Opium Lettuce
Lactuca Virosa, also known as "opium lettuce" or "wild lettuce" is a member of the... you guessed it... lettuce family.
Its effects are similar to that of opium poppies but much milder. It is a sedative and pain reliever, good for sore muscles, headaches, insomnia and to just relax a little.
From the leaves you can make tea, tinctures or lettuce cigarettes. When the leaves are picked or otherwise damaged, they release a white latex sort of resin. If you let it dry a little and scrape it up, it can be formed into a ball and smoked like opium.
Another way to extract from wild lettuce is to make a strong tincture from fresh, macerated leaves and then filter out the plant material and evaporate the alcohol. This leaves you with a potent extract which can be eaten or smoked.
It is easy to grow and the seeds have a high germination rate. These pictures are from today, wintertime. They have grown more over the winter then they did all summer, one of the greenest plants in the garden.
If you plan on consuming wild lettuce, do your research beforehand for it can cause undesirable side effects for some people. As with many plants, overconsumption of wild lettuce can result in toxicity.
Do you know the Latin name for this plant? There are so many regional plants I have seen in books all called "wild lettuce". Much appreciated and upvoted! Edit to add: duh, its the first line!
Woah - crazy! So... if it's not in the opium family... does it carry the same or similar opioid risks?
Not that I know of. I use it sometimes and have never felt like I need more.
That's awesome! I was googling around after reading this and saw on the wiki that there's been at least one fatality from intoxication and also it's related to latex (maybe the fatality was a latex allergy??)
Either way, it's super cool! Thanks for sharing and giving me something to nerd out on for a bit!! :D
Hmm, I wonder how much they consumed. I guess lettuce kills. We are going to need laws to protect people from lettuce.
Its always interesting to discover new plants and their effects, finding which medicines work for you. Strictly medicinal seed company has wild lettuce, all their seeds are high quality.
I am purchasing wild lettuce and tobacco seeds from their site right now! Cheap prices. Free shipping on orders more than $10!
Awesome. They have good prices and selection, lots of rare and interesting herbs too.
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