Valerian

[Flickering]

Just thought I'd recount a little experience.

Got home this afternoon feeling tired, yet unable to sleep, pretty typical. I was aware that my already bad state of mind was just getting worse and worse, and lying in bed did not help. In the end my inability to feel anything but hopelessness and depressive ego distortion led me to punch the walls until my knuckles bled, and hit myself repeatedly in the head... bit of an odd expression of self-harm but there you go. I just needed to switch off but I COULDN'T, nothing would make my brain just shut the fuck up.

So I opened a can of herbal sleeping tablets containing valerian, hops and a couple of other things. At two pills it's generally quite noticeable, and two is the maximum recommended dose, so of course I took three, and wavered on whether to take a fourth...

Ahh, man. An hour later my head was sinking into the pillow, my thoughts had gone soft, my mind was being wrapped in a thick blanket... sweet sedation. Those feelings vanished like the nonsense they were. I just drifted in a subtle yet definite state of not thinking so much, and feeling more or less fine, pleasantly not quite here.

I didn't get any sleep, but have you ever thought "If I could JUST somehow feel like this I know I'd be all right..." and then you do?

So many things become possible when depression takes a backseat. So, so many things repressed by an inability to feel or care or want to do anything but scratch your own eyeballs out. Fuck I hate this state of mind. If I could keep 'overdosing' on herbal sleeping pills all day, I'd do it.

 

[Vaya]

This post seems more appropriate for Blogs or Trip Reports, as it poses no real question in our forum.
Consider phrasing a question to supplement the content of this post?

Thanks!

~ Vaya

 

[Where Wolf?]

Hmmmm...even when I was fairly benzo-naive, herbal sleeping pills did nothing for me. I'd take massive doses (same cocktail - valerian, hops,et cetera), and feel at most a very, very mild relaxation. The only time I managed to get a noticeable effect - roughly comparable to 10mgs diazepam - from Valerian was by buying a large quantity of fresh root (can't remember how much, but it was a big block of herb), in a famous London gourmet coffee & herb store, and making tea in a caffetiere. The raw herb reeked so much that people were sniffing the air and staring at me on trains (this when it was double-wrapped and ziplocked), and as I brewed the tea, my 'bro came into the kitchen and said 'wtf? Did you throw up?'.

It wasn't easy keeping the shit down, and no way worth it for the effect, but it satisfied my curiosity. I guess the contrast of my experience and the OPs just goes to show how much metabolisms and their reaction to drugs vary: and I've noticed, over the years, that this seems to be particularly true of mildly sedating/intoxicating herbs like Valerian and Damiana. But the Mod above is right...whither the darkness in this thread, other than the stench of my raw root?

I can't imagine bothering with valerian again: picked up a bottle of tincture last year at a Polish convenience store with a dubiously legal supply of Polish pharms, including melatonin (legal to import for personal use, but not to sell domestically, where I live), and pills containing some weird herb and 15mgs of codeine, which you definately can't sell without a pharmaceutical licence, and there were no pharmacists around. I don't think they knew they were breaking the law, and I sure didn't tell them. But the tincture wasn't noticeably active, and it tasted worse than Kratom FSTkay, that, in fact, is the darkness. Valerian's unreliable and reeks of vomit, and some ill-informed Poles in London might get busted for melatonin and codeine.

Not all that dark, really, they'd just get a small fine. But maaan, did that tea stink. Vomit actually smells better.

 

[RobotRipping]

yeah it does smell awful, cats seem to like the smell tho lol same with kratom. I used valerian root and valeric acid (not sure how strong but smelled awfully potent) during benzo withdrawal and they seemed to help. I really couldn't get over the taste/smell though and if you accidentally let a burp loose after taking some the taste was worse than cactus tea.

 

[Flickering]

But the Mod above is right...whither the darkness in this thread, other than the stench of my raw root?

Well the depressive mood and mild self-harm and all that, plus that valerian is sort of not-quite a drug, I just felt like talking about it and Bluelight came to mind. But you're right, I'll keep it to blog next time.

Er... worse than cactus tea, really? But the spectrum of good-to-bad taste is defined at the bottom end by cactus... it's an unbreakable law of nature, you CANNOT GET a worse flavour.