Wild Lettuce #


Binomial / Botanical Name	Lactuca Virosa
Street Names	Bitter Lettuce; Laitue Vireuse; Opium Lettuce
Major Active Compound	Lactucin; Lactucopicrin
Indigenous Source	Europe; Asia; Australia
Form	Leaves
RoA	Smoked / Oral
Personal Rating On Shulgin Scale	+ / +

SUBJECTIVE EXPERIENCE #

It is easy to confuse this with the common lettuce, as purchased from the supermarket. Whilst I should categorically state that it is a different member of the genus, I should add that there is more to the family itself than meets the eye.

I purchased a pack of wild lettuce in Australia, as a self-help remedy for jet lag. I simply couldn’t sleep through the nights. My experiments with this were therefore undertaken at unconventional times: I smoked it from a small pipe at 3am and 4am respectively.

Did it work?

No, at least to the extent that it didn’t send me to sleep. I continued to toss and turn hopelessly.

Was it psychoactive?

Yes. Even though I already felt rather strange, courtesy of the jet lag, this changed the complexion of the feeling slightly.

There was a definite sedation, as there was the following day when I consumed this as tea. It was more anxiolytic than sleep inducing, with a heady presence. Perhaps the latter is what causes some users to claim that it has an opium type feel; something which I didn’t really notice.

Although minor, a background form of sedating psychoactivity was certainly in play, via both RoA’s.

THE IMPULSE OF YOUTH #

As an aside, this was not my first experiment with the lettuce family. Many years ago, I read somewhere that all lettuces were, to some degree, psychoactive.

Whether this was true or not, the impulse of youth drove me to purchase two whole lettuces, and eat them, or at least, eat as much as I possibly could. This amounted to approximately one lettuce and a half.

I have no idea which type of lettuce these were, but they were procured as normal lettuces from a normal grocer.

I ate them in the evening, and dropped into a deep and extremely long sleep (10+ hours) a few hours later. At the time I was astonished, and never saw the humble lettuce in the same light again.

During the research for this book, I discovered that perhaps there is something to it, as lettuce is often promoted as a natural remedy for insomnia.