I very much enjoy this high over most any other I've found.

Exp Year: 2006	ExpID: 54385
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Dec 20, 2008	Views: 34,605
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Poppies - Opium (43) : Preparation / Recipes (30), Retrospective / Summary (11), Not Applicable (38)