IMO for the really mild end of herbal relaxants, lemon balm tea (contains a GABA-transaminase inhibitor, plus some actions on nicotinic acetylcholine receptors, meant to have mind sharpening properties in that respect IIRC as well as calming properties)
Tastes wonderful, especially fresh-picked tender tops whilst in full flower, crushed to a pulp and made into a hot infusion, then filtered from plant matter, and sweetened with a bit of your favourite honey. Nice and citrusy. I particularly like it with lady grey tea, if the caffeine wouldn't be a bother to you, because that particular tea blend also has a strongly citrusy note, and using the hot balm infusion (a jug full of several fistfulls of balm, pounded, to make it, then that used in place of water for the tea itself, it tastes great)
For a step up in potency with some proper efficacy, there is valerian. High dose extract pills/capsules are best as far as preparations go, not the kind of crap with passionflower and other bits and shits in there, just valerian extract equivalent to about 2.7-3g valerian root dry weight per capsule of extract, is what I find the most effective. Different to benzos, barbs/chlormethiazole, to neurosteroids in terms of its binding site. It targets GABAa receptors expressing beta2/beta3 subunits, the same as the prototypical ligand for the binding site of valerenic acid, loreclezole, although this I have never yet tried. Intriguingly I read a few bits and pieces which while stopping short of saying 'yes the two share a binding site in common', dropped some hints that it might be the propofol recognition site at GABAa. Although nothing needs saying about the fact that valerian isn't a plant thats full of ultrapotent GABAa agonists with a hair trigger and a damn low therapeutic index like propofol (I.e its injected and you pass out within seconds, possibly before the entire dose has been administered, and those who try it recreationally, such as a few anaesthetists with sticky fingers, don't infrequently wind up dead with propofol)
It definitely piqued my curiosity though. Orally active propofol-site ligands of modest potency would be interesting. .
Wish it didn't smell and taste as if one were sucking on a football team's pooled together unwashed post-match soggy socks stuffed into an arab's skid-marked underpants and doused liberally in stale, rancid sweat that had at last sight, been inhabiting a tank with a number of the more noxious smelling, nasty ass types of cheese and the scrapings from under the toenails of a further pack of arabs after they've finished using them to scratch the name of muhammid into the arse crack of a similarly unwashed, rank stinking and possibly dead, goat, though. And I seriously do not know how anybody could consume a liquid preparation of valerian, because it really does smell and taste odious. It'd be like trying to steel oneself to drink n-butyric anhydride whilst first having had a meal consisting of rotting shellfish, dog muck and some variety of volatile organoselenium compound and surgically grafting a tube of flesh directly from beak to britches and awaiting the first assault of aerosolized selenol-doped scatological rotting shellfish fumes carried by a blast of distilled essence of analytical reference sample for NMR-grade barf. (ignoring the corrosive properties of acid anhydrides and the resulting glacial butyric acid that would at first arise of course)
It really is wretchedly vile in smell and taste. Like trying to swallow cryogenically liquefied farts from the rotting bacon-stuffed arse ring of allah his own paedophile-loving self. Only not nearly to appealing. Even the thought of liquid valerian extract or valerian teas is enough to make my stomach twitch, just from imagining what the stuff is like from the taste of the dried extract, makes my gorge rise involuntarily, as if one were (not that I ever would, even if it wasn't for the fact I find the smell really unpleasant) about to pour out and slowly sip down a pint of isopropyl alcohol. Don't have to do it, only think about it to make my intestines sense they should make a break for freedom from the captivity of the peritoneal bastille in which I currently have mine incarcerated indefinitely without hope of parole.
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