DOSE:	repeated	oral	Poppies - Opium	(tea)
	repeated	oral	Alcohol	(liquid)
	repeated	smoked	Cannabis	(plant material)

BODY WEIGHT:

220 lb

I've read some of the reports about poppy seed tea, and some of them jibe with my experiences on it and some of them don't. Basically, I'm starting to think the business involving the lemons is superfluous and possibly only adds to the sour taste.

In the past few months, I've had poppy seed tea three times. The first time, I experienced it with a friend who works at a bakery, and thus has access to bulk poppy seeds. His method is very simple and produces a strong tasting blend, but one that I find easy to drink and not unpleasant. He takes anywhere from five to seven pounds of seeds, pours in a half gallon of orange juice and some alcohol. His favorite recipe includes adding a single bottle of Guinness Draught. Most recently, he switched to adding about 12oz of quality vodka. Stir heavily for several minutes, then let the mixture sit for about an hour, stirring every fifteen minutes or so. Strain, and set aside the juice and refrigerate.

Mix with orange juice as you would a screwdriver, dosing based of course, off how stoned we would like to get. We usually never get to the point of storing it because there's often a houseful of people who want to join in. Standard dosing is about 4oz of the tea/extract poured into an empty 8oz bottle of orange juice and topped up with more OJ. This dosage is enough to produce anywhere from mild to serious effects, depending on the potency of the seeds. We've found that the seeds at the bakery aren't as potent as seeds from a local health food store. The only obvious difference between them being that the ones from the bakery have a greyish-blue appearance to them while the seeds from the health food store are coal black. I have no idea what the difference is, but they were much, much more potent. Right, so that handles preparation. Let's move on to the fun part.

The first time I tried 'tea' as we simply refer to it, I had just smoked about a gram and a half or so of some really good canadian hydro bud with a friend of mine whom I will refer to as 'C.' We went over to my apartment and hauled out my gravity bong, loading it up a few times each. After waiting until we were in good enough condition to walk, we headed over to the bakery where a mutual friend of our's works, as mentioned above. C had told me about the tea before and I thought he was frankly nuts for wanting to play around with anything that contained morphine, but I was feeling adventurous and decided to throw caution to the wind. It just so happened that when we arrived, our baker friend had a batch sitting in a foodservice-sized can in front of an oven. He told us he had just gotten it started and that it if we came back in an hour or so, we were welcome to try some.

So C and I walked over to a local bar and chatted with a few friends there. Neither of us consumed any alcohol. Instead, we went out on the back porch and took a few hits each of some fairly decent weed to maintain our buzz. The time flew by and before I knew it, we were headed back to the bakery. When we got there, The baker had already portioned the tea, fully prepared in small, single-serving orange juice bottles as explained. Since it was my first time, C split his portion with me to help keep it from getting too intense. This was a mercy.

The taste definitely had some bitterness to it, but I wouldn't rank it much worse than grapefruit juice, the way it was prepared. I was instructed to sip it rather than simply down it. I was told that according to their experiences, the rate you drink it helps determine the length and intensity of the buzz. Guzzling it will make it hit sooner and harder, and apparently, wear off sooner as well, depending on the amount. I can attest to that, but since I did as I was told and sipped it, I didn't experience this intense effect at that time.

So we sat in the back of a scorching bakery and sipped this concoction. By now, my stone from the weed seemed to be coming down a bit and I was relaxed and chatty. There were five of us partaking. C had his half of the bottle in about fifteen minutes and handed it off to me. 'Enjoy, buddy.' C is grinning at me like a shark, which I found both unsettling and reassuring at the same time. C and I have lockstep tolerance for most things, it seems, even though I outweigh him by a good sixty pounds or so. I sip my tea for about ten minutes and then down the last few swallows. Within twenty minutes, I begin to feel something. Something was definitely different, although I couldn't narrow down exactly what it was. Another ten minutes go by and I'm feeling pretty good, mentally and physically.

Now a bit of backstory: I damaged both knees playing heavy contact sports in high school (I'm 24 now) and in wreckless weightlifting in college. I have, at best, mild pain in both knees, every day. Other days, I can hardly walk. I also sciatica issues with my lower back from a work related accident three years ago that also ranges anywhere from mild daily pain to crippling agony that prevents me from even being able to sit up. Those episodes, although infrequent, last anywhere from a day to three days.

At this point in time, I was also about three months out of a four year relationship that had ended very badly. My ex had spent the last nine months we were together shopping around on me. About a month before this initial experience with poppy tea, I had a full STD test battery done and found that as a result of her infidelities, she had left me a final going away present: Herpes. I was an emotional wreck, prone to bouts of violent anger and crushing depression and the only thing keeping me together was support from my family and my closest friends. Once the full realization of how extensively this is going to effect the rest of my love life finally hit me, I became severely depressed for almost a month.

I was routinely putting out cigarettes on myself, and often in the same spot until it was burned down to the fat. I have burns all over my body from this (which I no longer do, and haven't in months). I account them to be the visual representation of the scars I wear beneath. So needless to say, I was in a very bad place and trying with all my might to force myself to find happiness, wherever it may be. That night, I found it in a half-drunk orange juice bottle.

So with these things in mind, believe me when I say that forty five minutes or so after I finished my half dose, I have absolutely no pain. None. My knees feel great, my back feels like it did when I was a teenager, and absolutely nothing is bothering me at this point even though I have a whole closet full of issues to brood over. However, I found myself sweating rather profusely. I lean over and tell C that I need to get some air. He asks our baker friend if we can go out back and he agrees. So out we go, C, the baker, his girlfriend, his coworker and myself. We were all buzzing.

Evenings in the Ontario region in May are often cool and pleasant and this one turned out to be no different. As soon as the cool air hit me, I felt a wave of the morphine wash through me. My limbs felt loose and lax, and I was into a full body buzz, in combination with a great creative and social stone. We climb halfway up the fire escape where the breeze is nice, and we all sit down and relax. I should mention now that I was also advised not to smoke any cigarettes while on tea, as it causes immediate and severe nausea. C told me that the first time he did tea, he stepped out and had two puffs of a cigarette and only got out the words 'Hey, I think I feel a little...' before he began to spew uncontrollably. I really want a cigarette, however, and decide to brave it. I smoke a cigarette and feel fine. Mind you, I smoke anywhere from a pack and a half to two and a half packs a day. Luckily for me, I didn't get nauseus. I think it might have been the lower dosage.

I have no idea how much time passed, but these waves of intense, tingly, pleasurable sensations started to become more frequent, lasting a minute or two and then subsiding. Being a bit of a hobbyist writer, I start constructing lines and descriptions in my head, refining and discarding them until I felt I had the makings of a good short story. I finally have a relevant venue to 'publish' it. C is also starting to feel pretty creative and produces a sketch pad and pencil and starts drawing some amazing creatures. I was sitting there wishing I could be here, typing this as I am now. Our baker friend tells us he has to get back to work and C and I decide we've intruded long enough and take off.

Being the chain smoker I am, and still feeling pretty buzzed, we stand out front for a bit and I light another cigarette. Again, thankfully I don't throw up all over the sidewalk in public. This is about an hour and a half into my first foray into the wide world of substances other than alcohol or pot, and I feel like I'm starting to come down a bit and I tell C so. 'Yeah, you'll think you're getting straight and then another wave will hit you and you'll realize you're still stoned.' Ok, whatever. I find myself talking about weed and the stuff we had smoked earlier and my friend interrupts me mid-sentence with a sharp look and 'Hey, we need to call Aaron.'

I have no idea who Aaron is, and realize I need to clam up. I shift my weight and look around and see a policeman walking towards me on the sidewalk. Oh Shit. I keep it cool, smile at him and say ''Evening, sir.' He smiles back and nods and keeps walking. What a relief. He walks out of earshot and I look at C with eyes wide and we both laugh. 'You were right, man. I just realized I am still pretty stoned,' I say under my breath and we both laugh. After this, I decided it was time to call it a night. I headed back to my apartment and that night, I had the most refreshing sleep. I should also mention that on this experiment, I did not feel itchy, a side effect I had both heard of and been warned about.

The second time I tried the tea, I got two thirds of one of those little bottles and felt extremely peaceful and happy. I also felt mild itching, but nothing unbearable. The main thing I noticed and remembered was that when I smoked cigarettes, I felt zero irritation in my lungs or throat - it was like taking a breath of fresh air. For a heavy smoker, that's a sensation long forgotton. I honestly don't remember much of this episode because I immediately followed the tea with about four well-packed gravity bongs and was so stoned from the combination that I had only a very vague notion of what was going on around me. I experienced mild nausea, but again, I didn't have a full dose (as mixed by my baker friend).

The third time I had tea was the most powerful and the most memorable and the main reason I'm submitting this. C called me one afternoon and told me to meet him at our baker's house. I head over there and find them both in the kitchen, toiling over a huge pot on the kitchen table like a couple of witches. I look into the pot and see what they're doing and burst into laughter. 'You crazy bastards' was all I could think to say and we all just laughed. Turns out that C had gone to the health food store and bought up every single package of poppy seeds on the shelf. When he got to the checkout, the girl working knew him and knew what he was doing and had to go into the back room and send out another worker to check him out because she was fighting off a giggling fit over the amount of seeds he was buying. He told them he worked at the bakery and they had run out of poppy seeds and needed some in the meantime while they were waiting for the shipment. Quick thinking and a plausible story landed him a 10% discount.

He tells me this while we're sitting around the kitchen table, watching our baker stir the wonderful conconction and we had another prolonged round of hearty laughter. All told, he made out with ten pounds of the stuff and spent $15. Half of it was sitting in the pot. I knew I was in for a good night, and it was only five in the afternoon. When it was ready, the baker filled up large coffee mugs full for everyone and we went outside and sat on the porch to drink it. The weather was beautiful and we were all in high, anticipating spirits and generally having a good time. This time, however, I did not sip the tea. I wanted the full experience, whatever it may have to offer. I took big gulps of it and polished it off in about five minutes.

We sat there for about ten more minutes or so and C says he figures that we had better get going. I didn't know it at the time, but two more friends of ours had asked to try it when it was done and we were supposed to meet them back at C's place. One is a woman whom I will refer to as 'B' and the other, a male associate of C's I will call 'H.' I head outside, get my car and pull up out front of the house. C comes out with a full 12oz bottle of Mountain Dew that was not Mountain Dew. I didn't know this. It's about a three mile drive through a tiny town, and I figure I've got about another twenty minutes or so before I can't drive, so I had no qualms with getting behind the wheel.

[Erowid Note: Driving while intoxicated, tripping, or extremely sleep deprived is dangerous and irresponsible because it endangers other people. Don't do it!]

This was a mistake. Two hundred yards and one stop light from C's place I realize I shouldn't have driven. I'm stopped behind a vehicle at the light and halfway through the light, all my limbs suddenly go lax. I can hardly lift my arms to grip the steering wheel and it was a hurculean effort to keep my foot from slipping off the brake pedal. I tell C about this disconcerting development and he doesn't believe me. He says I'm feeling placebo because of the anticipation. I tell him I am most certainly not.

He was smart. He had sipped his over the span of the time we had sat on the porch, pounding the last few gulps only when we decided it was time to go. His reasoning was that his high would start out mellow at first and increase in intensity throughout the evening. As I sit there, waiting for the light and trying to keep control of my limbs, I watch people walking by on the sidewalk and I find myself smiling at them and wishing good things for them. I don't know how to explain it, but through the panic, I was at peace and wanting everyone around me to feel as good and happy as I did. The light turned green, and off we went. I managed to keep it together well enough to make it the final stretch and park my car, thankfully without incident.

Now a warning: Do not drive or operate anything other than a couch on a dosage like this unless you have a serious deathwish. In fact, don't drive at all under any amount. Sit your ass down, put some nice music on and chat with friends. If you have a lover, enjoy some intimacy. Don't go gallavanting around the town. What I did was supremely stupid, and I won't be repeating those actions.

So, safely arrived at C's place, we head inside and I sit down to enjoy the heavy body buzz that is now starting to subside and I realize I got hit with a pretty heavy wave there. If it started that soon and was that intense, what else was I in for throughout the course of the night? While I'm sitting there, contemplating my buzz and trying to plan out how to keep it going safely, C is in the kitchen, rattling glasses and making racket. I'm just about to call out and ask him what the hell he's doing and in he walks with the bottle of Dew and four glasses - two iced tea glasses and two juice glasses. I start to catch on and give him a 'What the hell are you thinking' look and he chuckles. 'Let's have a little bit more, I'm not feeling it yet.' I shake my head and say 'Ok, man. Your call.'

So C pours enough into the small juice glasses to fill them about halfway. 'What are the other glasses for? You got some soda or something?' I ask. 'B and H are coming over, they wanted to try tea so I filled this bottle. I figured we'd have a little bit more before they get here and then they can split the rest.' I start laughing again and we toast to his ingenuity in acquiring the seeds and begin to sip. So there we sit, nursing our drinks and joking back and forth. C has about two sips in him and during a lull in the conversation, he looks at me and starts laughing. I ask him what's so funny and he says that he's starting to feel the same way I described at the stop light. 'See? Didn't I tell you, you sonofobitch?' I sputter, and begin to laugh so hard that my face goes flush, which sets off a wave of burning sensation throughout my body.

We recover a bit, and sit and talk until B and H show up. We bring them up to speed on the afternoon's events so far and C splits up the rest of the tea for them. Now, B has a lot of experience with a wide array of drugs under her belt. She's about 5' 3' and 110lbs. She'll smoke an eighth of good weed and go driving, and she drives better stoned than I do straight and sober. The girl should probably be doing stock car racing because Lord knows, she gets enough practice at it every day. beyond that, I've seen her chew morphine patches and blow lines of Oxy. She pops Vicodins every day and had a bad Xanax problem a few years back, house-sitting for a geriatric who had a scrip for them and left bottles full lying all over the house. Knowing all this, I honestly didn't think the tea would touch her. H is almost as crazy as she is, and he does all the same drugs but not in the same quantitites and runs about 6' and 230lbs or so.

After telling our stories, H says I'm full of shit about the incident in traffic, thinking I'm trying to psych him out. I shake my head and tell him 'You'll see, man. Just wait.' So they start to stip their tea and we sit around and chat. B complains about the taste, saying it's so bitter and vile she can 'hardly gag the shit down.' H says he loves the way it tastes and offers to finish what's left of her's and she tells him to 'jam it.' We all laugh.

Fifteen minutes into the conversation, H is telling us about a problem customer he had to deal with at work that day and stops mid-sentence. He droops back into the couch and looks over at me with a stupefied look on his face. 'You weren't fucking kidding, were you?' he says. I grin and tell him I wouldn't bullshit him about something like this. Not if he needs to know what he's getting into. 'Holy shit, I guess not.' His first wave hits him and he wasn't half done with his glass. 'This is some serious shit, man!' I just keep grinning at him, wondering how hard it would hit him later and praying it wouldn't leave me immobilized.

After we had all finished our tea, B says she isn't feeling anything and asks if we want to smoke. She laid hands on some good hydro and it was sitting in her car. Well, twist my arm. We all go out on the porch and chat while she packs one up. We pass it around and it's tasty stuff. It kicks after a few passes and she packs up another one. Then another. We go back inside and sit down and she calmly announces that she's starting to feel something. Then she let slip that before she headed over, the friend who sold her the dope had given her a tablet of some new type of E to try out and she didn't want to be rude, so she had popped it on the spot, it was triple something. My jaw drops when I add it all up. 'Holy shit, B! Why didn't you tell me that? You're going to be FUCKED UP!' C exclaims. We look at each other and just shake our heads.

I don't rightly recall time after this point. I know we headed over to H's house with B driving like a bat out of hell. It's a wonder and a mercy that we didn't get stopped and busted, let alone have a collision and get maimed or killed. We get to H's place and by now, I'm extremely, heavily stoned. Very heavy waves are hitting me and they are both building in intensity with each progressive instance and also coming closer and closer together. By the time we get there, it's all I can do to keep from vomiting during the waves, and so I decide the best course of action is to claim H's throne - A super plush chair and ottoman. I sink into the chair and put my feet up.

By this point, I am not feeling very good. I'm getting intense waves of nausea and bonus waves with every cigarette, but somehow I manage not to wretch my guts up. C comes over and asks me if I'm ok. 'Yeah, man, I'll be ok I think. It's just really heavy right now.' He nods and walks across the room and sits down with B and H to give me space. They ask if I'm ok and he tells them what's up. H comes over and tries to comfort me with quiet, reassuring small talk. 'It's comfy, isn't it?' 'Oh yeah. Exactly what I need.' We chat for a bit and he decides I'm not all there, but I'll be ok and heads back over to sit with C and B. I'm not sure how long I sat there, but it couldn't have been the hours that have subsequently disappeared from my memory. What I do remember is heading over to one of C and H's associate's place and getting smoked up there as well.

At this point, I was starting to plateau off the morphine, but was also extremely itchy and said so. B, bless her sweet heart, came over and started scratching my back. It was almost orgasmic it felt so good. We stayed for a bit and decided to head back to C's apartment. We drop H off at his place on the way and put him to bed. He drops off immediately. We get back and figure we'll walk around town for a bit. By now, it's 1 am on a Friday night and things are pretty busy on the street, but we're not interested so we call up this girl who works with B, who I have been flirting back and forth with for a few weeks. I'll call her 'S.'

We get to her apartment, and she surprises us with more weed! By this point, the morphine has basically worn off. It's two in the morning and the massive dosage of tea I had taken nine hours previous is completely out of my system, so at this point all I'm dealing with is the tail end of a mild pot stone. Right. We smoke four bowls worth of good bud between S, B, C, and myself. Within the hour or so we were there, B and C have darted out the door to yack off the front porch several times apiece by now and thankfully, I have managed to keep from succumbing as well. Then C reminds me he has to work in six hours and begs off, badly needing some sleep. B goes with him to hang out for a bit and crash on his couch, finally being too stoned to drive (I never thought I would see the day).

So now, it's just S and I and I'm toying with the idea of making a move. It wasn't meant to be. For whatever reason, her weed seemed to wake up the morphine. I started getting waves again, but they were mild and pleasant. The problem is, I can't open my eyes or even support my head. I'm fully conscious, I just can't move or work a muscle, but I feel tremendous. She asks if I'm alright and in my best stoned slur I tell her 'I'm fiiiiine... I just can't move.' She suppresses a giggle and we decide to just sit there and watch a movie.

When I was good enough to move, I decide it's probably best that I leave, not wanting to pass out on her couch with nothing to show for it. I walk back to C's place to see if he and B are still up, and they are. I find B sprawled on his couch, and my buddy scratching her back. She looks over at me and says 'When he's done, you're up, buddy.' 'You got it,' I tell her. I sit down in a recliner and stone out, staring at the cieling in the meantime, my reverie broken only when C pipes up and tells me he's been at it since they left, which was almost forty five minutes. We both crack up laughing.

After another fifteen minutes or so, he says he can't take it anymore and heads upstairs to rack out. I'm up. As it turns out, B was very heavily stoned on both the morphine tea and the ecstasy, so she's very itchy and at the same time, every touch is an overwhelmingly pleasurable sensation. I scratch her back for a while and decide a massage would probably be better. I won't go into inappropriate details, but I basically brought the poor girl off by giving her a back rub. That's one for the scoreboards.

She's wiped out and so am I, so she claims the recliner and passes out and I take the couch. As I lie there, bewildered at the day's events, I realize I'm getting rapid closed eye visuals of colors and objects. My mind races for a while and then settles down, leaving me in a peaceful sleep heavy with colorful, erotic dreams. I wake up the next morning and head home to do my own thing and recover. The next afternoon, C, B, H and myself all get together to pack a few bowls up and we start talking about the previous evening's events. Before I start to feel any buzz off the dope, I realize I have been both thinking and talking about the whole experience as if it had been several days prior. It honestly felt that way. It was like coming out of a fog and looking back and seeing the whole thing as very far away.

I found out later the day after that a housemate of the baker's had come home after we left and wanted a little bit of tea. He had two shot's worth and while it took an hour and a half to hit him, it hit him pretty hard and left him immobilized for several hours and itchy for the next 16 or so. How I consumed as much as I did and smoked as much weed as I had on top of that and still managed to remain functional, I will never know. I do plan, however, on experimenting with making my own tea sometime soon and reserving it for small, occasional doses to relax and take the edge off. While it was a very good time, I can't see myself wanting to get that insanely high off it again unless I'm in a social situation where there's a number of my friends all partaking in the experience.

Overall, the experience was very pleasant but very disorienting. I felt spectacular, but the whole next day, my brain was complete mush. I couldn't put an intelligent sentence together or carry on a decent conversation. I lost track of what I was doing several times during the day, and basically acted like a classic burnout. Morphine tea will most definitely give you a hard buzz, so prepare yourself and dose slowly. Also, try as I might, I cannot recall how the exact sensations actually felt. I recall my thoughts and observations at the time, and my general state of mind, although only vaguely. It's difficult to describe, but I'm sure plenty of people know what I'm talking about.

Exp Year: 2007	ExpID: 64674
Gender: Male
Age at time of experience: Not Given
Published: Sep 11, 2007	Views: 20,087
[ View PDF (to print) ] [ View LaTeX (for geeks) ] [ Swap Dark/Light ]
Poppies - Opium (43) : Combinations (3), Retrospective / Summary (11), Various (28)