Letter: Dear Treating Yourself
From The Mad Scientist
I am writing to you for two very good reasons, the first being a gigantic thank you for the best magazine out there for all level headed cannabis lovers.
The second reason is in response to an article you published in issue 35-2012, Opium Made Easy By Dr.Z. We were very happy to see some positive light being shed on another wonderful medicine plant for our use. Just as the wonderful cannabis plant. I’ve loved, admired, grown and used them both since the mid 70’s and will continue to do so until I die. I must admit that in the beginning it was a defiance and antiestablishment thing but for the past couple of decades it’s been all about the medicine.
My wife and I are both physically disabled. I have COPD and a very painful case of arthritis in my back. My wife suffers from a severe case of Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (EDS), a rare genetic disorder that causes all of her connective tissues to be defective causing severe pain in her entire body and frequent joint dislocations daily. We both take a long list of medications for some relief but we both believe that the cannabis and the poppy plant provide much better pain relief with zero negative side affects. And for this reason I would like to elaborate just a bit on Dr.Z’s article and provide your readers with a very nice and easy way to use the wonderful poppy.
Opium is described as: The latex that is gathered from the scarred poppy seed pod. Which, by the way, is the least productive method as well as being the most legally dangerous, especially for the small home gardener. We find the most productive and safest way to get your O is to go a step beyond the tea as described by Dr.Z and end up with what’s known as poppy extract.
For those of you who aren’t in a position to grow your own or are just afraid of your poppies being noticed by a nosey neighborhood snitch, don’t despair. You can easily find poppy pods on the Internet.
I would also like to suggest to any of your interested readers what I consider to be the best book ever written on the subject. Opium For The Masses/Harvesting Nature’s Best Pain Medication By Jim Hogshire. A must have for all home growing and medical users of nature’s best.
I thank you
very much for your time and I can
only hope you’ll allow me to share this
wonderful information with
your readers.
Thank You, The Mad Scientist
Harvest your poppies when ripe, and leave a few of your best plants for next years seed. Harvest your plants, stems, leaves and pods, and chop them up like a fine salad. Put this salad in a blender, 2 or 3 cups at a time. Chop this as fine as you can in the blender. Bring about three cups of water with a quater teaspoon of lemon juice or apple cider vinegar to a hard boil. Remove from the heat and pour in your blended product and let steep for about 20 minutes, stirring often. Strain this tea through a T-shirt like cotton cloth and a screen strainer into a 9 x 13 glass baking dish. Set this liquid in front of a lite fan, check and scrape the sides from time to time keeping the distillate together. Conditions dependent, in about a day or so you should end up with several grams of a thick, black, gooey, tar- like substance, poppy extract.
An excellent home made pain medicine and it also is very good for a restful night’s sleep. You’ll have to find your own dose, but a 1/4” to a 5/16” ball of your hardened extract should do the trick. You can also get a second and third run (just use half the amount of water with the leftover poppy grounds), a little less product from these runs, but the product is just as good as the first.