I’ve tried Chameleon and Valyrian root tea blends before thinking they might make good sleep aids, but I’ve never had any luck with them. A lot people say they find those very relaxing, but I wasn’t even catching a placebo effect.

So for a while I just assumed all this herbal tea bullshit I see in stores and pharmacies must be just a step above homeopathic products. They’re probably pretty good if you like the taste of the herbal blends and find sipping a warm beverage relaxing in itself, but otherwise a waste of time. Clearly if they really worked they wouldn’t be sold in large supermarket chains. Instead they’d be relegated to the weird, near grey market status that Kratom seems to exist in, right?

Today at the store I just happened to notice something very alarming. A box of Kava blend tea was the absolute one and only herbal tea variety on the shelf to include a warning asking you to consult your doctor before use, and stating that minors and pregnant women should not consume this product.

Well, that warning instantaneously lit up the junkie addict center of my brain like a Christmas tree, and I impulse bought two boxes. This might have major negative health consequences? Wow, must be the fucking good stuff. I got home and brewed six of them into a single mug of tea, and yep, this shit is psychoactive all right. Subtle, but definitely not placebo subtle. It quite honestly feels similar to a moderate dose of Gabapentin, and it’s making me sleepy.

I sure wish I knew this before I most likely took 15 years off the lifespan of my kidneys by using 200mg of Diphenhydramine every night for years just to have a fighting chance at falling asleep more often than every two days.

46 points

Banned on bad island

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23 points

terf island is such a fucking pathetically cucked country lmao, gotta get a special loiscense to buy whipped cream and sleepy time tea is considered a hard drug

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17 points

Fun is illegal here

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luv me a pint, luv ingerland, 'ate herbal tea, simple as

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7 points

Life of a true brexit geezer

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12 points

We have DougDoug emotes?? Every day I learn something new lol

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41 points

Chameleon

Do you mean Chamomile?

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41 points

What do you mean?

me gently dipping a lizard into a hot cup of water a few times before putting it back in its terrarium

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Heat Lamp

Cup Hot Tub

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25 points

Yes

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50 points
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Also it’s valerian.

Valyrian is the civilization from Game of Thrones lol

Sorry I’m a botany nerd.

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11 points

GoT would’ve had a very different vibe with a bit of Herbie Hancock on the soundtrack.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kava

Kava Kava extract is the one thing I found to moderate extreme highs and lows. It is a natural neuro-inhibitor. Helps keep me level. Only a particular brand for me cultivated in Vanuatu. It’s somewhat difficult to find so I buy in bulk when I can. A 1 oz bottle is good for a month or two and used as needed.

It is from a pepper plant and has been used for thousands of years in Polynesia / Pacific Islanders. They used it before negotiation meetings and such to maintain peace.

The reason there is a warning on all things Kava is because being a plant, a very small fraction of people are incompatible with it. As in it shuts down their liver, which blind sighted, obviously made some famlies upset. So they lobbied to outlaw it, and Big Pharma doesn’t like affordable natural solutions so it became outlawed in areas and sitgmatized. Vast majority of people it’s perfectly fine in reasonable quantities.

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10 points
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Is there a way to test if you’re one of those people without shutting down your liver?

Ah nvm I read more

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24 points

Taking magnesium at night has been amazing for me. Best consistent sleep I’ve had in a long time

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Just magnesium or magnesium glycinate? Asking because I suffer from poor sleep very frequently and have been recommended magnesium supplements but buying any vitamins is like a minefield. You look them up and there’s dozens of different kinds and glycinate in particular seems to be one only sold by random brands.

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7 points
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I’m very sensitive to cross contamination (celiac disease) so I have to be very selective about my supplement brands. I use Pure Encapsulations, Thorne, Xymogen. And for magnesium specifically you might be interested in Xymogen’s Optimag Neuro - it’s what I take for RLS and sleep - it’s got magnesium l-threonate, malate, and glycinate so you can see more easily if any forms work well for you.

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Thank you for the recommendation! Not a USian so unfortunately it’s not readily available for me and very, very expensive on the sites it is. I’ll look around for that combination in readily available brands though!

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24 points

Yeah, its a GABA enhancer, similar to how alcohol works on that system. It also binds to different GABA receptors than drugs like xanax. Tends to be a bit expensive for the effect you get, imo, but it’s kinda nice.

I never tried the tea, but they just came out with instant dehydrated kava mix you can get from various online stores, too. Specifically look for dehydrated, not micronized. The gastro-intestinal system generally doesn’t like any of the plant fibers that are hard to filter out with more traditional methods of making it, on top of those methods being a pain in the ass.

There were reports in the early 2000’s of liver damage associated with Kava but those reports seem to have been of low quality, and nothing like that has been found since, and it hasn’t been found among cultures that have been consuming it for thousands of years.

I like the effect of mixing kratom and kava, but I can’t vouch for the safety of doing that.

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