What are your favorite quasi-drug-but-not-drug recreational substances?
Feel free to be loose with your definitions. "Not usually considered a drug" is fine to qualify as "non-drug", for instance. I'm not really thinking so much of "foods", though, but maybe "food ingredients" and substances found in food ingredients are fine, especially if they're quasi-drug-like or if you'd get a lot of the same benefits/enjoyment from it consuming it straight rather than in food.
Also ITT, tell other users why their substances actually are drugs actually.
Mine:
- Chamomile - good for my mood and gives me vivid dreams.
- Capsaicin - I and Wilbur Scoville are well acquainted.
- Cacao - I don't really do cacao any more because I've quit caffeine, but I include it here because I still miss sucking on unsweetend baker's chocolate daily.
81 replies
insomnia. after the second or third day of no sleep you start seeing some really wild shit.
That used to be my drug of choice
Sugar. That shit is like meth.
Saffron: either a few strands in hot water as a tea, or the much more affordable saffron extract tablets; gives a mildly speedy/stimulant effect, genuinely interesting.
Valerian root extract: smells like feet, knocks you off of your feet.
Licorice root: sugar free sweetener that increases your BP in larger amounts, I literally use a stick of it to stir my tea, the sweetness is felt at the back of the mouth and typically comes on as an aftertaste, doesn't have a strong anise flavour.
Kanna: a small plant from South Africa that an extract of will give entactogen effects (reminiscent of MDMA, but with a much lower ceiling)
Syrian Rue Seeds: seeds which contain harmala alkaloids, the thing that changes DMT into a 3-hour experience in Ayahuasca. The seeds are traditionally used as an incense in Persian/middle eastern cultures.
Ginger: it has 3 different properties if left fresh, dried or cooked. The main spicy component of fresh ginger becomes more pungent if left to dehydrate (dried ginger), or becomes sweeter if cooked/baked from fresh (the molecule literally ends up closer to vanillin, the main flavour of vanilla)
Nutmeg: consumed in a large quantity raw, will causes stoning and mild anticholinergic effects.
Cloves and clove oil will block out a tooth ache.
Poppy seeds have a very small amount of morphine naturally on them, you can make a painkilling tea from them, but I wouldn't recommend doing this, and would suggest if ever attempted to titrate up slowly.
Music. It's mind-altering and mood-altering.
Cheese. One of its ingredients, casein, can trigger opioid receptors.
https://erowid.org/experiences/subs/exp_Cheese_Blue.shtml
I love that erowid is still alive and kicking.
I'd have died in my 20s without it. Like, literally.
Playing guitar, thrashing a scale up and down without making any mistakes makes you feel like you could eat gods.
I hit all the wrong notes, still eat gods.
Eat ‘em up, baby, eat ‘em up.
Eat 'em and smile
Definitely black tar heroin oh and English Breakfast Tea, and cats
That shit will rule your life if you dabble in it. Cats, I mean.
My cat makes little effort noises and grumbles when I cuddle her, which is the funniest thing in my world at the moment.
Apart from caffeine (which is definitely a stimulant and therefore a drug) I also use sweets and other carbs recreationally and to enhance my performance at work.
You can just buy straight linalool terpenes now (the smelly stuff in lavender attributed to sleep).
I drop a couple drops on a stuffed animal or small pillow in bed and it's like knockout wonder.
Caffeine.
Spicy foods.
Favorite foods, like maybe something you only get once in a great while that you really like.
Staying up until 1 to 2 am. I feel more creative in the evening, but in the night, I don't have the energy to commit to a vision, so I just kind of imagine a few different things poorly
So many of my projects are getting manic and locked in until 3 am, then the next day I'm burnt out and tired and never finish it. I'll get around to it eventually, but only because in procrastinating another project I never finished.
Nice try Mr. DEA.
https://featureassets.gocomics.com/assets/9ebc38b08e4f012f2fe200163e41dd5b
(https://www.gocomics.com/doonesbury/1973/08/06)
Tulsi (Holy Basil): Has just enough anti-anxiety properties to quiet the inner voice that keeps me up at night.
Sugar is great for when I'm sleepy in the afternoon (good strong black licorice is a good complimentary to that, since it seems to keep my blood sugar from dropping in the first place)
I love some spicy food, oh yeah.
Music and movement, dancing can feel like a drug.
English Mustard. A nice thick layer of it, as in, thick enough that you question the structural integrity of the result, and everyone else questions your sanity, in a cheese (other fillings are available) sandwich will light your day up. The heat is different to capsaicin, you feel it more in your nose and sinuses, but it has a similar effect. You get a mild, giddy, flying feeling for a moment, then settle down into a haze of sensation. The endorphin (I assume it's endorphins anyway) release feels great, all my muscles relax, and it's a pretty good painkiller too.
sold! that's the calm I'm up for
Seconded. I like to slather steaks in english mustard. My partner and kids think I'm insane.
Another annual tradition for me is leftover Christmas ham, in white bread, with loads of english mustard, while sitting on my ass watching the cricket.
Giving my pets scritches.
Or when my cat gives me headbutts.
Yes sameee
Pickle, olive, etc
Starch.
Specifically, potato.
More specifically, fried somehow.
Sugar. Would love to get rid of but for one it's everywhere and if I minimise I will suffer and be insufferable.
It's not a drug but sure has identical properties...
Oh, favourite. Well, it's a love hate abusive relationship.
I once spent an entire summer giving up as much sugar as possible. No sweets, minimal added sugar, minimal processed food, pretty much my only sugar was fruit. I ran every single day.
I was miserable. Insanely depressed, grumpy, exhausted, moody, awful cravings and just so generally unhappy. None of this "I quit sugar and now I'm so full of energy and feel so healthy and happy!" Absolutely the opposite. At the end of the summer I had lost exactly 4 lbs and it wasn't because I had gained muscle mass either.
Said fuck that, life is about balance and if I can't eat ice cream once in awhile it's not worth being alive. But sugar is absolutely addictive and it gave me a new perspective on anyone trying to quit anything like cigarettes or heroin.
Yes, exactly this. I get really miserably depressed. I can not stress how much. And if a craving hits in vicinity of sweets or such, everything gets so much worse bo matter the outcome (resist or cave in).
So I settle with more or less controlle dosages.
I'm dealing with what I'm pretty sure is SIBO and am basically currently on a no suger diet, natural or added, and looking at the extreme low FOD map diet of no sugar, no gluten, no dairy for a while. It's really hard to avoid all added sugars, they put that shit in fucking everything and you can't trust the nutritional labels because they can say 0 grams of sugar per serving if the serving size is small enough. (Classic example is tic-tacs, ingredients are basically just sugar, but per serving size they can claim 0g of sugar because the serving size is one tic and one tac)
All that to say, cutting sugar out of your diet is definitely doable, and honestly I've never felt healthier about my diet as much as I hate how it's being restricted.
There are infinite ways to combine rice and beans and meats with spices that are nutritionally complete. You probably wouldn't have any issues with veggies either so that opens up the diet considerably.
Oh my gosh. I get violently ill and can't stay out of the bathroom when I eat sugar. (I've told people, "yeah, sugar makes me sick so I don't eat it". And they're like "oh yeah, me too, the sugar crash in the afternoon always makes me feel so blah." And I'm like "listen...".) I basically haven't eaten anything sweeter than a tomato in 20 years because it's super not worth it. I'd never heard of SIBO, and I don't have any letters after my name, but this SIBO thing sounds very much like my experience.
Not that having a name for my symptoms would really change much to speak of. It doesn't seem like there's much of a treatment for SIBO aside from eating in ways that don't trigger it. But hell. At this point, if there was a cure, I don't think I'd take it. I've only had one cavity in the last 20 years (and I suspect that actually wasn't a cavity but rather a resorption). Keeping my weight in a healthy range is way easier without sugar in my diet. My taste buds have adapted a lot and things that wouldn't taste remotely sweet to anyone else taste super sweet to me, so I don't feel deprived in that way. I have a lot more appreciation for more complex and stronger flavors like bitter, sour, spicy, etc. And I appreciate having that "biofeedback mechanism" that tells me (and not subtly) "hey, that's bad for you; cut it out".
(I cut gluten out of my diet the same time I cut sugar out of my diet and my symptoms abated. I've had a couple of times when I've had sources of sugar -- granny smith apples and bing cherries specifically -- and my symptoms came back. But I haven't had occasion to experiment with gluten to see if having gluten would give me symptoms again. I just haven't tried it, so I don't know if I'm sensitive to gluten or not. I don't make restaurants break out the gluten-free deep fryer or anything. I just ask them to leave the bun off my hamburger or whatever. But gluten is another thing that I just don't feel deprived for lack of and don't see how my life would improve any by putting gluten back in my diet. Maybe some day I'll have enough bread to figure out whether it affects me the same way, but I don't have any plan to do such an experiment any time soon.)
And, yeah. I can attest to your point that cutting sugar out of your diet is entirely doable. I virtually never miss it, and in the very rare cases when I do, it's more of a mild nostalgia than anything you might call a "craving".
Yeah that's the thing, if I lower sugar too much or cut it out entirely for like two weeks, I get very moody and depressed as lonefighter described. So much that life is no longer bringing any joy and that's not overstated. It's just how my body feels about it - or was conditioned over time.
But it seems you are different, which I am happy for, at least you can avoid that poison.
meditation and early hypnangogic sleep stages, just watching my brain do weird brain shit. sometimes I get this insane, intense sensation of being/observing something formless and simultaneously infinitely large and infinitely small. like my location/place neurons doing some kind of existentially overwhelming hardware stress test lol
Chocolate
400 mg of l-theanine. Aka two pills. If I don't take any for a while I start with one otherwise it feels like like a extremely mild stimulant.
Just regulates my mood, and gives me focus in the day. Smooths out caffine too makes me feel less wired, and makes me more awake/cognitive awareness. For the mood part i would compare it to eating a 5mg edible where you don't feel high but are more smiley and giggly.
It helped with anxiety and I rebound better off poor sleep.
And for those that don't know its found in green tea or matcha which is originally how I learned about it. I bought matcha powder and noticed it made me feel almost "stoned" or just a weird uplifed mood in the mornings, then just started buying l-theanine. Mornings are supposed to be depressing and a struggle even with coffee so I knew something was wrong.
Damn I wish L-theanine did something for me. I thought it was a scam because it does absolutely nothing at all for my mood or anxiety. Shame, because it's supposed to work well for ADHD when combined with caffeine...
(FWIW a 5mg edible would do nothing for me either. I guess I just have a naturally high tolerance to everything.)
Sugar... mostly sugar. I baked a legendary citrus cake yesterday and I've had most of it in two sittings.
Ginger and Valerian (interestingly Valerian is the component of most bedtime teas that's associated with vivid dreams. You might actually be reacting to that, check the ingredient list on your tea or supplement).
Have you got anything against vivid dreams?
I want complete darkness until my alarm goes off.
Now it is the 2AM "Weeeeee! I lost my pacifier" and the 5AM "Daddy can I sleep in your bed"...
Nothing OTC or supplement
Good call, but the chamomile I do is just bulk "Egyptian chamomile". Not any kind of a "sleepy-time tea" or anything like that.
In the past I've done Celestial Seasonings Sleeptytime Vanilla. Love the taste. It doesn't have any Valerian either, though.
I have done Cup of Calm by Traditional Medicinals which is a mix (it doesn't have any Valerian, though) but it's honestly a little stronger than I'd like. It'd be fine on a once-in-a-while basis, but I wouldn't want to do it daily.
I honestly don't know that I've ever consumed Valerian now that you mention it. 🤔 Maybe I'll try some sometime.
Sleepytime extra does (it's the extra).
Oh boy!
Cacao is done better as KokoSamoa. Roast whole cocao beans until the air smells like hot cocoa. Then grind in a mortar and pestle and scoop into a ball. Let the ball solidify, then later, put it in a cup of hot water with sugar. It tastes like pure heaven. Zero dairy, and has a solidly just above mild euphoric feeling.
A tea of a little mugwort, a little wormwood, and star anise is bitter as fuck but will send you on a 30 minute swirly ride where your paredoilia is cranked up to 11. You can sweeten with honey, but it's not exactly a sipping tea. (wormwood can be toxic in high amounts, this is not withccraft advice, see a shaman if you experience swirling lasting more than 4 hours)
OP, chamomile and lavender are a great pair for calming. Chamomile, hibiscus, lemongrass and rosehip also do a good job at that. Camomile, lavender, mugwort and hops will send you to sleep and you'll enjoy some fun, vivid dreams.
Breathwork alone can easily get you to a weird, fun place.
And, of course, the smell of rain in the desert and fresh cut grass. To quote Hank Hill, "Why would anyone want to do drugs when you can just mow the lawn?"
Oh yeah. I've heard lots of wild stuff about some of the holotropic kind of breathwork. I even did it once, but I don't really trust it. Seems potentially dangerous. Plus, I read How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan a while ago and he had a real scare of a near-medical-emergency from that. (To be fair, he's got heart issues, so that definitely contributed.) I remember reading that part of the book hearing the bit leading up to the holotropic breathwork and thinking "oh, god, don't do it Michael; you'll regre-... oh god he did it." Lol. He had a choice between MDMA and breathwork and because his doctor told him to avoid amphetamines because of his heart, he opted for the breathwork, and I knew that might not really be that much safer. It doesn't seem he had any long-lasting negative effects. Just a spell of irregular heartbeat or something (I don't remember more specifically than "or something"). But yeah.
All that happened the time I tried it myself was a bit of tingling and a lot of hand and face... I dunno. Cramping? Spasming? Like, my muscles seized up and I couldn't relax them. Not enough to be painful. Just enough to be weirded out. No psychedelic-y sort of effects or anything like that for me personally. I might have gotten into more of that territory had I kept going longer, but who knows. I didn't have any guide or trip sitter or whatever, so I got scared and aborted when something weird happened. I don't remember how long those effects lasted, really, but it wasn't all day or anything.
First off, there's a LOT of different kinds of breathwork out there. They each have nuance, caveats, and some dangers associated with doing them wrong. I did dirga pranayama breathwork with breath rentention for years when I had a different schedule in the mornings, and never had the muscle thing you mentioned. The only danger was in doing it wrong.
As for holotropic - here's a study of 11,000 participants, where only 2% didn't have any sort of interesting experience.
So, based on this, evidence suggests you might have simply not done it right. Which is common with people doing breathwork on their own. YT videos don't often train you as well as a real human watching how you breathe.
As for calling it "dangerous" and you projecting that on accomplished "I'll try anything" author Michael Pollin - why? Lots of things are dangerous and we do them every day. Driving a car kills about 40,000 people in the US. If he mentions driving a car, do you also groan and think "Don't do it!"? Likely not because that's something mundane to you.
The need for a trip sitter seems (as are the effects of breathwork according to a lot of people, honestly. It's cool, but it's work, not like dropping acid) overblown. Psychedelic experiences last about as long as the breathwork lasts - it's that people keep up the breathwork for hours. Feelings of euphoria might last all day, but the need for a trip sitter seems unnecessary, IMO.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s44271-025-00247-0
I mean, Wikipedia seems to contradict a lot of what you're telling me. Not to say Wikipedia can't be wrong, but it's not like anything I said about holotropic breathwork came out of nowhere.
Wikipedia specifically calls out the face and hand cramping thing. It also mentions a potential risk of seizure based on a 1993 report which may well be outdated at this point. Wikipedia also says "it should not be attempted alone" which seems to contradict your take that "A trip sitter seems unnecessary, IMO". So at very least even if your take is more correct, it doesn't sound like it's uncontroversial.
I've never heard Michael Pollan called an "I'll try anything" author, but also you'll note from my comment that I didn't get from him the idea that holotropic breathwork was associated with some risks to your health. I already had that understanding before reading his book. (I read his book not knowing that holotropic breathwork would come up.) And I'm not sure what you mean by "projecting" in that context. Here's a quote from How to Change Your Mind talking about his experience with holotropic breathwork:
And a footnote:
What am I "projecting onto" Michael Pollan exactly?
Tell you what. I'll edit "seems dangerous" to "seems potentially dangerous".
If your reasoning is that the fact that I didn't have "some sort of interesting experience" means I wasn't doing it right, I basically admitted to that in my previous comment. "I might have gotten into more of that territory had I kept going longer".
If your reasoning is that the had hand and face cramping is evidence that I was doing it wrong, that's in fact the usual effect of "doing it right". I don't have any reason to think the cramping effect in particular was dangerous, nor did I say it was.
If he'd previously mentioned specific reasons why he couldn't possibly drive safely, of course I'd have had concerns with him driving. He'd mentioned previously in the book that he had a history of heart issues and so I thought it concerning that he'd do something like holotropic breathwork. (Also, I never said anything about "groaning".)
Look, I'm not trying to discount your experience as real. I am suggesting that trying things like breathwork without someone there to explain step-by-step and guide your progress makes one - anyone - more prone to errors. Those errors can lead to problems. I mentioned going breathwork with retention, which is holding one's breath. If you hold for too long, too many times, you can end up with tinnitus. Which I did, because I was also doing it wrong. It's a common beginner's error, and once corrected, it stopped being a problem for me.
Wikipedia has a known set of ideological bias, and because you're looking at the (New Age) article, the bias of "everything in here is stupid pseudoscience BS, so light it up" is easily met. I can't find the interview I saw a few years ago, because now everything is buried in some "is it wOkEipedia???" garbage slurry, but an editor says something like "Yes, I'm biased. Wikipedia should show my biases because I'm always right." Which is....just such an egotistical human thing to say. Anyway, point is that if you're looking at any Wikipedia page that can be dismissed as "woo-woo" then it's automatically becomes fairly anti-that thing page.
Which I think you recognize. You're doubtful about the relevance of a 1993 study already. And if you follow that to the citation, it's a book named "Hypocrisy and Dissent Within the Findhorn Foundation: Towards a Sociology of a New Age Community" that seems like a hit piece on a singular foundation. Which, just a guess here, means someone in Scotland was teaching holotropic breathwork wrong, and ran into some problems, and it was assumed that holotropic breathing, and not the failures of one group, were to blame. Here we are over 30 years later, and you have as many citations supporting holotropic breathing as "dangerous" as there are that say vaccines cause autism, and potentially about the same quality of study. Which isn't to say that more research isn't needed, sure. However, I would suggest that if over 30+ years where increased research into breathwork has taken place hasn't pointed to holotropic breathwork specifically as uniquely dangerous as compared to any other kind of breathwork, then maybe don't single out one narrow practice based on one experience you had while 99.999% of other people seem to be getting along just fine.
Speaking of which, you'll notice that Michael Pollin says that it's CO2 levels in the blood, not holotropic breathwork specifically, that led to his AFib. Many kinds of breathwork change the CO2 levels in the blood. Pranayama does that. And so does Ketoacidosis - the keto diet, along with medical issues like kidney disorders that acidify the blood. So maybe projecting is the wrong term. Bias-seeking would be more accurate. Any number of things that produced low CO2 levels were going to have the same effect, and so had his experiment been about the keto diet, he would have had the same results. He had something weird happen as a side effect which was negative, so it met your bias. Which is normal and human, but please see that for what it is. You didn't even have the same negative effects as Pollin, so it seems to me like the word "holotropic" is all that connects the experiences, yes? Did you do the practice right or not? I don't know. Only you can know. But if you're running into negative experiences based not on an established medical condition, then I ask what was the difference between what you did and the people that have a lovely time?
And you can't really call a guy that wrote This if Your Mind on Plants and takes mescaline and goes off caffeine as not willing to try anything. It's been a few years since I read the book, but I seem to recall he seemed like he was willing to grow opium poppies in his yard if it wasn't for the simple fact that doing so, and writing about it, would have easily incriminated him in print and made the whole section of the book unpublishable.
Call it whatever you want, but if you're trying to approach this from an evidence-based, scientific perspective, first off, you should say just "some breathwork has potential dangers." Because it does. If you jump in a pool and to pranayama and breath retention and pass out, you can drown. Which was in Scott Carney's book about Wim Hof. Not ideal, right? Yet, not holotropic, either. Second, eating a sandwich can lead to choking and death. Eating shellfish can lead to negative reactions and death. Eating too many eggs can lead to death. But we don't call eating food "potentially dangerous" regularly. We don't say "eggs are dangerous!" because eating 100 in a day will strip vitamin K from your cells.
I'm asking you to be specific and look at what you're calling dangerous and why. Take a step back and be objective and specific.
If "holotropic breathwork can be dangerous" is bias, then everyone else seems "biased" as well.
I did a DDG search for "holotropic breathwork" and looked at the first 5 (actually 6 because one wouldn't load) links for references to hand and face cramping and to any dangerous effects:
If your take is that it's always safe for everyone "if done correctly", then your take is the outlier, not mine.
I never said anything about whether other kinds of breathwork are or aren't (sometimes, comparatively) dangerous.
If I said "boxing carries a risk of concussion", would you say I was "singling it out" from among other sports that also carry a risk of concussion? (MMA, American football, etc.) I'm not singling anything out. I said nothing about whether ther other forms of breathwork carry risks or not. I'm only "singling out" doing holotropic breathwork from (all else being equal) not doing holotropic breathwork.
Read more carefully. I never said I believed holotropic breathwork to be dangerous in some cases from my own experience. I said quite the opposite. My own experience didn't harm me. Taken in isolation, my own experience supports your assertion that it's safe (though taken in isolation, it's only an anecdote, so hardly conclusive proof that it's safe for everyone). I believed holotropic breathwork to be potentially dangerous in some cases before my own experiment and before reading How to Change Your Mind. Neither of those were what convinced me. The preponderance of writings I'd found on the topic did and continue to.
Michael Pollan (whose name you keep misspelling) did specifically call the practice he'd been led in "holotropic breathwork" in the passage I quoted.
The keto diet causing ketoacidosis is not typical. The keto diet (purposefully) causes "ketosis", but that's distinct from ketoacidosis. Ketosis doesn't alter blood pH. Wikipedia: "While ketosis refers to any elevation of blood ketones, ketoacidosis is a specific pathologic condition that results in changes in blood pH and requires medical attention.".
If he had risk factors for the keto diet putting him in ketoacidosis, maybe. The keto diet can be dangerous in some cases. "Doing it right" is only safe if "doing it right" includes taking into account any risk factors one might have and being open to abstaining if the risk is too high. (And even then, the risk would never be zero.) Which is exactly what I've been saying about holotropic breathwork. Michael Pollan had exactly some of the risk factors which could make holotropic breathwork dangerous for him. Whether he has additional risk factors that would contraindicate the keto diet for him, I don't know, nor do I know if his heart condition would specifically contraindicate the keto diet absent other conditions.
Again, you're reading what I said and making up your own interpretation exactly contrary to what I said. I never said I had a negative experience beyond being "scared" and "weirded out" enough to end the experiment. (Mind you, I knew to expect the hand/face cramping as it had been mentioned in a lot of material that I had read on the topic.) I didn't have any of the sort of "theraputic" effects that are the reason why people who seek holotropic breathwork seek it. But again, nothing negative came of the experience.
Again, my best guess is "I might have gotten into more of that territory had I kept going longer".
Sure. I'll concede the point. I'm not sure what that has to do with the rest of the conversation, though.
That's exactly what I've been saying across three comments now.
Just in: things that aren't holotropic breathwork can be dangerous in some cases, ergo holotropic breathwork isn't.
I have been. You just don't seem to comprehend written English.
Meditating one time got me back to the void I was in during part of my NDE - all other sounds turned to static then the silence that felt alive drowned out the static, it was wild
Caffeine. It might be a self-medication thing but I drink it all day.
Kava. I like to mix it with lavender, chamomile and valerian root for a very mellow calm.
Something in sleepytime tea hits me almost like a good indica. I think it's the valerian root, because regular chamomile tea doesn't do it.
Something to keep in mind; virtually all commercial tea bags release insane amounts of microplastics in every cup (like millions). Recommended to cut open the bags and put the tea itself into a stainless steeping ball to avoid the plastics.
The only commercial bags I know of that are actually made of wood based paper and are safe are Yogi tea bags.
Bigelow teabags are also made from wood pulp and also dont use any adhesive (their pyrimid bags use a corn/sugarcane adhesive tho, but still no plastic)
It is if you're specifically getting sleepytime extra (it's the extra). It's likely gaba active iirc the limited research correctly. The newly sober from sedating drugs often use it for insomnia during the post-acute withdrawal period.
im addicted to soda. so that.
Incense.
Melatonin
Gobs of honey and bit of lemon juice in hot water. I find it soothing and stimulating at the same time.
I've heard that some people add hard liquor to this, but I don't drink.
Also, a hot chocolate with oat milk.
I find myself actually needing coffee in the morning as I'm getting older.
I don't know if you get Oatley brand oat milk where you are, but they do a chocolate milk. Steamed up with an espresso machine, just a little bit of cacao, a squirt of cold whipped cream, and you have yourself a little cup of heaven, my friend.
I do get Oatley, but it's expensive unless it occasionally shows up in Grocery Outlet.
I have a giant can of cocoa powder so I don't have to have a half-gallon box of chocolate milk hogging space in my fridge, and having to worry about consuming all of it before it turns.
I get a crick in my neck on occasion and will take valerion by the handful until it goes away. I get a little light headed afterwards.
I'll push the boundary somewhat and nominate bitters. I enjoy bourbon and bitters, as in an old fashioned without the sugar. Earlier this year I purchased some Orinoco bitters, which are spiced - think cumin and cardamom. I've been alternating the tropical fruit flavours of the more traditional Angostura with the Orinoco. I must get my hands on some citrus bitters too.
I do bitters and neat liquor from time to time. But My hefty bitters collection actually tends to go into both Hot and Cold tea (always something black tea type, I hate green tea). Also do not add sugar or honey to my tea in 80% of that which I make.
The tea + bitters brings out all kinds of complexities that I've grown to enjoy over unadulterated tea. My combos so far:
I really liked coca tea when I visited Peru. It's no stronger than caffeine and really does help adapting to altitude. I wouldn't really consider it a drug.
Does it make your mouth numb?
Not that I'd noticed.
Lemon Balm, Passionflower, and Lavander (as tea)
I am having a hard time finding passionflower tea. Like just passionflower.
Is it sold in bulk at herbalists anywhere, maybe I will try that.
that's where i had to buy it. they sell out all the time. in a 500g bag
Tea tree oil, that's the good stuff.
Green Leaf Kratom
It's the only antidepressant that works for me.
(Cannabis too if that counts.)
How is Kratom not a drug?
It is a drug in the same way that caffeine is a drug, which is what this topic is about. Withdrawal from caffeine is much worse for me than withdrawal from kratom. There's a lot of unwarranted fear-mongering when it comes to kratom, and judging by the tone of your comment, it seems to me that you believe the misinformation.
As someone with eight years of experience with on and off kratom usage, I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.
Especially in the early days of the recent Kratom "boom", I definitely heard a lot of people call it "not a drug". I think kindof in the same way as there are lots of psychoactive substances that people don't consider "drugs". (Chamomile that I listed in my OP, for instance. People feed that shit to their little kids and don't think of it even slightly like they think of alcohol or hard drugs or whatever. But that shit's a GABA agonist just like alcohol, GHB, and benzos. There's definitely a sense of the word "drug" in which chamomile is super duper for sure yes a drug.) I think mostly those folks were in deep denial. It's not just a drug, but a pretty concerning one for its addiction potential if nothing else. But still, I've heard people say it's "not a drug". So, yeah. I think it counts for purposes of this thread.
The reason why kratom users are like this is because the withdrawal effects are no worse than caffeine withdrawal. When I don't take kratom, I feel tired and irritable, just like someone who hasn't had their coffee. That's the worst of it. After a few days I'm back to baseline, even if I was taking it daily. (I'm currently two weeks into a break from it right now.)
Am I in denial? IDK; I can only provide my own personal experience from what I've seen in my family and myself when we use it. I just don't want to see it being lumped in with harder substances like cocaine and fent, cause I swear some of you act like it's all one in the same. But for me and the people I know who take it, it's no worse than a caffeine addiction. You want to talk about an addiction that's tough to quit? Let's talk about nicotine.
I think kratom would meet the quasi-drug-but-not-a-drug condition set by OP since it is a drug but is largely unregulated and not legally a drug in a lot of places.
Its status now reminds me a lot of betel nut.